Question

For decades, the dominant consensus among cognitive linguists—often termed Universalism—maintained that the structural features of a native language exert no substantive influence on non-linguistic cognition. Under this framework, the assignment of grammatical gender to inanimate objects is conceptualized as a purely morphological artifact, carrying no semantic weight or psychological consequence. Recently, however, Neo-Whorfian researchers have challenged this orthodoxy. Relying on experiments where subjects consistently attribute stereotypically masculine or feminine characteristics to objects corresponding to their grammatical gender, Neo-Whorfians contend that grammatical structure fundamentally and permanently reconfigures an individual's conceptual taxonomy of the material world.

While the empirical data gathered by Neo-Whorfians compellingly demonstrates that language can intermittently influence perception in isolated laboratory conditions, their broader conclusions overreach. The cognitive biases they document are highly context-dependent, typically dissipating entirely when subjects engage in complex, real-world tasks that demand non-linguistic problem-solving. Consequently, the claim that grammatical gender permanently restructures human thought conflates a transient psychological priming effect with foundational cognitive architecture.

According to the passage, the "Universalism" consensus holds which of the following views regarding the assignment of grammatical gender?