Whorfian socioeconomics is an emerging interdisciplinary field of study that holds that linguistic structures explain differences in beliefs, values, and opinions across communities. This field, which draws on linguistic relativity but extends it radically, holds that linguistic features are a fundamental explanation for variation in human behavior. This essay provides a conceptual overview and methodological critique of Whorfian socioeconomics, with a particular emphasis on empirical studies that document a correlation between the presence or absence of a linguistic feature in a survey respondent's language and their responses to survey questions. Using the universe of linguistic features from the World atlas of language structures online and a wide array of responses from the World Values Survey, I show that such an approach produces highly statistically significant correlations in a majority of analyses, irrespective of the theoretical plausibility linking linguistic features to respondent beliefs and behavior. I show how two simple and well-understood statistical fixes can more accurately reflect uncertainty in these analyses, and use them to replicate two prominent findings in Whorfian socioeconomics. The essay concludes by reflecting on the common methodological challenges facing linguists and other social scientists interested in nonlinguistic effects of linguistic structures.

‘Homers Sprache ist nicht panhellenisch. Sie kann nur solches Sprachgut enthalten, das bei den Stämmen, die das Epos pflegten, lebendig war.’ Thus Wackernagel, SUH 222. On that principle a word limited to the Ionic dialect—'auf den ionischen Dialekt beschränkt', to use a phrase of Bechtel's—cannot gain entrance to the epos until the epos is being produced by speakers of Ionic. I present two examples: ϵ ὗντϵ, already a high-class word, doomed to early obsolescence, that could appear in poetry unchanged; and , for which an Aeolic-looking dress seemed more appropriate.

The phonemes of Russian are as follows:

Consonants:

1. Plain and palatalized counterparts regardless of the following sound:

p pj b bj m mj f fj v vj

t tj d dj n nj s sj z zj

1 lj r rj

2. Plain or palatalized depending on the following sound: k g x

3. Plain only:

c š ž

4. Palatalized only:

c šč y žĵ

A large amount of sentence-processing work has focused on revealing how the parser incrementally integrates each incoming word into the current linguistic representation. It is often explicitly or implicitly assumed that the structure endorsed by the parser should determine the ultimate interpretation of the sentence. The current study investigates whether the interpretive bias in sentence comprehension necessarily tracks the parsing bias. Our case study concerns the locality bias in nonlocal dependencies, specifically Mandarin WH-in-situ scope dependencies. Our findings suggest a misalignment between parsing and interpretative decisions at the global level. In particular, for Mandarin WH-in-situ constructions that involve scope ambiguity, there is a locality bias in parsing, but an antilocality bias in interpretation. Building upon the RATIONAL SPEECH ACT framework, we propose a Bayesian pragmatic analysis to account for these findings. Under our proposal, the seeming conflict between parsing and interpretation will ultimately disappear because parsing preferences will be naturally embedded under the pragmatic reasoning process to generate the ultimate interpretation. The current study therefore makes novel contributions, both empirically and theoretically, to addressing the broader question about the relationship between parsing and interpretation.

This paper responds to the target article by Law et al. (2025), who explore whether sign languages undergo regular phonological change similar to regular sound change observed in spoken languages. While they argue that iconicity and transmission patterns may inhibit such change, I propose that sign languages evolve systematically in a way that allows for regular change but in modality-specific ways that obscure it. Evidence of grammaticalization, lexicalization, and phonetic variation in sign languages indicates that both signed and spoken languages undergo the same processes, challenging the notion that regular change is absent. Additionally, I propose an approach that examines regular change through bundles of phonological features in signs that act as phonological environments shaping such change. Future research must integrate historical and online data, computer vision, and concerted studies to uncover whether regular phonological change is specific to modality or to language.

Historical linguistics has primarily used phonological evidence for genealogical classification. The evidence consists of ‘characteristic facts and details’, in Meillet's terms. Syntactic evidence can now be used. Subjectivity, i.e. the subjective dominance of the principal verb in a sentence, is cited as an illustration of a ‘characteristic fact’ in Proto-Indo-European and its dialects.

Hermann Hirt, Idg. Gr. 1.336–7 (1927), in a treatment of initial consonant variation, presented eight sets of examples as evidence for an alternation gw [sic] : w. In general the etymological relationship of so much as lies to the left of the colon (e.g. Gk. bía, Skt. jayati, jināti) or to the right of the colon (e.g. Gk. s, Lat. vīs) is admitted by the standard etymological dictionaries. Relationship between forms lying on the left and on the right is naturally not admitted, since Hirt did not develop his material to a point at which alternations of the kind in question could be used in support of new etymologies. We have in fact no right to take such equations for granted, though I hope in this article to show some reasons for regarding it as credible that certain forms with reflexes of /gw/ and of /w/ had an identical origin. In connection with the Latin forms it is well to mention that v, being a reflex of both IE /gw/ and /w/, cannot be used as unambiguous evidence for either. In §§2–9 I take up Hirt's equations in order, with brief discussion.

In a previous article (Language 7.194-9) U. T. Holmes sought to establish the probability of German influence on the syntax of late Latin as spoken in northern Gaul. He also suggested a method for determining those Germanic constructions which differed most from popular Latin; and, where these German constructions are present in OFrench syntax he assumed that an interconnection was quite possible. Willem L. Graff has observed recently that ‘it is not yet possible to formulate the general laws that are thought to rule the drift of syntactical features.’ This may be true, in part, but it is safe to argue that every language has inherent tendencies which work themselves through to an expected conclusion, once the restrictions of artificial grammar become lax. It is possible to foresee much of late vulgar Latin in primitive and early Latin. The drift is continuous—no radical departures of syntactical construction are apt to develop without a rude shock from without, and, as was argued on good authority in the earlier article, the most vigorous shock which Gallo-Latin had to bear was from the horde of Germanic speakers who eventually took political possession of northern France. Furthermore, whatever we may say of the phonology and spelling of Saint Jerome's Vulgate Bible, its syntax (particularly before the revision by Alcuin) shows the popular concept of the phrase and sentence as held in the fourth century A.D. By confronting the Vulgate text with painfully literal translations made from it into OHG it is not difficult to discover those Germanisms which were essentially different from the late Latin drift. At the same time no construction must be labelled Germanic, even by this careful comparison, until a check has established that it is not present, or only slightly so, in the other Romance tongues. Italian and Provençal suffered less Germanic influence than French; Spanish had still less, and Roumanian almost none at all.