How climate shapes the meanings of words across languages

When English speakers say "rose" and Chinese speakers say "玫瑰," do they mean the same thing? A Peking University team led by Professor Bi Yanchao explored this question using word embeddings from 53 languages, behavioral ratings from speakers of eight languages and exploratory multilingual brain imaging data. Published in Nature Communications, the study shows that word meanings are organized along shared neurocognitive dimensions, while differences across languages are associated with climate.