Geoffrey Miller, “The Mating Mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature”

Language comprehension vs. language production

Given a strict male-display, female-choice mating system, we should expect female superiority in language comprehension and male superiority in language production. For example, females should recognize more words, but males should use a larger proportion of their vocabulary in courtship, biasing their speech towards rarer, more exotic words. In this simple picture, more women might understand what «azure» really means (so they can accurately judge male word use), but more men might actually speak the word «azure» in conversation (even if they think it means «vermilion»). Standard vocabulary tests measure only comprehension of word meaning, not the ability to produce impressive synonyms during courtship. Reading comprehension questions are more common than creative writing tests. Women are faster readers and buy more books, but most books are written by men.