【主讲】Xiaojian Zhao 助教授 (香港科技大学)
【主题】An Economic Investigation of Linguistic Differences: Theory and Experiment
【时间】2013年10月29日 (周二) 15：30-17：00
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼801室
【语言】英文
【摘要】The paper theoretically and experimentally explores how different language structures emerge in different environments. Using communication games, we focus on one main characteristic of the environment: the variability of relations and objects of states. Our laboratory experiments show that the languages emerging from the environment with more variable relations tend to be verb-prominent, whereas the languages from the environment with more variable objects turn to be noun-prominent. It appears that a combination of universal optimization rules and idiosyncratic environmental parameters gives rise to the linguistic differences. The paper also experimentally studies whether the structure of a language affects the way by which its speakers view their world, and thus revisits the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in Linguistics.