In this chapter we shall examine the characteristic properties of a construction wide-spread in the world’s languages, the passive. In section 1 below we discuss defining characteristics of passives, contrasting them with other foregrounding and backgrounding constructions. In section 2 we present the common syntactic and semantic properties of the most wide-spread types of passives, and in sec...

In this paper we propose foregrounding concepts of visual abstraction and soundscape to inform a Geodesign process that is inclusive of a wider variety of people (designers, users, participants) and considers a wider degree of inputs (e.g. multimodal) in the design and planning of landscape. Two key research areas are reviewed: visualization abstraction (in relation to future uncertainty) & sou...

Repetition is one of the most basic operations on talk, often discussed for its iconic meanings. Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory imagery, often identified by their reduplicated forms. Yet not all reduplication is iconic, and not all ideophones are reduplicated. This paper discusses the semantics and pragmatics of repeated talk with special reference to ideophones. To understand ...

Humans spatialize time. This occurs within individual minds and also in larger, shared cultural systems like language. Understanding the origins of space-time mappings requires analyses at multiple levels, from initial individual biases to cultural evolution. Here we present a laboratory experiment that simulates the cultural emergence of space-time mappings. Dyads had to communicate about temp...

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Drawing on an ethnographic study of the installation and maintenance of Paris subway wayfinding system, this article attempts to discuss and specify previous claims that highlight stability and immutability as crucial aspects of material ordering processes. Though in designersʼ productions (guidelines, graphic manuals...), subway signs have been standardized and their consistency has been inves...

This paper examines a Mandarin construction that involves the general classifier, ge, when the element to its right is not a N(P). Through usage-based investigation, V-ge-Comp is identified as a construction in vernacular Mandarin that expresses the attainment of an unusual resultant state. It is argued that the meaning of the construction relies critically on a reanalysis of the Comp as a noun...