This paper examines the impact of language on firms’ cross-listing decisions. Utilising the survival analysis on data from 28,602 firms in 44 countries, we hypothesise and find that firms whose ...operational languages do not grammatically distinguish the future from the present are more likely to cross-list as its first listing destination. After integrating crucial controls, adding various fixed effects, and conducting extensive robustness checks, this relationship remains consistent. Our additional analysis reveals that speakers of such languages on average exhibit stronger long-term orientated thinking, thus predisposing them to benefit from stringent regulations, reduced capital cost, and broader investor base, especially in countries with robust governance. This observation further supports the ‘bonding theory’ and ‘linguistic relativity theory’. Collectively, our research highlights the importance of the linguistic dimension in driving corporate financial decisions.
Two perspectives stand out in examining international variations in innovative new venture creation: institutions and national culture. However, systematic insights into the interconnections between ...institutional and cultural perspectives and their effects on entrepreneurship are severely lacking. In order to fill this gap, the current research integrates two prominent yet under-explored institutional and cultural factors: linguistic future-time reference (FTR) as an institutional factor and long-term orientation as a cultural factor, and considers how they are linked through the time perspective reflected in risk and uncertainty perception. Drawing upon linguistic relativity theory and cultural theory, we propose that institutions with strong FTR languages and cultures with short-term orientation are more likely to foster innovative new venture creation. We utilized merged, multi-level, and multi-source data of 34,673 entrepreneurs from 42 countries to test our hypotheses. We also conducted a series of scenario-based, intra-group experiments with bilingual entrepreneurs to further confirm that strong-FTR has a positive relationship with innovative new venture creation. Results offer compelling support for our hypotheses.
•We explore the underlying mechanisms of international variation in new venture creation with respect to time by focusing on two salient and interrelated aspects of time at the national level: linguistic time reference as an institutional factor and time orientation as a cultural value factor.•We focus on linguistic relativity theory and culture theory to develop our hypotheses.•In the Main Study, we utilized merged, multi-level, and multi-source data of 34,673 entrepreneurs from 42 countries to test our hypotheses that institutions with strong-FTR foster innovative new venture creation through their connections with short-term oriented cultures.•IIn the Replication Study, we conducted a series of scenario-based, intra-group experiments with bilingual entrepreneurs to confirm the relationship between strong future-time-reference languages and innovative new venture creation.
Temporal perspectives allow us to place ourselves and temporal events on a timeline, making it easier to conceptualize time. This study investigates how we take different temporal perspectives in our ...temporal gestures. We asked participants (n = 36) to retell temporal scenarios written in the Moving‐Ego, Moving‐Time, and Time‐Reference‐Point perspectives in spontaneous and encouraged gesture conditions. Participants took temporal perspectives mostly in similar ways regardless of the gesture condition. Perspective comparisons showed that temporal gestures of our participants resonated better with the Ego‐ (i.e., Moving‐Ego and Moving‐Time) versus Time‐Reference‐Point distinction instead of the classical Moving‐Ego versus Moving‐Time contrast. Specifically, participants mostly produced more Moving‐Ego and Time‐Reference‐Point gestures for the corresponding scenarios and speech; however, the Moving‐Time perspective was not adopted more than the others in any condition. Similarly, the Moving‐Time gestures did not favor an axis over the others, whereas Moving‐Ego gestures were mostly sagittal and Time‐Reference‐Point gestures were mostly lateral. These findings suggest that we incorporate temporal perspectives into our temporal gestures to a considerable extent; however, the classical Moving‐Ego and Moving‐Time classification may not hold for temporal gestures.
Languages and dividends He, Wen; Zhang, Feida
The British accounting review,
November 2022, 2022-11-00, Volume:
54, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We study whether languages are related to corporate dividend policies around the world. Users of languages with a weak future time reference (FTR), such as Japanese and Finnish, do not need to ...grammatically distinguish future and current events, while users of strong-FTR languages such as French and Italian do. Chen (2013) shows that people who use weak-FTR languages may perceive the future to be nearer and have less precise perceptions of the timing of future events than users of strong-FTR languages. We argue that these perceptions may result in a lower discount rate and a higher valuation of future dividends, leading to a weaker preference and demand for a dividend today. Using a large sample of firms from 19 markets, we find supporting evidence that firms in weak-FTR language markets pay lower dividends than firms in strong-FTR language markets. The results remain robust after a battery of robustness tests, including using a single market with multiple languages and using a difference-in-differences approach in a market with a change of official languages. Further evidence shows that weak-FTR languages are related to a lower implied cost of equity capital and stronger market reactions to dividend changes. Our results offer a new explanation for cross-country differences in dividend policies and add to the research on culture and financial markets.
Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between progressive patterns and present and past time reference. First,
it looks at the shared distribution of more than 90 progressives in two ...parallel corpora and discusses the characteristics of
these contexts. It is shown that while progressives are used for dramatic and topical events in the present, they are typically
used as backgrounding, supportive material in the past. Second, it is shown that progressives generally have more occurrences in
contexts with present time reference than past, this is especially true for progressives with many uses, i.e. more grammaticalized
progressives. And third, a number of progressives temporally restricted are presented. Two historical explanations for these
restrictions are provided, both of which result from the higher frequency of present uses over past.
Language and innovation Kong, Dongmin; Wang, Jialong; Wang, Yanan ...
Journal of business finance & accounting,
January-February 2022, 2022-01-00, 20220101, Volume:
49, Issue:
1-2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Strong‐future‐time reference (FTR) languages require speakers to grammatically mark future events, while weak‐FTR languages do not. Using data from 34 countries, we find that firms in countries where ...strong‐FTR languages are spoken have fewer patent counts and citations than those in countries where weak‐FTR languages are spoken. Further evidence shows that strong‐FTR languages affect inventors’ perceptions and beliefs about future rewards from innovation. Moreover, due to interactions between people speaking different languages, globalization attenuates the negative impact of language FTR on innovation. To further support these findings, we provide evidence from a single country with a multilingual environment to control for omitted country‐level characteristics. Our study emphasizes the impact of language on corporate innovation and sheds light on the importance of informal institutions in economic outcomes.
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Aim. To focus on such a feature of future time reference as talking about the future through the forms of the present tense in the comparison of the Russian and English languages.
...Methodology. The key research methods were hypothetical-deductive method, the analysis and synthesis of scientific materials on the research topic and the introspection method. The analysis of the linguistic discussion on the opposition of the present/past/future trichotomy and the past/non-past dichotomy is given. Special attention is paid to the question if the tendency to focus primarily on the present is equally represented in the two languages under consideration at the level of the verb forms usage.
Results. It is emphasized that from the linguistic-philosophical point of view the ability to express the present and the future by means of one form reflects the peculiarities of human perception of time. This feature can be recognized as universal for different languages and it manifests itself in Russian and English. An open-to-discussion hypothesis is put forward that the reference to the future through the present is more widely expressed in everyday speech in English than in Russian.
Research implications. The article updates the problems of comparative study of the features of future time reference in language and speech.
Time reference is used to build the temporal framework of discourse and is essential in ensuring efficient communication. Several studies have reported time reference deficits in fluent and ...non-fluent aphasia and have shown that tenses (past, present, future) are not all impaired to the same extent. However, there is little consensus on the dissociations between tenses, and the question of the influence of the type of aphasia (fluent vs. non-fluent) on time reference remains open. Therefore, a systematic review and an individual participant data meta-analysis (or mega-analysis) were conducted to determine (1) whether one tense is more impaired than another in fluent and non-fluent aphasia and, if so, (2) which task and speaker-related factors moderate tense effects. The systematic review resulted in 35 studies reporting the performance in time reference of 392 participants. The mega-analysis was then performed on 23 studies for a total of 232 participants and showed an alteration of past tense compared to present and future tenses in both types of aphasia. The analysis also showed a task and an age effect on time reference but no gender effect, independently of tenses. These results add to our knowledge of time reference in aphasia and have implications for future therapies.
Studies have shown that the use of languages which grammatically associate the future and the present tends to correlate with more future-oriented behavior. We take an experimental approach to go ...beyond correlation. We asked bilingual research participants, people fluent in two languages (12 language pairs) which differ in the way they encode time, to make a set of future-oriented economic decisions. We find that participants addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked more distinctly tended to value future events less than participants addressed in a language in which the present and the future are similarly marked. In an additional experiment, bilingual research participants (seven language pairs) were asked to choose whether they wish to complete a more enjoyable task first or later (delayed gratification). When addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked more distinctly, participants tended to prefer immediate gratification more than when addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked less distinctly. We shed light on the mechanism in a within-person experiment in which bilingual research participants (nine language pairs) were asked to spatially mark the distance between the present and the future. When participants were addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked more distinctly, they tended to express more precise temporal beliefs compared with when addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked less distinctly.
Mandarin speakers, like most other language speakers around the world, use spatial terms to talk about time. However, the direction of their mental temporal representation along the front‐back axis ...remains controversial because they use the spatial term “front” to refer to both earlier times (e.g., front‐year means “the year before last”) and the future (e.g., front‐road means “prospect”). Although the linguistic distinction between time‐ and ego‐reference‐point spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin suggests a promising clarification of the above controversy, there is little empirical evidence verifying this distinction. In this study, Mandarin speakers’ time‐ and ego‐reference‐point temporal representations on three axes (i.e., sagittal, lateral, and vertical) were separately examined through two tasks. In a time‐reference‐point task, Mandarin speakers judged whether the time point of the second picture was earlier or later than the time point of the first picture, while in an ego‐reference‐point task, they judged whether an event or phase had happened in the past or would happen in the future. The results indicate that Mandarin speakers construe an earlier‐times‐in‐front‐of‐later‐times temporal sequence and adopt the front‐to‐the‐future orientation.
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