Linguists find proof of sweeping language pattern once deemed a 'hoax'

In 1884 the anthropologist Franz Boas returned from Baffin Island with a discovery that would kick off decades of linguistic wrangling: by his count, the local Inuit language had four words for snow, suggesting a link between language and physical environment. A great game of telephone inflated the number until, in 1984, the New York Times published an editorial claiming the Inuit have “100 synonyms” for the frozen white stuff we lump under a single term. Boas’s observation had swelled to mythic proportions. In a 1991 essay, British linguist Geoff Pullum called these claims a “hoax,” citing the work of linguist Laura Martin, who tracked the misinformation’s evolution. He likened it to the xenomorph from Alien, a creature that “seemed to spring up everywhere once it got loose on the spaceship, and was very difficult to kill.” His acerbic critique rendered the subject taboo for a generation, says Victor Mair, an expert on Chinese language at the University of Pennsylvania. But now, he s ... Read full article.