Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures
72 Pages Posted: 1 Dec 2016
There are 4 versions of this paper
Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures
Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures
Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures
Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures
Date Written: November 02, 2016
Abstract
This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in agricultural productivity, and more hierarchical society, are at the root of existing cross-language variations in the presence of the future tense, grammatical gender, and politeness distinctions. Moreover, the research suggests that while language structures have largely reflected the coding of past human experience and in particular the range of ancestral cultural traits in society, they independently affected human behavior and economic outcomes.
Keywords: Comparative Development, Cultural Evolution, Language Structure, Future Tense, Politeness Distinctions, Grammatical Gender, Human Capital, Education
JEL Classification: I250, J240, O100, O110, O120, O400, O430, O440, Z100
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