There are two versions of this hypothesis. The stronger version, called
linguistic determinism, asserts that thought is completely determined by language,
while the weaker version, called linguistic relativity, asserts instead that ways of
thinking tend to be partly shaped by language. Linguistic determinism would leave
little room for creative thinking that transcends the limitations of language, and this
view has been largely discredited. Linguistic relativity is a much more plausible idea.
In a later chapter, we shall discuss such perspectives in relation to the typology
of motion verbs (see 3.?.?). In the following, we shall look at a number of studies that
seem to support the idea of linguistic relativity