Peking University, June 9, 2026: 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 8 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.

Background
Although languages differ in sound, grammar, and vocabulary, they are all used by human brains shaped by common systems of perception, action, emotion, and social cognition. To connect semantic theory with the brain, the researchers mapped word meanings onto 13 biologically grounded dimensions, including sensory-motor features such as color, shape, taste, smell, sound, touch, and body movement, as well as cognitive features such as time, space, quantity, mental cognition, emotion, and social cognition.

Why it matters
A long-standing question in cognitive science is how languages can be both universal and diverse. This study offers a unified explanation: human languages share a brain-based semantic framework, but this framework can be flexibly shaped by long-term environmental conditions. The findings suggest that word meanings are influenced not only by culture, history, or geography but also by the climates in which language communities live.

Key Findings
The team first analyzed pretrained word-vector data from 53 languages across 10 language families, mapping 1,016 concepts onto the 13 neurocognitive dimensions. This brain-inspired model captured cross-language semantic similarity better than alternative models and random controls. It also predicted patterns in a large colexification network covering 2,681 languages, suggesting broad cross-linguistic relevance.

The researchers then examined why languages still differ. Among climate, geography, linguistic history, and culture, climate showed the strongest independent effect. Languages spoken in similar climates tended to organize meanings more similarly.

To confirm the results beyond text data, 253 speakers of 8 languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish) rated 207 concepts along the same dimensions. Again, climate best explained cross-language differences in the ratings. In multilingual fMRI data from speakers of 45 languages, the right anterior temporal lobe encoded this shared semantic structure, and climate distance predicted neural differences during language processing.

Future Implications
The study suggests that word meanings are shaped by both the human brain and the environments people inhabit. Over generations, climate may influence how strongly concepts connect to sensory, emotional, and social experience. This offers a new framework for understanding how language, cognition, and environment work together.

*This article is featured in PKU News "Why It Matters" series. More from this series.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-70608-8

Written by: Akaash Babar
Edited by: Chen Shizhuo
Source: PKU News (Chinese)