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VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL SPATIAL COGNITION ACROSS LANGUAGES: EVIDENCE FROM ENGLISH AND FRENCH
Abstract
Languages differ in how they lexicalize and grammaticalize spatial information, thereby constraining how speakers organize spatial information to encode motion in discourse. Such cross-linguistic differences raise new questions concerning the relation between language and thought. In this context we examined how speakers of two typologically different languages, English and French, performed several tasks, all of which involved motion events: a production task (describing visual scenes showing motion events), a non-verbal categorization task (grouping visual stimuli of these events), a verbal categorization task (deciding which visual stimulus best corresponds to a sentence describing a motion event). In addition, all three tasks were coupled with an eye-tracking paradigm measuring on-line how participants allocated their visual attention when exploring these events. Subjects' verbalizations during the production task differed substantially in the two groups as a function of language-specific factors. French speakers focused mostly on Path information (lexicalized in the verb), while English speakers expressed Manner (in the verb) and Path (outside of the verb) equally often, thereby producing denser utterances. Subjects' preferential choices during the categorization tasks (in both of its verbal and non-verbal versions) were guided by different criteria. However, a more important language effect was observed in the verbal version of this task as compared to its non-verbal version. Finally, although speakers in both groups allocated more attention to Path information overall during their visual exploration of the events, their focus ٭ Address correspondance to Efstathia Soroli, 2 of attention also varied across groups, suggesting a greater focus on Path in French as compared to English, as well as a different unfolding of attention during the processing of the visual stimuli. However, the eye-tracking data must be interpreted with care since they also showed variable patterns that seem to be stimulus dependent. In conclusion, we argue that our results support a moderate version of the relativity hypothesis according to which typological language properties have a clear impact on linguistic behaviours, but also on non-linguistic behaviours, although to a lesser extent, in some tasks, and with some stimuli.
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This project collected linguistic data for spatial relations across a typologically and genetically varied set of languages. In the linguistic analysis, we focus on the ways in which propositions may be functionally equivalent across the linguistic communities while nonetheless representing semantically quite distinctive frames of reference. Running nonlinguistic experiments on subjects from these language communities, we find that a population's cognitive frame of reference correlates with the linguistic frame of reference within the same referential domain.*
This experimental study investigates event construal by early Dutch-German bilinguals, as reflected in their oral depiction of everyday events shown in video clips. The starting point is the finding that the expression of an aspectual perspective (progressive aspect), and its consequences for event construal, is dependent on the extent to which means are grammaticalized, as in English (e.g., progressive aspect) or not, as in German (von Stutterheim & Carroll, 2006). The present study shows that although speakers of Dutch and German have comparable means to mark this aspectual concept, at a first glance at least, they differ markedly both in the contexts as well as in the extent to which this aspectual perspective is selected, being highly frequent in specific contexts in Dutch, but not in German. The present experimental study investigates factors that lead to the use of progressive aspect by early bilinguals, using video clips (with different types of events varied along specific dimensions on a systematic basis). The study includes recordings of eye movements, and examines how far an aspectual perspective drives allocation of attention during information intake while viewing the stimulus material, both for and while speaking. Although the bilinguals have acquired the means to express progressive aspect in Dutch, their use shows a pattern that differs from monolingual Dutch speakers. Interestingly, these differences are reflected in different patterns in the direction of attention (eye movements) when verbalizing information on events.
This paper focuses on native speaker judgments of a construction in Dutch that functions as a progressive aspectual marker (aan het X zijn, referred to as aan het-construction) and represents an event as in progression at the time of speech. The method was chosen in order to investigate how native speakers assess the scope and conditions of use of a construction which is in the process of grammaticalization. It allows for the inclusion of a large group of partici-pants of different age groups and an investigation of potential age-related dif-ferences. The study systematically covers a range of temporal variables that were shown to be relevant in elicitation and corpus-based studies on the gram-maticalization of progressive aspect constructions. The results provide insights into the selectional preferences and constraints of the aan het-construction in contemporary Dutch, as judged by native speakers, and the extent to which they correlate with production tasks.
English and Spanish speakers differ in the ways they talk about motion events, but how have these different modes of expression become instantiated as differing generalizations—as syntactic rules, lexical patterns, or both? In two studies, we asked English- and Spanish-speaking adults to interpret novel motion verbs presented in three types of sentence frames. Overall, English speakers expected novel verbs to encode the manner of motion, whereas Spanish speakers expected the verbs to encode the path of motion. The sentence frames also significantly affected how the speakers interpreted the novel verbs. We conclude that speakers of different languages represent their different generalizations about the composition of motion verbs both lexically and syntactically, and discuss how these generalizations might be important for issues of language acquisition and linguistic relativity.
English and Spanish clearly differ in their encoding of motion events, but what is the exact nature of this difference? How does it influence language use? These questions were investigated in two studies of adult English and Spanish speakers' descriptions of static (Study 1) and dynamic (Study 2) motion events. English speakers overwhelmingly used manner-of-motion verbs (e.g. run). Spanish speakers used more path-of-motion verbs (e.g. salir/exit); however, with some motion events they strongly preferred to use manner verbs as well. The two language groups also differed in the degree to which they mentioned the manner of motion at all, and in the types of sentence frames they preferred, but not in the sheer number of verb types produced. The results are discussed with respect to the varying contexts of language use, refinements to typological differences between English and Spanish, and implications for children's acquisition of motion verbs.
It is well known that languages differ in how they encode motion. Languages such as English use verbs that communicate the manner of motion (e.g., slide, skip), while languages such as Greek regularly encode motion paths in verbs (e.g., enter, ascend). Here we ask how such cross-linguistic encoding patterns interface with event cognition by comparing labelling and categorisation preferences for motion events by English- and Greek-speaking adults and 5-year-olds. Our studies show that, despite cross-linguistic encoding differences, the categorisation of dynamically unfolding motion events proceeds in identical ways in members of these two linguistic communities. Nevertheless, language-congruent categorisation preferences emerge in tasks that implicitly encourage the use of linguistic stimuli during event apprehension. These data have implications for the relationship between language and event categorisation.
Spatial orientation and direction are core areas of human and animal thinking. But, unlike animals, human populations vary considerably in their spatial thinking. Revealing that these differences correlate with language (which is probably mostly responsible for the different cognitive styles), this book includes many cross-cultural studies investigating spatial memory, reasoning, types of gesture and wayfinding abilities. It explains the relationship between language and cognition and cross-cultural differences in thinking to students of language and the cognitive sciences. © Stephen C. Levinson 2004 and Cambridge University Press, 2010.
This study investigated whether different lexicalization patterns of motion events in English and Spanish predict how speakers of these languages perform in non-linguistic tasks. Using 36 motion events, we compared English and Spanish speakers' linguistic descriptions to their performance on two non-linguistic tasks: recognition memory and similarity judgments. We investigated the effect of language processing on non-linguistic performance by varying the nature of the encoding before testing for recognition and similarity. Participants encoded the events while describing them verbally or not. No effect of language was obtained in the recognition memory task after either linguistic or non-linguistic encoding and in the similarity task after non-linguistic encoding. We did find a linguistic effect in the similarity task after verbal encoding, an effect that conformed to language-specific patterns. Linguistic descriptions directed attention to certain aspects of the events later used to make a non-linguistic judgment. This suggests that linguistic and non-linguistic performance are dissociable, but language-specific regularities made available in the experimental context may mediate the speaker's performance in specific tasks.
Languages differ in how they encode motion. When describing bounded motion, English speakers typically use verbs that convey information about manner (e.g., slide, skip, walk) rather than path (e.g., approach, ascend), whereas Greek speakers do the opposite. We investigated whether this strong cross-language difference influences how people allocate attention during motion perception. We compared eye movements from Greek and English speakers as they viewed motion events while (a) preparing verbal descriptions or (b) memorizing the events. During the verbal description task, speakers' eyes rapidly focused on the event components typically encoded in their native language, generating significant cross-language differences even during the first second of motion onset. However, when freely inspecting ongoing events, as in the memorization task, people allocated attention similarly regardless of the language they speak. Differences between language groups arose only after the motion stopped, such that participants spontaneously studied those aspects of the scene that their language does not routinely encode in verbs. These findings offer a novel perspective on the relation between language and perceptual/cognitive processes. They indicate that attention allocation during event perception is not affected by the perceiver's native language; effects of language arise only when linguistic forms are recruited to achieve the task, such as when committing facts to memory.
Languages vary strikingly in how they encode motion events. In some languages (e.g. English), manner of motion is typically encoded within the verb, while direction of motion information appears in modifiers. In other languages (e.g. Greek), the verb usually encodes the direction of motion, while the manner information is encoded in modifiers. We designed two studies to investigate whether these language-specific patterns affect speakers’ reasoning about motion. We compared the performance of English and Greek children and adults (a) in non-linguistic (memory and categorization) tasks involving motion events, and (b) in their linguistic descriptions of these same motion events. Even though the two linguistic groups differed significantly in terms of their linguistic preferences, their performance in the non-linguistic tasks was identical. More surprisingly, the linguistic descriptions given by subjects within language also failed to correlate consistently with their memory and categorization performance in the relevant regards. For the domain studied, these results are consistent with the view that conceptual development and organization are largely independent of language-specific labeling practices. The discussion emphasizes that the necessarily sketchy nature of speech assures that it will be at best a crude index of thought.
The idea that the language we speak influences the way we think has evoked perennial fascination and intense controversy. According to the strong version of this hypothesis, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after the American linguists who propounded it, languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world, and the structure of one's language influences how one understands the world. Thus speakers of different languages perceive the world differently.
Although the last two decades have been marked by extreme skepticism concerning the possible effects of language on thought, recent theoretical and methodological advances in cognitive science have given the question new life. Research in linguistics and linguistic anthropology has revealed striking differences in cross-linguistic semantic patterns, and cognitive psychology has developed subtle techniques for studying how people represent and remember experience. It is now possible to test predictions about how a given language influences the thinking of its speakers.
Language in Mind includes contributions from both skeptics and believers and from a range of fields. It contains work in cognitive psychology, cognitive development, linguistics, anthropology, and animal cognition. The topics discussed include space, number, motion, gender, theory of mind, thematic roles, and the ontological distinction between objects and substances.
Contributors
Melissa Bowerman, Eve Clark, Jill de Villiers, Peter de Villiers, Giyoo Hatano, Stan Kuczaj, Barbara Landau, Stephen Levinson, John Lucy, Barbara Malt, Dan Slobin, Steven Sloman, Elizabeth Spelke, and Michael Tomasello
Bradford Books imprint
The M1T Press (Language, speech, and communication series), 2000, volume I: viii+495 pp, volume II: viii+565 pp; hardbound, ISBN 0-262-20120-8 (volume I), 0-262-20121-6 (volume II), 0-262-20122-4 (the set), $60.00 per volume, $110.00 the set Reviewed by Keith Allan Monash University Talmy is a pioneer of cognitive linguistics and something of an icon. His most impor-tant papers from 1972 to 1999 are re-presented here organized in terms of their subject matter. All papers have been revised, and most expanded. However, they are not par-ticularly well integrated in this massive work, which combines patches of brilliance with unnecessary wordiness and repetition--it needed a stern editor. 1 Volume I, con-sisting of an introduction and eight chapters, is "concerned with the patterns in which and the processes by which conceptual content is organized in language" (I.2). Vol-ume II, consisting of the identical introduction and (a different) eight chapters, presents typologies for the structure of concepts, proceeding to on-line processing of these in culture and narrative. Talmy's viewpoint is that "the relation between a linguistic ex-pression and something in the world cannot be direct but must, in effect 'pass through' the mind of the language user" (I.309, n. 14). Cognitive systems--language, percep-tion, reasoning, affect, attention, memory, cultural structure, and motor control--share some fundamental properties as well as each having unique structural properties; they are not autonomous like Fodor modules (I.16). "Semantics simply pertains to concep-tual content as it is organized in language" (I.4). Conceptual content includes affect and perception--only accessible through introspection, which must be employed with "controlled manipulation of linguistic material" (I.5)--that is, correlation with other findings across languages and other sciences. Talmy pays closer attention to meaning-form mappings than do many writers on semantics. He is best known for bringing the notions of Figure and Ground--a schematic system of attention into linguistics in the early 1970s. "In Figure-Ground organization, the entity that functions as the Figure of a situation attracts focal attention and is the entity whose characteristics and fate are of concern. Tile Ground entity is in the periphery of attention and functions as a reference entity used to characterize the Figural properties of concern" (I.12-13). It is within this framework that the book is written. 1 There are inconsistencies; for example, there is no explanation when it is first mentioned of Atsugewi's affiliation (it is a Hokan language of Northern California). Abbreviations are only occasionally explained. There are many minor typos. Also, I disagree with many of Talmy's grammaticality judgments--which would lead me to different analyses of a small portion of his material.
1.0 What this is all about 2.0 Cross-modal transfer of frame of reference: evidence from Tenejapan Tzeltal 2.1 Tzeltal absolute linguistic frame of reference 2.2. Use of absolute frame of reference in non-verbal tasks
Two experiments compared how French vs. English adults and children (three to seven years) described motion events. Given typological properties (Talmy, 2000) and previous results (Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Hickmann, 2003; Slobin, 2003), the main prediction was that Manner should be more salient and therefore more frequently combined with Path (MP) in English than in French, particularly with four types of 'target' events, as compared to manner-oriented 'controls': motion up/down (Experiment I, N=200) and across (Experiment II, N=120), arrivals and departures (both experiments). Results showed that MP-responses (a) varied with events and increased with age in both languages, but (b) were more frequent in English at all ages with all events, and (c) were age- and event-specific among French speakers, who also frequently expressed Path or Manner alone. The discussion highlights several factors accounting for responses, with particular attention to the interplay between cognitive factors that drive language acquisition and typological properties that constrain this process from early on.
English and Korean differ in how they lexicalize the components of motion events. English characteristically conflates Motion with Manner, Cause, or Deixis, and expresses Path separately. Korean, in contrast, conflates Motion with Path and elements of Figure and Ground in transitive clauses for caused Motion, but conflates motion with Deixis and spells out Path and Manner separately in intransitive clauses for spontaneous motion. Children learning English and Korean show sensitivity to language-specific patterns in the way they talk about motion from as early as 17-20 months. For example, learners of English quickly generalize their earliest spatial words--Path particles like up, down, and in--to both spontaneous and caused changes of location and, for up and down, to posture changes, while learners of Korean keep words for spontaneous and caused motion strictly separate and use different words for vertical changes of location and posture changes. These findings challenge the widespread view that children initially map spatial words directly to nonlinguistic spatial concepts, and suggest that they are influenced by the semantic organization of their language virtually from the beginning. We discuss how input and cognition may interact in the early phases of learning to talk about space.
Does the language you speak affect how you think about the world? This question is taken up in three experiments. English and Mandarin talk about time differently--English predominantly talks about time as if it were horizontal, while Mandarin also commonly describes time as vertical. This difference between the two languages is reflected in the way their speakers think about time. In one study, Mandarin speakers tended to think about time vertically even when they were thinking for English (Mandarin speakers were faster to confirm that March comes earlier than April if they had just seen a vertical array of objects than if they had just seen a horizontal array, and the reverse was true for English speakers). Another study showed that the extent to which Mandarin-English bilinguals think about time vertically is related to how old they were when they first began to learn English. In another experiment native English speakers were taught to talk about time using vertical spatial terms in a way similar to Mandarin. On a subsequent test, this group of English speakers showed the same bias to think about time vertically as was observed with Mandarin speakers. It is concluded that (1) language is a powerful tool in shaping thought about abstract domains and (2) one's native language plays an important role in shaping habitual thought (e.g., how one tends to think about time) but does not entirely determine one's thinking in the strong Whorfian sense.
Li and Gleitman (Turning the tables: language and spatial reasoning. Cognition, in press) seek to undermine a large-scale cross-cultural comparison of spatial language and cognition which claims to have demonstrated that language and conceptual coding in the spatial domain covary (see, for example, Space in language and cognition: explorations in linguistic diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press; Language 74 (1998) 557): the most plausible interpretation is that different languages induce distinct conceptual codings. Arguing against this, Li and Gleitman attempt to show that in an American student population they can obtain any of the relevant conceptual codings just by varying spatial cues, holding language constant. They then argue that our findings are better interpreted in terms of ecologically-induced distinct cognitive styles reflected in language. Linguistic coding, they argue, has no causal effects on non-linguistic thinking--it simply reflects antecedently existing conceptual distinctions. We here show that Li and Gleitman did not make a crucial distinction between frames of spatial reference relevant to our line of research. We report a series of experiments designed to show that they have, as a consequence, misinterpreted the results of their own experiments, which are in fact in line with our hypothesis. Their attempts to reinterpret the large cross-cultural study, and to enlist support from animal and infant studies, fail for the same reasons. We further try to discern exactly what theory drives their presumption that language can have no cognitive efficacy, and conclude that their position is undermined by a wide range of considerations.
How do we talk about events we perceive? And how tight is the connection between linguistic and non-linguistic representations of events? To address these questions, we experimentally compared motion descriptions produced by children and adults in two typologically distinct languages, Greek and English. Our findings confirm a well-known asymmetry between the two languages, such that English speakers are overall more likely to include manner of motion information than Greek speakers. However, mention of manner of motion in Greek speakers' descriptions increases significantly when manner is not inferable; by contrast, inferability of manner has no measurable effect on motion descriptions in English, where manner is already preferentially encoded. These results show that speakers actively monitor aspects of event structure, which do not find their way into linguistic descriptions. We conclude that, in regard to the differential encoding of path and manner, which has sometimes been offered as a prime example of the effects of language encoding on non-linguistic thought, surface linguistic encoding neither faithfully represents nor strongly constrains our mental representation of events.
Different languages map semantic elements of spatial relations onto different lexical and syntactic units. These crosslinguistic differences raise important questions for language development in terms of how this variation is learned by children. We investigated how Turkish-, English-, and Japanese-speaking children (mean age 3;8) package the semantic elements of Manner and Path onto syntactic units when both the Manner and the Path of the moving Figure occur simultaneously and are salient in the event depicted. Both universal and language-specific patterns were evident in our data. Children used the semantic-syntactic mappings preferred by adult speakers of their own languages, and even expressed subtle syntactic differences that encode different relations between Manner and Path in the same way as their adult counterparts (i.e., Manner causing vs. incidental to Path). However, not all types of semantics-syntax mappings were easy for children to learn (e.g., expressing Manner and Path elements in two verbal clauses). In such cases, Turkish- and Japanese-speaking children frequently used syntactic patterns that were not typical in the target language but were similar to patterns used by English-speaking children, suggesting some universal influence. Thus, both language-specific and universal tendencies guide the development of complex spatial expressions.
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