Optimal categorisation

The debate as to whether language influences cognition has been long standing but yielded conflicting findings across domains such colour and kinship categories. Fewer studies have investigated systems nominal classification (gender, classifiers) different languages examine the effects of linguistic categorisation on cognition. Effective needs be informative maximise communicative efficiency also simple minimise cognitive load. It therefore seems plausible suggest that implications for way speakers conceptualise relevant entities. A suite seven experiments was designed test this; here we focus our card sorting experiment, which contains two sub-tasks — a free sort structured sort. Participants were 119 adults six Oceanic from Vanuatu New Caledonia, with classifier inventories ranging 23. results experiment reveal classifiers appear provide structure in tasks where they are explicit salient. task did not incite through classifiers, arguably it required subjective judgement, rather than instruction. This evident quantitative qualitative analyses. Furthermore, employing more extreme displayed smaller variation comparison moderate systems. Thus, or rigid efficient. study implies influence may vary languages, all employ this optimal trade-off between simplicity informativeness. These novel data new perspective origin nature classification.