Linguistic typology and the cognitive science of non-WEIRD societies: The role of memory types

Abstract

Linguistic typology has identified properties shared by the world’s languages, as well as features with respect to which languages diverge, including infrequent or rare phenomena. Cognitive biases are one important source of language universals, through their indirect effect on language change via their impact on language learning and language use. At the same time, typologically rare phenomena can exist only if the human brain is able to accommodate them. Nonetheless, our knowledge of how we process language mostly derives from the analysis of a limited set of languages associated with WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) societies. Including non-WEIRD languages in our psycholinguistic experiments stands to benefit the cognitive science of language and, in addition, linguistic typology, given that languages do best what speakers do most, which in turn depends on what our brains do most. In this paper, the benefits of a less biased approach to the cognitive science of language diversity are illustrated through the consideration of a research project aimed at determining the impact of the typological diversity of human languages on different memory types, specifically, procedural vs. declarative memory, with the latter encompassing two subtypes of relevance to linguistic structure, semantic and episodic. Our focus is on typological features that have been shown, in the past, to correlate with sociolinguistic factors. Overall, we aim at delving into an array of multi-directional feedback relationships among memory types, sociolinguistic properties, and typological features.