Frames of reference in discourse: Spatial descriptions in Bashkir (Turkic)
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Tatiana Nikitina
Abstract
In spite of the growing body of research on frames of spatial reference, a number of important questions remain unanswered. This study explores reference frame use in Bashkir, based on a linguistic matching task and a nonverbal task. In the linguistic task, speakers relied freely on intrinsic and relative frames. In intrinsic descriptions, two different kinds of mapping were attested: a mapping based on the Ground’s function, and a mapping based on the Ground’s shape. Several factors were identified that affect the choice of linguistic description, including lexical choice, the chair’s orientation with respect to the viewer, and the speaker’s age. Interference from Russian was not a significant factor. The repair strategies speakers used when encountering misunderstanding suggest that they were not aware of the source of their difficulties. A number of previous studies reported, for different languages, a correlation between reference frame use in linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks, supporting the linguistic relativity hypothesis. The data from Bashkir shows no such correlation: nonverbal coding strategies did not correspond to the same individual’s linguistic strategies, but correlated with the use of Russian in linguistic descriptions. I interpret this finding tentatively as pointing toward a mediated relationship between spatial cognition and language.
Acknowledgements
The study was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-1053123 Spatial language and cognition beyond Mesoamerica (PI J. Bohnemeyer). I thank all my participants, as well as Elena Perekhvalskaya and Sergey Say who helped organize my stay in the village of Rakhmetovo, and Maria Ovsjannikova for comments and discussion.
Appendix
Linear mixed-effects model predicting the use of the relative frame of reference
>summary(lmer(relative ~ chair_aligned_FrBack+ball_FB_ego+term_FB+(1|speaker)+ego_comp_with_prec+descr+Russian+over_25+geo_above_6+gender, data=b_ch, REML=FALSE))
| AIC | BIC | logLik | deviance | df.resid |
| 97.5 | 130.8 | –36.8 | 73.5 | 106 |
| Scaled residuals: | ||||
| Min | 1Q | Median | 3Q | Max |
| –3.8794 | –0.4787 | 0.1105 | 0.7400 | 1.5533 |
| Random effects: | ||
| Groups Name | Variance | Std.Dev. |
| speaker (Intercept) | 0.002282 | 0.04777 |
| Residual | 0.107115 | 0.32728 |
Fixed effects:
| Estimate | Std. Error | t value | |
| (Intercept) | 0.60216 | 0.12518 | 4.811 |
| chair_aligned_FrBack | –0.64770 | 0.12774 | –5.070 |
| ball_FB_ego | 0.57635 | 0.07126 | 8.088 |
| term_FB | –0.55400 | 0.07027 | –7.884 |
| ego_comp_with_prec | 0.25218 | 0.10041 | 2.511 |
| descrchair | 0.20655 | 0.36514 | 0.566 |
| Russian | –0.03164 | 0.08421 | –0.376 |
| over_25 | –0.28976 | 0.10235 | –2.831 |
| geo_above_6 | –0.03252 | 0.08509 | –0.382 |
| gendermasc | –0.11288 | 0.08260 | –1.367 |
Correlation of Fixed Effects:
| (Intr) | ch__FB | bl_FB_ | trm_FB | eg_c__ | dscrch | Russin | ovr_25 | g_bv_6 | |
| chair_xp_FB | –0.420 | ||||||||
| ball_FB_ego | –0.133 | 0.042 | |||||||
| term_FB | –0.456 | 0.263 | –0.220 | ||||||
| eg_cmp_wth_ | –0.632 | 0.178 | 0.109 | 0.135 | |||||
| descrchair | –0.073 | –0.259 | 0.045 | 0.055 | 0.234 | ||||
| Russian | –0.126 | 0.002 | 0.108 | –0.081 | 0.001 | 0.022 | |||
| over_25 | 0.050 | 0.105 | –0.064 | –0.078 | –0.227 | –0.100 | –0.186 | ||
| geo_above_6 | –0.462 | 0.115 | –0.026 | 0.076 | –0.040 | –0.088 | 0.146 | –0.296 | |
| gendermasc | –0.084 | 0.143 | –0.040 | –0.030 | –0.306 | –0.216 | –0.072 | 0.510 | –0.095 |
Anova(lmer(relative ~ chair_aligned_FrBack+ball_FB_ego+term_FB+(1|speaker)+ego_comp_with_prec+descr+Russian+over_25+geo_above_6+gender, data=b_ch, REML=FALSE))
Analysis of Deviance Table (Type II Wald chisquare tests)
Response: relative
| Chisq | Df | Pr(>Chisq) | |
| chair_aligned_FrBack | 25.7096 | 1 | 3.969e-07 *** |
| ball_FB_ego | 65.4184 | 1 | 6.057e-16 *** |
| term_FB | 62.1574 | 1 | 3.171e-15 *** |
| ego_comp_with_prec | 6.3075 | 1 | 0.012023 * |
| descr | 0.3200 | 1 | 0.571607 |
| Russian | 0.1412 | 1 | 0.707119 |
| over_25 | 8.0155 | 1 | 0.004638 ** |
| geo_above_6 | 0.1461 | 1 | 0.702320 |
| gender | 1.8675 | 1 | 0.171758 |
| --- |
Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1
Linear mixed-effects model predicting the use of the function-based vs. shape-based mapping for intrinsic responses
Formula: function_only ~ chair_aligned_FrBack+ball_FB_ego+term_FB+(1 | speaker)+funct_comp_with_prec+descr+Russian+over_25+geo_above_6+gender
| AIC | BIC | logLik | deviance | df.resid |
| 60.4 | 96.8 | –18.2 | 36.4 | 142 |
Scaled residuals:
| Min | 1Q | Median | 3Q | Max |
| –2.1613 | –0.3077 | –0.0646 | 0.0000 | 3.3990 |
Random effects:
| Groups Name | Variance | Std.Dev. |
| speaker (Intercept) | 0.00000 | 0.0000 |
| Residual | 0.07416 | 0.2723 |
Fixed effects:
| Estimate | Std. | Error t value | |
| (Intercept) | 0.0838806 | 0.0672158 | 1.248 |
| chair_aligned_FrBack | –0.0596805 | 0.0560848 | –1.064 |
| ball_FB_ego | –0.4205819 | 0.0616412 | –6.823 |
| term_FB | 0.4873136 | 0.0593508 | 8.211 |
| funct_comp_with_prec | 0.4379455 | 0.0543042 | 8.065 |
| descrchair | 0.4508820 | 0.1966725 | 2.293 |
| Russian | –0.0037802 | 0.0583364 | –0.065 |
| over_25 | –0.0037277 | 0.0651330 | –0.057 |
| geo_above_6 | –0.0003588 | 0.0558624 | –0.006 |
| gendermasc | –0.0091271 | 0.0510356 | -0.179 |
Correlation of Fixed Effects:
| (Intr) | ch__FB | bl_FB_ | trm_FB | fnc___ | dscrch | Russin | ovr_25 | g_bv_6 | |
| chair_xp_FB | –0.478 | ||||||||
| ball_FB_ego | –0.115 | 0.007 | |||||||
| term_FB | –0.345 | 0.369 | –0.463 | ||||||
| fnct_cmp_w_ | –0.224 | 0.063 | 0.405 | –0.439 | |||||
| descrchair | –0.062 | –0.007 | 0.045 | 0.051 | 0.049 | ||||
| Russian | –0.170 | –0.061 | 0.080 | –0.074 | 0.020 | 0.034 | |||
| over_25 | –0.086 | 0.027 | –0.085 | 0.089 | –0.196 | 0.063 | –0.178 | ||
| geo_above_6 | –0.587 | 0.067 | –0.021 | 0.022 | 0.077 | –0.075 | 0.190 | –0.347 | |
| gendermasc | –0.344 | 0.068 | –0.005 | 0.060 | –0.024 | 0.017 | –0.164 | 0.474 | –0.136 |
Significance measures
>Anova(lmer(function_only ~ chair_aligned_FrBack+ball_FB_ego+term_FB+(1|speaker)+funct_comp_with_prec+descr+Russian+over_25+geo_above_6+ gender, data=b_ch, REML=FALSE))
Analysis of Deviance Table (Type II Wald chisquare tests)
Response: function_only
| Chisq | Df | Pr(>Chisq) | |
| chair_aligned_FrBack | 1.1323 | 1 | 0.28728 |
| ball_FB_ego | 46.5542 | 1 | 8.912e-12 *** |
| term_FB | 67.4161 | 1 | <2.2e-16 *** |
| funct_comp_with_prec | 65.0390 | 1 | 7.343e-16 *** |
| descr | 5.2558 | 1 | 0.02187 * |
| Russian | 0.0042 | 1 | 0.94833 |
| over_25 | 0.0033 | 1 | 0.95436 |
| geo_above_6 | 0.0000 | 1 | 0.99487 |
| gender | 0.0320 | 1 | 0.85807 |
| --- |
Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Universal meaning extensions of perception verbs are grounded in interaction
- Baseline elaboration and echo-sounding at the adjective adverb interface
- Speech-gesture constructions in cognitive grammar: The case of beats and points
- Frames of reference in discourse: Spatial descriptions in Bashkir (Turkic)
- Address inversion in Swahili: Usage patterns, cognitive motivation and cultural factors
- Extending the Talmyan typology: A case study of the macro-event as event integration and grammaticalization in Mandarin
- Book Review
- Hans-Jörg Schmid: Entrenchment and the psychology of language learning. how we reorganize and adapt linguistic knowledge
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Universal meaning extensions of perception verbs are grounded in interaction
- Baseline elaboration and echo-sounding at the adjective adverb interface
- Speech-gesture constructions in cognitive grammar: The case of beats and points
- Frames of reference in discourse: Spatial descriptions in Bashkir (Turkic)
- Address inversion in Swahili: Usage patterns, cognitive motivation and cultural factors
- Extending the Talmyan typology: A case study of the macro-event as event integration and grammaticalization in Mandarin
- Book Review
- Hans-Jörg Schmid: Entrenchment and the psychology of language learning. how we reorganize and adapt linguistic knowledge
