Quite a few people have already responded to Keith Chen’s paper, but as far as I can see, none have highlighted a rather glaring problem with Chen’s claims: Chen completely ignores the hard-won insights about language structure that have emerged from research on language change, especially grammaticalization studies.
If I understand Chen right, he’s arguing for a direct, causal (‘Whorfian’) link between language structure and ‘habitual behavior.’ As he writes, ‘my findings are largely consistent with the hypothesis that languages with obligatory future-time reference lead their speakers to engage in less future-oriented behavior.’ Continue reading


An inflection/derivation distinction on the other side of the globe?
There is a tradition of dividing all of (non-compounding) morphology into inflection and derivation in European languages, and like other European traditions, this one has been carried over to languages around the world. But on what basis?
There are clear cases of inflection and derivation where nobody would argue Continue reading →
Martin Haspelmath
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