Rethinking the relationship between pronoun-drop and individualism with Bayesian multilevel models

IF 2.1 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
Sean Lee
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Can the language we speak determine how we represent the world around us? To those familiar with the theory of linguistic relativity, this may seem like an age-old question about which everyone has their own answer. Although the evidence supporting linguistic relativity remains controversial, the long reach of language into our perception and behavior is nevertheless an intriguing possibility that deserves further investigation. Here I take a closer look at a case of linguistic relativity that had a particularly strong impact on cross-cultural research: the pronoun-drop effect. The theory of pronoun-drop effect posits that languages that allow their speakers to drop subject pronouns in verbal communication would lead their speakers to create collectivistic culture. It was argued that the absence of pronouns necessitates the speakers to embed their self-identities in the context of social interaction, so the linguistic practice of omitting pronouns would reduce the sense of individuality in the minds of speakers. After conducting a series of Bayesian multilevel analyses on the original dataset, however, the current study concludes that the pronoun-drop effect is unlikely to be a robust, universal phenomenon. The analyses revealed that the majority of statistical signal supporting the phenomenon comes from the Indo-European language family, and other families provided little or inconsistent evidence. It was also observed that the Indo-European languages alone made up 61 per cent of the original dataset, and dropping them from analysis completely nullified the pronoun-drop effect. These observations suggest that the pronoun-drop effect is a consequence of failing to account for (i) varying effects among language families and (ii) overrepresentation of the Indo-European languages. With these results, this article suggests that the theory of pronoun-drop effect should be thoroughly revised. Additionally, the article provides several suggestions for many similar cross-cultural studies that suffer from the same problems as the pronoun-drop effect study.
用贝叶斯多层模型重新思考代词下降与个人主义的关系
我们所说的语言能决定我们如何代表我们周围的世界吗?对于那些熟悉语言相对论的人来说,这似乎是一个古老的问题,每个人都有自己的答案。尽管支持语言相对性的证据仍然存在争议,但语言对我们的感知和行为的长期影响仍然是一种有趣的可能性,值得进一步研究。在这里,我将仔细观察一个对跨文化研究产生特别强烈影响的语言相关性案例:代词脱落效应。代词省略效应理论认为,允许说话人在言语交际中省略主代词的语言会导致说话人创造集体主义文化。有人认为,代词的缺失使说话人必须将自己的身份嵌入社会互动的语境中,因此省略代词的语言实践会降低说话人心目中的个性。然而,在对原始数据集进行了一系列贝叶斯多级分析后,目前的研究得出结论,代词脱落效应不太可能是一种稳健的普遍现象。分析表明,支持这一现象的大多数统计信号来自印欧语系,而其他语系提供的证据很少或不一致。还观察到,仅印欧语系就占原始数据集的61%,将它们从分析中删除完全消除了代词删除效应。这些观察结果表明,代词脱落效应是由于没有考虑到(i)语系之间的差异效应和(ii)印欧语言的过度代表性。鉴于这些结果,本文建议对代词脱落效应理论进行彻底的修正。此外,本文还为许多类似的跨文化研究提供了一些建议,这些研究与代词脱落效应研究存在相同的问题。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Journal of Language Evolution
Journal of Language Evolution Social Sciences-Linguistics and Language
CiteScore
4.50
自引率
7.70%
发文量
8
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