Abstract
Few areas of cognition are as fundamental to our lives as representing physical space. However, the way languages represent space varies widely, as does non-linguistic spatial behavior. Research on spatial language casts light on the relationship between language and conceptual structure, and across linguistic and non-linguistic modalities. Most research in this domain treats languages as individual data points, typologizing them on the basis of, for example, preferred frame of reference, such as the egocentric viewpoint-based relative FoR (terms like left and right), versus a geocentric or absolute FoR (terms like north and south). The papers in this special collection demonstrate that considerable variation exists in spatial language within as well as between language communities, and that a diverse array of factors interacts to drive this variation, from terrain to group-level cultural practices and associations, from individual demographic diversity to innate cognitive biases. Drawing on the notion of sociotopography (Palmer, Bill, Jonathon Lum, Jonathan Schlossberg & Alice Gaby. 2017. How does the environment shape spatial language? Evidence for sociotopography. Linguistic Typology 21(3). 457–491), the papers in this special collection explore the interaction of factors that shape spatial behavior in language and beyond.
Funding source: Australian Research Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: DP200101079
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Research funding: This study was financially supported by Australian Research Council grants DP120102701 and DP200101079.
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© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Diversity in representing space within and between language communities
- A quantitative approach to sociotopography in Austronesian languages
- Directionals, topography, and cultural construals of landscape in Lamaholot
- A socially anchored approach to spatial language in Kalaallisut
- River-based and egocentric spatial orientation in Yine
- Geocentric directional systems in Australia: a typology
- The irrelevance of scale and fixedness in landscape terms in two Australian languages
- Changes in spatial frames of reference use in Iwaidja in different intergenerational contexts
- Cross-generational differences in linguistic and cognitive spatial frames of reference in Negev Arabic
- Sociotopography meets Dialectology: the case of Aquilan
- Conflation of spatial reference frames in deaf community sign languages
- Linguistic spatial reference systems across domains: How people talk about space in sailing, dancing, and other specialist areas
- The influence of language, culture, and environment on the use of spatial referencing in a multilingual context: Taiwan as a test case
- Reference frames in language and cognition: cross-population mismatches
- From the field into the lab: causal approaches to the evolution of spatial language
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Diversity in representing space within and between language communities
- A quantitative approach to sociotopography in Austronesian languages
- Directionals, topography, and cultural construals of landscape in Lamaholot
- A socially anchored approach to spatial language in Kalaallisut
- River-based and egocentric spatial orientation in Yine
- Geocentric directional systems in Australia: a typology
- The irrelevance of scale and fixedness in landscape terms in two Australian languages
- Changes in spatial frames of reference use in Iwaidja in different intergenerational contexts
- Cross-generational differences in linguistic and cognitive spatial frames of reference in Negev Arabic
- Sociotopography meets Dialectology: the case of Aquilan
- Conflation of spatial reference frames in deaf community sign languages
- Linguistic spatial reference systems across domains: How people talk about space in sailing, dancing, and other specialist areas
- The influence of language, culture, and environment on the use of spatial referencing in a multilingual context: Taiwan as a test case
- Reference frames in language and cognition: cross-population mismatches
- From the field into the lab: causal approaches to the evolution of spatial language