Universität Bielefeld - Graduiertenkolleg "Aufgabenorientierte Kommunikation

Comparative spatial semantics and language acquisition.
Evidence from Danish, English, Japanese and Zapotec.

Chris Sinha

Department of Pychology
University of Aarhus, Denmark

with thanks to Kristine Jensen de López, Mariko Hayashi, Lis A. Thorseng, Kim Plunkett

Monday, January 24th, 2000, 16 p.m., Hörsaal 9

Abstract

Space has been cited as a domain exemplifying at least four different classes of theory of the relations between language and general cognitive processes. The first two classes involve general propositions regarding human language and (non-linguistic) cognition.
  1. the determination of semantic structure by innate perceptual and cognitive mechanisms or by universal aspects of human experrience (nativism as exemplified by generativist theories, cognitivism as exemplified by Lakoff and Johnson).
  2. the (partial) determination of non-linguistic cognitive processes by semantic structure (Whorfian linguistic relativism, most recently advanced by Levinson and colleagues).

The second pair of classes can be considered to be developmental psycholinguistic special cases of the first pair of classes.

  1. the (partial) determination of acquisition strategies by (innate or acquired) non-linguistic cognitive structures (the cognition hypothesis, cf. Piaget and Inhelder, Mandler).
  2. the (partial) determination of acquisition strategies by the semantic structure of the target language (Bowerman, Slobin).

I will report the results of my and my colleagues' research into the development of language production and language comprehension in the domain of spatial relations in four different languages: two closely related languages (Danish, English) and two genetically and typologically unrelated languages (Japanese, Zapotec).

Our data comprises both spontaneous speech production corpora and experimental tests of language comprehension and nonlinguistic spatial cognition.

Our results suggest that universalist and language-specific developmental accounts are not mutually exclusive, although strong universalism and strong relativism both appear to be precluded by the data. Specifically, although there are broad, general similarities in all children¹s spatial language and cognitive development, both linguistic and nonlinguistic cognition appear to be mediated by both the specific features of the target language and the background of cultural practices in which the child's developing understanding of space and spatial relations is situated.

Anke Weinberger, 2000-01-19