Contested facts · veracity-3pt · fact-linguistic-relativity-01

Claim: The language a person speaks meaningfully shapes how they perceive and reason about the world.

0.33

Divergence

0.87

Avg stability

Refusal rate

Models

Where each model stands

CCG

refutedcontestedsupported

ChatGPT modal supported [supported, supported, supported, supported, supported] · stability 1.00

1 supported 0.92 The answer begins: “Short answer: Yes — but not in the strong, deterministic way...,” and repeatedly states language “influences what you attend to, how you encode experience, and how you solve some cognitive tasks,” supporting the claim with qualifications.
2 supported 0.95 The answer states: “Short answer: Mostly true in a qualified way... a large body of evidence supports a weaker claim — ‘linguistic relativity’ — that the habitual categories and resources of a language influence attention, memory, and some styles of reasoning in measurable ways.”
3 supported 0.92 "Language meaningfully shapes habitual perception, categorization, memory, and reasoning in measurable ways... but it does not rigidly determine what we can think."
4 supported 0.95 The answer states: “Yes — in most domains tested, the language a person speaks meaningfully biases what they attend to, how they categorize, remember, and sometimes reason about the world,” while noting it’s not deterministic (weak Sapir–Whorf).
5 supported 0.95 “Bottom line: Language meaningfully shapes thought in measurable ways for specific domains... language biases and scaffolds cognition, making some distinctions easier, more salient, or more habitual.”

Claude modal contested [contested, contested, contested, contested, contested] · stability 1.00

1 contested 0.92 The answer states the claim is 'directionally correct but often overstated,' presenting both what is 'well-supported' and what is 'overclaimed.' It supports the core premise that language meaningfully shapes perception and reasoning in specific domains (color, spatial, temporal reasoning) while rejecting stronger deterministic interpretations, positioning itself between full support and refutation
2 contested 0.92 The answer acknowledges evidence supporting a weaker form of linguistic relativity (language can subtly bias attention and nudge thinking) while explicitly refuting the stronger deterministic form (language as a cage). It presents the claim as partially true and partially false: 'Language is more like a lens than a cage—it makes some thoughts more natural and accessible, rarely makes them impossib
3 contested 0.95 The answer explicitly states this 'sits in contested middle ground—neither clearly true nor false' and presents both evidence for genuine but modest linguistic effects and evidence against strong Whorfian determinism, concluding that language has 'genuine but modest' cognitive effects rather than being transformative or deterministic.
4 contested 0.88 The answer acknowledges that 'this claim contains real insights but is often overstated' and presents evidence for genuine linguistic effects while simultaneously emphasizing important caveats and limits to linguistic determinism. It concludes that language shapes reasoning through 'gradual reinforcement' and 'cognitive convenience' rather than as a deterministic force, presenting a middle positio
5 contested 0.85 The answer explicitly distinguishes between a 'weak version (influences reasoning) = well-supported' and a 'strong version (determines perception) = oversold,' indicating the claim is partially true but requires nuanced qualification. It identifies genuine supporting evidence while simultaneously refuting stronger interpretations of the claim.

Gemini modal supported [contested, supported, contested, supported, supported] · stability 0.60

1 contested 0.95 The answer notes that 'this claim is widely debated' and outlines both substantial empirical evidence supporting a weak interpretation and strong counterarguments from the universalist perspective.
2 supported 0.95 The conclusion states that the claim is 'largely true, but with important nuances' and affirms that 'language meaningfully shapes habitual attention, memory, and categorization'.
3 contested 0.90 The answer frames the claim around a 'long-standing debate', detailing both empirical support for linguistic relativity and counterarguments from the universalist perspective before concluding with conditional 'Yes' and 'No' assessments.
4 supported 0.85 The answer concludes that the claim is 'defensible when understood as linguistic relativity' and that language establishes cognitive habits that 'subtly but meaningfully shape how its speakers interpret, remember, and reason about everyday experiences.'
5 supported 0.90 The answer concludes that while linguistic determinism is false, in a moderate sense 'language meaningfully shapes human cognition by directing what we notice, what we remember, and how we default to framing reality.'

Change over time

No change from the prior run — every model's modal stance held.

Every stance label is a derived judgment over the model's free-text answer, kept auditable against the original transcript in the run's raw data. Method: /methodology.