TY - JOUR
T1 - Reference frames in language and cognition
T2 - cross-population mismatches
AU - Bohnemeyer, Jürgen
AU - Danziger, Eve
AU - Lum, Jonathon
AU - Alshehri, Ali
AU - Benedicto, Elena
AU - Blythe, Joe
AU - Cerqueglini, Letizia
AU - Donelson, Katharine
AU - Eggleston, Alyson
AU - Gaby, Alice
AU - Lin, Yen Ting
AU - Moore, Randi
AU - Nikitina, Tatiana
AU - Stoakes, Hywel
AU - Yulbarangyang Balna, Mayangna
N1 - Funding Information:
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.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
PY - 2022/1/1
Y1 - 2022/1/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - language and cognition
KW - linguistic relativity
KW - semantic typology
KW - sociotopography
KW - spatial frames of reference
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124381428&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1515/lingvan-2021-0091
DO - 10.1515/lingvan-2021-0091
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85124381428
SN - 2199-174X
VL - 8
SP - 175
EP - 189
JO - Linguistics Vanguard
JF - Linguistics Vanguard
IS - S1
ER -