主题：Grammar and Meaning: An Experimental Analysis of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
嘉宾：Yang Yang （杨扬）
时间：10月20号 10:00-11:30
地点：后主楼1610会议室

Abstract:
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH) is that grammar affects how one interprets one's environment and experiences. The importance of SWH to economic decision-making has been noted (Chen, 2013) yet rigorous evidence on its validity has remained elusive (Chen, 2015). Our paper fills this gap by reporting data from a laboratory experiment of SWH. Participants take part in communication games in which grammars emerge. By varying the incentives of the communication environment, we can affect the nature of the emergent grammar. This enables us to randomly assign people to different grammars. We then ask people using different grammars to interpret the meaning of the same items. We find clear evidence of that the structure of language does influence the way its users interpret objects. Our findings offer the first support of SWH using data from a controlled laboratory experiment.

Short Bio of Speaker:
Dr. Yang Yang is an Assistant Professor at Lingnan College, Sun Yat-sen University. She obtained her doctoral degree at Tinbergen Institute and University of Amsterdam, and bachelor degree in Mathematics and Economics at Peking University. Her main research interests include behavioral and experimental economics, applied game theory and mechanism design. She has a series of research papers related to inequity aversion, cooperation, contest, and language, etc., some of which has already been published in the Journal of Economic Psychology.