Grounding spatial language in non-linguistic cognition: Evidence for universal and relative spatial semantics in thought
نویسندگان
چکیده
The categories named by spatial terms vary considerably across languages. It is often proposed that underlying this variation is a universal set of primitive spatial concepts that are combined differently in different languages. Despite the inherently cognitive assumptions of this proposal, such spatial primitives have generally been inferred in a top-down manner from linguistic data. Here we show that comparable spatial primitives can be inferred bottom-up from non-linguistic pilesorting of spatial stimuli by speakers of English, Dutch, and Chichewa. We demonstrate that primitives obtained in this fashion explain meaningful cross-linguistic variation in spatial categories better than primitives designed by hand for that purpose, and reflect both universal and language-specific spatial semantics.
منابع مشابه
Universals and variation in spatial language and cognition: Evidence from Chichewa
The relation of spatial language and spatial cognition is central to the debate over language and thought. Recent findings move this debate beyond the standard opposition between universalist and relativist (Whorfian) stances. Two such studies suggest that spatial language (Khetarpal et al., 2009) and the spatial cognition underlying it (Khetarpal et al., 2010) both reflect universal tendencies...
متن کاملSpatial cognition and spatial language: What do we need to know to talk about space?
Like all mobile species, humans have the capacity to perceive and understand important aspects of the spatial world, such as the structure of objects and layouts, and to use this knowledge to guide motor tasks such as reaching, grasping, throwing, and walking. Unlike other species, however, humans also can talk about space. The language of space is apparently so fundamental to human cognition t...
متن کاملA computational investigation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The case of spatial relations
Investigations of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis often ask whether there is a difference in the non-linguistic behavior of speakers of two languages, generally without modeling the underlying process. Such an approach leaves underexplored the relative contributions of language and universal aspects of cognition, and how those contributions differ across languages. We explore the naming and non-ling...
متن کاملLanguage and Space: Momentary Interactions
Does language change thought? This classical question has recently received renewed attention, as new lines of evidence have been offered, either supporting or arguing against the idea that speaking a particular language– or having a language at all– affects our non-linguistic representation. The domain of space has provided particularly fertile territory for this debate. In this talk, I will p...
متن کاملGrounding the Ungrounded: Estimating Locations of Unknown Place Names from Linguistic Associations and Grounded Representations
Spatial locations can be extracted from language statistics, based on the idea that nearby locations are mentioned in similar linguistic contexts, akin to Tobler’s first law of geography. However, the performance of language-based estimates is inferior to human estimates, raising questions about whether human spatial representations can actually be informed by such (inferior) statistics. We sho...
متن کامل