Language Log has been asked more than once to comment on the unpublished working paper by Yale economist Keith Chen that is discussed in various online sources, most recently David Berreby's post at Big Think. Briefly, Chen's paper alleges that a certain simple grammatical property of languages correlates robustly with indicators of profligacy and [...]
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A Yale economist has found that people whose languages draw strong differences between the present and the future — like the Greeks — tend to save less. Kevin Chen examined two groups of languages in a new working paper: languages t... Read Post
[This is a guest post by Keith Chen.] Mark and Geoffrey were kind enough not only to write thoughtful columns on a recent working paper of mine here and here, but to invite me to write a guest post explaining the work. In the spirit... Read Post
Geoff Pullum summarizes Keith Chen's view of "The E?ect of Language on Economic Behavior" as follows ("Keith Chen, Whorfian economist", 2/9/2012): Chen […] thinks that if your language has clear grammatical future tense marking […],... Read Post