In this article, Li and Gleitman are questioning the implications of the Whorf–Sapir linguistic relativity hypothesis.
The hypothesis argues (based on linguistic studies of Mayan populations) that the language of a society determines the members’ spatial reasoning, or the way they think about locations and distances. The Mayans use a spatial-coordinate system (ex. “to the north”) as opposed to a viewer-perspective system (ex. “to the left”).
Li and Gleitman question the findings, and they devise a research that involves only English speakers, but where they manipulate landmark cues. While they do not claim to have proven the Whorf–Sapir linguistic relativity hypothesis wrong, they argue that the availability of landmark cues plays a larger role in spatial reasoning than the linguistic system itself.
