Abstract
We compared two non-overlapping data sets: (a) the semantic categories in representative samples of nominal classification languages (N=334); and in a non-overlapping population (b) semantic category-specific impairments of European neurological patients (N=121). Each of these appears to organize world objects in natural kinds (e.g., animal, body part, plant, fruit and vegetable, liquid) or manmade kinds (e.g., food, clothing, tool, vehicle, furniture). We show that whenever a specific semantic category is found as a cognitive impairment, this category also exists in some language as a semantic classifier. Since all of the existing semantic impairments reports are with speakers whose languages lack semantic nominal classification systems, the present regularities between grammar and cognitive deficit suggests the idea that cognitive universals may constrain how the neural substrate of knowledge is organized and can break apart but also how they can become expressed in different grammars.
Highlights
In this review and survey of two literatures, we present a striking commonality between linguistics and neuropsychology on the mind's semantic system: There appear to be remarkable regularities in two seemingly unrelated phenomena, each described within two very different fields of study: linguistics and neuropsychology
Based on the general assumption of universality of human cognitive structure and the importance of language features as windows into a universal human mind, we made the following prediction: If there exists a semantic category that is affected in cognitive impairment, this category will be likely to exist in some classifier language
Since we predicted that ‘if there exists a semantic category that is affected in cognitive impairment, this category will be likely to exist in some classifier language’, we computed the probability of obtaining exactly 30 instances of matching impairments and classifiers out of the 43 identified semantic domains
Summary
In this review and survey of two literatures, we present a striking commonality between linguistics and neuropsychology on the mind's semantic system: There appear to be remarkable regularities in two seemingly unrelated phenomena, each described within two very different fields of study: linguistics and neuropsychology. The patients studied so far spoke languages where nominal classification systems principally based on semantics are absent and they constitute an entirely non-overlapping population of. M. Lobben et al / Lingua 244C (2020) xxx individuals (in Western societies in Europe and North America) from peoples speaking classifier languages. Lobben et al / Lingua 244C (2020) xxx individuals (in Western societies in Europe and North America) from peoples speaking classifier languages On these grounds, one can surmise that the structures of the languages that these patients spoke did not play any causal role for the types of cognitive deficiencies that they suffered. The translations of cây in the squared brackets are redundant in non-classifier languages (e.g., English) but in Vietnamese supply mandatory superordinate category information (the phrases were controlled for correctness by native speaker and linguist Jenny Tran, cf Tran, 2011):
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