In an anthropology paper, a student claims that the tendency toward e…

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Rafael Nunez and colleagues studied how members of the Yupno, an Indigenous group in Papua New Guinea, conceptualize time. The researchers recorded Yupno speakers explaining certain temporal words and phrases, such as kalip bishap, a past-oriented expression that translates to "past times," and coded each speaker's manual gestures. Previous research has found a tendency in many cultures to make temporal distinctions using spatial concepts and gestures, particularly along egocentric axes (i.e., relative to the orientation of the speaker): for instance, Hebrew speakers often refer to the right/left axis to describe events in time.

In an anthropology paper, a student claims that the tendency toward ego-based conceptualizations of time is universal. Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the student's claim?

Although Yupno speakers and Hebrew speakers both use gestures to indicate orientation in time, Yupno speakers tend to use fewer gestures overall when speaking than Hebrew speakers do.

Some Yupno grammatical structures used when talking about time are also used in Hebrew.

A Yupno speaker points in opposite directions when indicating a past event versus a future event.

When Yupno speakers who are outdoors use gestures to refer to the past, they point downhill from their current location regardless of which way they are facing.