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Reference frames in language and cognition: cross-population mismatches

  • Jürgen Bohnemeyer ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Eve Danziger , Jonathon Lum ORCID logo , Ali Alshehri , Elena Benedicto , Joe Blythe , Letizia Cerqueglini ORCID logo , Katharine Donelson , Alyson Eggleston , Alice Gaby , Yen-Ting Lin ORCID logo , Randi Moore , Tatiana Nikitina , Hywel Stoakes und Mayangna Yulbarangyang Balna
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 20. Januar 2022
Linguistics Vanguard
Aus der Zeitschrift Linguistics Vanguard Band 8 Heft s1

Abstract

Numerous studies have found evidence of a speech community’s referential practices in discourse being predictive of its members’ behavior in nonverbal tasks. In this article, we discuss a series of exceptions to this alignment pattern, drawing on data from eleven populations of Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North and Central America, and Oceania. These exceptions have not been discussed in conjunction with one another and the striking commonalities across the findings of these studies have gone unnoticed: (a) in discourses referring to small-scale space, either intrinsic frame use is dominant or both relative and geocentric frames are used frequently in addition to intrinsic frames; and (b) in recall/recognition memory, geocentric coding is more common than egocentric coding (in tasks that involve stationary stimulus configurations) in nine of the populations, while in the remaining two, there is evidence of extensive intrinsic coding even in nonverbal cognition. We discuss these findings in light of Haun’s innate geocentrism hypothesis (Haun, D. B. M., C. Rapold, J. Call, G. Janzen & S. C. Levinson. 2006. Cognitive cladistics and cultural override in hominid spatial cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(46). 17568–17573). Our data offers partial support for this hypothesis, but simultaneously calls into question whether any extrinsic reference frames are available innately.

Keywords: language and cognition; linguistic relativity; semantic typology; sociotopography; spatial frames of reference
Corresponding author: Jürgen Bohnemeyer, University at Buffalo – The State University of New York, Buffalo, USA, E-mail:

Funding source: Australian Research Council

Award Identifier / Grant number: DE130100399

Award Identifier / Grant number: DP120102701

Funding source: Israel Science Foundation

Award Identifier / Grant number: #680/17

Funding source: Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan

Award Identifier / Grant number: MOST 110-2811-H-002-543

Funding source: National Science Foundation

Award Identifier / Grant number: BSC-0723694

Award Identifier / Grant number: BSC-1053123

Award Identifier / Grant number: BSC-1551925

Funding source: Max Planck Society

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge the contributions of Tomasa Gomez, late member of the Mayangna Yulbarangyang Balna, who passed away in the spring of 2021 and was instrumental in the collection of the Sumu-Mayangna data presented here. We are grateful for the insightful comments and constructive criticism of Bill Palmer and one anonymous reviewer.

  1. Research funding: Our research was supported by the following grants: Australian Research Council grants DE130100399 “The acquisition of kinship terminology in a morphologically complex Australian Language” (PI J. Blythe) and DP120102701 “Thinking and talking about atolls: The role of the environment in shaping language and our understanding of physical space” (PIs B. Palmer and A. Gaby); Israel Science Foundation grant #680/17 “Spatial language across generations in Negev Arabic” (PIs L. Cerqueglini and R. Henkin); Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan grant MOST 110-2811-H-002-543; National Science Foundation grants BSC-0723694 “Spatial language and cognition in Mesoamerica”, BSC-1053123 “Spatial language and cognition beyond Mesoamerica”, BSC-1551925 “Doctoral dissertation research: Spatial language and cognition in bilingual minds” (PI J. Bohnemeyer). Data collection on Mopan and Yucatec was additionally supported by the Max Planck Society.

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Received: 2021-06-18
Accepted: 2021-09-23
Published Online: 2022-01-20

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Diversity in representing space within and between language communities
  4. A quantitative approach to sociotopography in Austronesian languages
  5. Directionals, topography, and cultural construals of landscape in Lamaholot
  6. A socially anchored approach to spatial language in Kalaallisut
  7. River-based and egocentric spatial orientation in Yine
  8. Geocentric directional systems in Australia: a typology
  9. The irrelevance of scale and fixedness in landscape terms in two Australian languages
  10. Changes in spatial frames of reference use in Iwaidja in different intergenerational contexts
  11. Cross-generational differences in linguistic and cognitive spatial frames of reference in Negev Arabic
  12. Sociotopography meets Dialectology: the case of Aquilan
  13. Conflation of spatial reference frames in deaf community sign languages
  14. Linguistic spatial reference systems across domains: How people talk about space in sailing, dancing, and other specialist areas
  15. The influence of language, culture, and environment on the use of spatial referencing in a multilingual context: Taiwan as a test case
  16. Reference frames in language and cognition: cross-population mismatches
  17. From the field into the lab: causal approaches to the evolution of spatial language
https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0091
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
language and cognition; linguistic relativity; semantic typology; sociotopography; spatial frames of reference

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Diversity in representing space within and between language communities
  4. A quantitative approach to sociotopography in Austronesian languages
  5. Directionals, topography, and cultural construals of landscape in Lamaholot
  6. A socially anchored approach to spatial language in Kalaallisut
  7. River-based and egocentric spatial orientation in Yine
  8. Geocentric directional systems in Australia: a typology
  9. The irrelevance of scale and fixedness in landscape terms in two Australian languages
  10. Changes in spatial frames of reference use in Iwaidja in different intergenerational contexts
  11. Cross-generational differences in linguistic and cognitive spatial frames of reference in Negev Arabic
  12. Sociotopography meets Dialectology: the case of Aquilan
  13. Conflation of spatial reference frames in deaf community sign languages
  14. Linguistic spatial reference systems across domains: How people talk about space in sailing, dancing, and other specialist areas
  15. The influence of language, culture, and environment on the use of spatial referencing in a multilingual context: Taiwan as a test case
  16. Reference frames in language and cognition: cross-population mismatches
  17. From the field into the lab: causal approaches to the evolution of spatial language
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