A young study that looks at the ways in which words and meanings are connected to each other in 81 world-wide language has indicate that all languages may deal a common underlying semantic bodily structure . This suggests that the way in which humans conceptualize the world may be determine more by our intrinsical nature than by the various environmental , social , and historic linguistic context that pass to the creation of distinguishable cultures .
Though many multitude take oral communication for granted , the reality is that the words we use say as much about the way that concepts are arranged within our mind as they do about the thing they actually announce ; theyassign meaningto phenomena by picking out those attributes that seem most worthy of import to us . later on , the fact that different languages expend words to assign meaning in dissimilar ways has top to a long - go debate about whether humans naturally conceptualize the world inculturally comparative – rather than universal – ways .
To test this , an international radical of investigator decided to make what they call “ semantic mesh , ” indicating how unlike words concern to each other in different languages . Using printed dictionaries , they examined the word used to describe 22 unlike concept in 81 languages . They specifically prefer concepts that denote instinctive geographic features – such as Sun , Moon , batch , star , and ocean – since the ways in which meanings are set apart to such construct are likely to be extremely act upon by historical and environmental experience .
For case , coastal and inland communities are likely to have a dissimilar relationship with the ocean , and may , therefore , conceptualise it in dissimilar ways .
print their findings in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the field of study author describe how they looked for polysemous words , meaning those that name to more than one thing . For example , they mention that the Lakhota lyric of the Sioux tribes contains a password for " Sun " that also means " Moon " and " calendar month . " In this way , multiple concepts are grouped together under a individual word .
Using this proficiency , the researchers were able to produce semantic maps for each language , which illustrate the elbow room that different construct are connected via these polysemantic words . compare these semantic meshing to one another , they identified a cosmopolitan underlying construction , with strong correlations between the slipway that concepts are grouped in all languages .
For example , in every lyric , the words " sea " and " salt " were found to be more intimately connected to one another than either were to the Word of God " Sun . " As such , the author resolve that concepts are connect via a “ universal set of relationships , ” which reflect the intrinsical properties of human noesis , and are not influenced by cultural or environmental factors .
It is worth notice , however , that linguistic meaning is an abstract conception and is therefore very difficult to quantify scientifically . As such , although this field has bring out some fascinating and noteworthy determination , it can not provide any categorical decision to the public debate as to whether human cognition is cosmopolitan orculturally relative .
