Geographical Origins of Language Structures∗
Geographical Origins of Language Structures∗ Oded Galor,y Omer¨ Ozak¨ ,z and Assaf Saridx January 5, 2018 Abstract This research explores the geographical origins of the coevolution of cultural and linguistic traits in the course of human history, relating the geographical roots of long-term orientation to the struc- ture of the future tense, the agricultural determinants of gender bias to the presence of sex-based grammatical gender, and the ecological origins of hierarchical orientation to the existence of polite- ness distinctions. The study advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that: (i) variations in geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher natural return to agricultural invest- ment contributed to the existing cross-language variations in the structure of the future tense, (ii) the agricultural determinants of gender gap in agricultural productivity fostered the existence of sex-based grammatical gender, and (iii) the ecological origins of hierarchical societies triggered the emergence of politeness distinctions. Keywords: Comparative Development, Cultural Evolution, Language Structure, Future Tense, Po- liteness Distinctions, Long-Term Orientation, Grammatical Gender, Gender Bias, Hierarchy, E- mergence of States JEL Classification: D01, D03, J16, Z10, Z13 ∗The authors are grateful to Alberto Alesina, Joan Bybee, Justin Cook, Lewis Davis, Klaus Desmet, Delia Furtado, Paola Giuliano, Luigi Guiso, Stelios Michalopoulos, and David Weil, as well as conference participants at the NBER Culture and Institutions
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