Spatial Language

Individual differences in spatial skill emerge prior to kindergarten entry. However, little is known about the early experiences that may contribute to these differences. The current study examined the relation between children's early puzzle play and their spatial skill. Children and parents (n ϭ 53) were observed at home for 90 min every 4 months (6 times) between 2 and 4 years of age (26 to 46 months). When children were 4 years 6 months old, they completed a spatial task involving mental transformations of 2-dimensional shapes. Children who were observed playing with puzzles performed better on this task than those who did not, controlling for parent education, income, and overall parent word types. Moreover, among those children who played with puzzles, frequency of puzzle play predicted performance on the spatial transformation task. Although the frequency of puzzle play did not differ for boys and girls, the quality of puzzle play (a composite of puzzle difficulty, parent engagement, and parent spatial language) was higher for boys than for girls. In addition, variation in puzzle play quality predicted performance on the spatial transformation task for girls but not for boys. Implications of these findings as well as future directions for research on the role of puzzle play in the development of spatial skill are discussed.

A more natural interaction between humans and mobile robots can be achieved by bridging the gap between the format of spatial knowledge used by robots and the format of languages used by humans. This enables both sides to communicate by using shared knowledge. Spatial knowledge can be (re)presented in various ways to increase the interaction between humans and mobile robots. One effective way is to describe the route verbally to the robot. This method can permit computer language-naive users to instruct mobile robots, which understand spatial descriptions, to naturally perform complex tasks using succinct and intuitive commands. We present a spatial language to describe route-based navigation tasks for a mobile robot. The instructions of this spatial language are implemented to provide an intuitive interface with which novice users can easily and naturally describe a navigation task to a mobile robot in a miniature city or in any other indoor environment. In our system, the instructions of the processed route are analyzed to generate a symbolic representation via the instruction interpreter. The resulting symbolic representation is supplied to the robot motion planning stage as an initial path estimation of route description and it is also used to generate a topological map of the route’s environment.

Earl 79 SESSION THREE 103 Critiquing freehand sketching: A computational tool for design evaluation Yeonjoo Oh, Ellen Do and Mark Gross 105 Analysis of a blindfolded architect's design session Zafer Bilda and John S Gero 121 SESSION FOUR 137 Qualitative representation and reasoning in design: A hierarchy of shape and spatial languages

Nakh-Daghestanian languages have encountered growing interest from typologists and linguists from other subdiscplines, and more and more languages from the Nakh-Daghestanian language family are being studied. This paper provides a grammatical overview of the hitherto undescribed Sanzhi Dargwa, followed by a detailed analysis of the grammaticalized expression of spatial elevation in Sanzhi. Spatial elevation, a topic that has not received substantial attention in Caucasian linguistics, manifests itself across different parts of speech in Sanzhi Dargwa and related languages. In Sanzhi, elevation is a deictic category in partial opposition with participant-oriented deixis / horizontally-oriented directional deixis. This paper treats the spatial uses of demonstratives, spatial preverbs and spatial cases that express elevation as well as the semantic extension of this spatial category into other, non-spatial domains. It further compares the Sanzhi data to other Caucasian and non-Caucasian languages and makes suggestions for investigating elevation as a subcategory within a broader category of topographical deixis.

Dasen, P. R., & Mishra, R. C. (2010). Development of geocentric spatial language and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. New Delhi: CUP India.

Egocentric spatial language uses coordinates in relation to our body to talk about small-scale space ("put the knife on the right of the plate and the fork on the left"), while geocentric spatial language uses geographic coordinates ("put the knife to the east, and the fork to the west"). How do children learn to use geocentric language? And why do geocentric spatial references sound strange in English when they are standard practice in other languages? This book studies child development in Bali, India, Nepal, and Switzerland and explores how children learn to use a geocentric frame both when speaking and performing non-verbal cognitive tasks (such as remembering locations and directions). The authors examine how these skills develop with age, look at the socio-cultural contexts in which the learning takes place, and explore the ecological, cultural, social, and linguistic conditions that favor the use of a geocentric frame of reference.
Pierre Dasen is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His field of expertise is cross-cultural developmental psychology, particularly culture and cognition and the interface between anthropology and psychology. Professor Dasen is the founder of the Association pour la Recherche Interculturelle (ARIC). Ramesh Mishra is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. His principal interest is in cultural influences on human development, and he has contributed numerous articles to professional journals, both in India and abroad, in the fields of cognition, acculturation, schooling, and cross-cultural studies.

The article explores the static spatial meaning of basic prepositions in Hieroglyphic Ancient Egyptian, as compared to eight modern target languages. The tertium comparationis is the typological-linguistic tool of the Topological Relations Picture Series. The author identifies as the basic meanings of some Egyptian prepositions: m IN and FROM; r ATTACHED, CLOSE_TO, and TO; ḥr SUPERIOR (i.e. VERT_ON + ABOVE) and AT; and ẖr INFERIOR (i.e. UNDER + BELOW); as well as m ẖnw INSIDE and WITHIN, and IN_THE_MIDDLE; dp (trad. tp) head.LOC, AT_TOP, and AHEAD; ḥr dp ON_TOP and ABOVE. Further, he highlights the case of the conflation of the meanings BEHIND and AROUND in ḥꜢ, as well as the phenomenon of a ‘Paradoxical Figure–Ground Reversal’ as exemplified by Egyptian wrrt m dp (lit. great_crown IN head) ‘the Great Crown on the head’. Finally, the author suggests decomposing the dynamic meanings of prepositions as well as the dynamic meanings of verbs. He supports the analysis that, in contrast to e.g. English, in dynamic contexts, Egyptian prepositions often only encode the static source or goal configuration, but not the path proper.

Different aspects of Frames of Reference (FoR) have been analyzed in detail since the early 1990s. Researchers have studied cross-linguistic variety (Levinson, 1996; Levinson and Wilkins, 2006b; Pederson et al., 1998), given detailed accounts of individual languages (François, 2003; Haviland, 1993; Hoffmann, 2011; Schultze-Berndt, 2006), considered the impact of landscape and cognition on FoRs (Bohnemeyer and O’Meara, 2012; Danziger, 2010; Levinson, 2003, 2008; Palmer, 2015), and provided regional overviews (Bohnemeyer, 2013; François, 2004, 2015). Three ‘classic’ FoRs have been described, namely intrinsic, relative, and absolute (Levinson, 2003; Pederson et al., 1998).  Little attention, however, has been paid to the usage patterns of these FoR. This paper describes and analyzes a curious restriction on the use of different types of absolute directionals within FoR and orientation settings in three Australian languages MalakMalak, Jaminjung, and Kriol. All three employ landmark-based `un-fixed' absolute terms based on river-flow or prevailing winds restricted to orientation settings and those where the the speaker is also the deictic center (ground) from which angles are projected. If a language also utilizes cardinal directions based on the direction of the rising and setting sun or a prominent riverbank, no such restrictions are observed.
The aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, I will describe the use of Frames of Reference and Orientation in Jaminjung, MalakMalak and Kriol in detail with particular emphasis on absolute directionals. Secondly, I provide a usage-based analysis of the types of absolute FoR used in orientation and deictic as well as non-deictic FoR settings considering cognitive, morphosyntactic, semantic, and culturally specific approaches. This highlights how language-external features are reflected in language-use and vice versa.

U radu se raspravlja o glagolima kretanja prefigiranim prefiksom po-. Slijedeći kognitivnolingvističke teorijske postavke te uzimajući u obzir  rezultate pretraživanja korpusa, pokušava se dokazati da su svi glagoli kretanja prefigirani prefiksom po- međusobno povezani te da svi na neki način elaboriraju predodžbenu shemu puta i površine. Ta predodžbena shema zajednička je prefiksu po- i prijedlogu po. Pozornost se posvećuje različitim tipovima glagola kretanja, posebice glagolima usmjerena kretnja koji prefigirani prefiksom po- zadobivaju ingresivno značenje.

§7 Fazit
Die metonymische und metaphorische Verwendung von Körperteil-Bezeichnungen für assoziierte Handlungen darf meines Erachtens zum Grundvokabular theologischer Rede in Ägypten gezählt werden (§§5–6). Ihre Verwendung setzt nicht notwendigerweise eine körperliche Vorstellung der betreffenden Aktanten voraus (vgl. §4). Grundlage ist eine Weltwahrnehmung, in der Körperteile und mit ihnen assoziierte Handlungen kognitiv eng verknüpft sind (§3). Diese Wahrnehmung scheint aber nicht auf die antiken Kulturen beschränkt, wie eine reflektierte Betrachtung moderner Sprachen nahelegt. Als kulturspezifisch-ägyptische Besonderheiten metonymisch-funktionaler Verwendungen von Körperteil-Lexemen möchte ich folgende hervorheben (vgl. §3):
a) Emotion und Kognition ist in Ägypten ausschließlich im Leib bzw. genauer im Herzen verortet – nicht im Kopf. Im Unterschied z.B. zum Deutschen leiten sich daher vom Kopf ausschließlich Verwendungen ab, die sich auf seine hervorgehobene Position ‚ganz oben‘  Anthropomorphismus) oder ‚ganz vorne‘ (Zoomorphismus) zurückführen lassen.
b) Das Ägyptische nutzt häufiger metonymisch das ‚Gesicht‘ (ḥr) zur Ansprache des ‚Blicks‘ o.ä. (anstelle des semantisch näher liegenden ‚Auges‘ jr.t). Analog nutzt es gelegentlich den ‚Schläfenbereich‘ (mꜢꜤ) (anstelle der ‚Ohren‘) zur Ansprache des Zuhörens.
c) Das Motiv der ‚Feinde unter den Füßen/Sohlen‘ steht für politische Unterwerfung und Dominanz über den politischen Gegner.
d) Das Motiv der ‚Luft für die Nase/an die Nase‘ und des ‚Lebens an der Nase‘ steht wohl für Lebensheil. Dasselbe Motiv liegt auch einer Schöpfungstheologie zu Grunde, die den göttlichen (lichtdurchfluteten) Äther (Šw; Schu) mit dem ‚Leben‘ (Ꜥnḫ) identifiziert.
Neben weiteren finden wir die beiden Motive ‚Feinde unter den Füßen/Sohlen‘ und ‚Luft für die Nase/an die Nase‘ auch mehrfach als ‚erweckte Metaphern‘ in bildliche Medien umgesetzt (§3).

In Spite of the fastest growing of Technologies of Information and Communication in the education and the development of very sophisticated environments to improve learning and education, there are a few tools dedicated to deaf education due to the difficulty to create content in sign language. In this context, we present in this paper an ICT environment we developed to aid deaf people improving their social integration and communication capabilities. Our environment is a specialized LCS that generates multimedia courses to teach and learn sign language [4]. These courses can be used either by deaf pupils to learn (or e-learn) sign language or also by hearing people to be able to communicate with deaf people. This educational environment uses mainly a web-based interpreter of sign language developed in our research laboratory and called Websign. It is a tool that permits to interpret automatically written texts in visual-gesturedspatial language using avatar technology.

In the course of language development children must solve arbitrary form-to-meaning mappings, in which semantic components are encoded onto linguistic labels. Because sign languages describe motion and location of entities through iconic movements and placement of the hands in space, child signers may find spatial semantics-to-language mapping easier to learn than child speakers. This hypothesis was tested in two studies: a longitudinal analysis of a native signing child's use of British Sign Language to describe motion and location events between the ages 1-10 and 3-0, and performance of 18 native signing children between the ages of 3-0 and 4-11 on a motion and location sentence comprehension task. The results from both studies argue against a developmental advantage for sign language learners for the acquisition of motion and location forms. Early forms point towards gesture and embodied actions followed by protracted mastery of the use of signs in representational space. The understanding of relative spatial relations continues to be difficult, despite the iconicity of these forms in the language, beyond 5 years of age.

■ Biological differences between signed and spoken languages may be most evident in the expression of spatial information. PET was used to investigate the neural substrates supporting the production of spatial language in American Sign Language as expressed by classifier constructions, in which handshape indicates object type and the location/motion of the hand iconically depicts the location/motion of a referent object. Deaf native signers performed a picture description task in which they overtly named objects or produced classifier constructions that varied in location, motion, or object type. In contrast to the expression of location and motion, the production of both lexical signs and object type classifier morphemes engaged left inferior frontal cortex and left inferior temporal cortex, supporting the hypothesis that unlike the location and motion components of a classifier construction, classifier handshapes are categorical morphemes that are retrieved via left hemisphere language regions. In addition, lexical signs engaged the anterior temporal lobes to a greater extent than classifier constructions, which we suggest reflects increased semantic processing required to name individual objects compared with simply indicating the type of object. Both location and motion classifier constructions engaged bilateral superior parietal cortex, with some evidence that the expression of static locations differentially engaged the left intraparietal sulcus. We argue that bilateral parietal activation reflects the biological underpinnings of sign language. To express spatial information, signers must transform visual-spatial representations into a bodycentered reference frame and reach toward target locations within signing space. ■

This paper is concerned with documenting critically endangered and culturally significant aspects of spatial language in MalakMalak, a non Pama-Nyungan Northern Daly language with eleven identified remaining speakers based in the Daly River Region in Australia. This documentation combines current speaker knowledge collected in fieldwork settings between 2012 and 2013 with historical recordings (Birk, 1971-1973) to identify such areas of knowledge that have been lost over time. As a result, this paper focuses on the intricate relationship between language, culture, landscape and tradition in the absence of customary community life and asks whether or not aspects of language may ever be fully documented when speakers no longer live within traditional areas practicing traditional cultural life.

In this paper I study semantic and pragmatic properties of elevational demonstratives by means of a typological investigation of 50 languages with elevational demonstratives from all across the globe. The four basic verticality values expressed by elevational demonstratives are UP, DOWN, LEVEL, and ACROSS. They can be ordered along the elevational hierarchy (UP/DOWN > LEVEL/ACROSS), which reflects cross-linguistic tendencies in the expression of these values by demonstratives. Elevational values are frequently co-expressed with distance-based meanings of demonstratives, and it is almost always distal demonstratives that express elevation, whereas medial or proximal demonstratives can lack elevational distinctions. This means that elevational demonstratives largely refer to areas outside the peripersonal sphere in a similar way as simple distal demonstratives. In the proximal domain, fine grained semantic distinctions such as those encoded by elevational demonstratives are superfluous since this domain is accessible to the interlocuters who in the default case of a normal conversation are located in close proximity to each other. I then discuss metaphorical extensions of elevational demonstratives to non-spatial uses such as temporal and social deixis. There are a few languages in which elevational demonstratives with the meaning UP express the temporal meaning future, whereas the DOWN demonstratives encode past. This finding is particularly interesting in view of the widely-debated use of Mandarin Chinese spatial terms ‘up’ for past events and ‘down’ for future events, which show the opposite metaphorical extension. I finally examine areal tendencies and potential correlations between elevational demonstratives and the geographical location of speech communities in mountainous areas such as the Himalayas, the Papuan Highlands and the Caucasus. I tentatively conclude that languages spoken in similar topographic environments do not tend to have similar systems of elevational demonstratives if they belong to different language families.

This paper presents an analysis of ‘Frames of Reference’ (FoR) in MalakMalak, an endangered non-Pama-Nyungan Northern Daly language of Australia.
Studies into FoR systems provide insight into the relationship between language and cognition, and highlight how landscape features are reflected in language use and vice versa. Data collected in fieldwork settings suggest that MalakMalak uses strategies for encoding spatial relationships and settings that are intricately bound to the traditional land and its features.
There are cardinal-type systems based on the directions of prevailing winds and the sun. Furthermore, the Daly River is used as a focal point in spatial descriptions. It provides a reference center from which angles of direction are projected for macro- and abstracted micro-scale descriptions in lexemes for the respective riverbanks.
Generally, toponyms, landmark- as well as person-based ground-descriptions are extensively used in combination with terms of ‘orientation’ and ‘body’-parts. Furthermore, intrinsic terms are utilized on occasion, while the use of relative FoR appears to be restricted.
My paper discusses MalakMalak’s FoR system in detail addressing functions and structures of the spatial system in the intricate relationship between language, culture, landscape, and cognition described by one speaker as ‘The language is like a map.’

Languages show di erences in how they encode motion in discourse: Verbframed languages lexicalize Path in the verb, leaving Manner peripheral or implicit; Satellite-framed languages lexicalize Manner together with Path adjuncts. e present study investigates: 1) the extent to which such typological constraints a ect the verbalizations of second language learners (English learners of French) and of aphasic speakers (English and French speakers with agrammatism) -who typically show dissociations between lexical and syntactic knowledge -in comparison to controls (English and French native speakers); as well as 2) the role of language-independent factors (level of acquisition, syndrome type). Despite some similarities between learners and speakers with aphasia due to language-independent factors, the ndings suggest typologically constrained verbalizations in all groups, as well as diverging strategies that may re ect distinct underlying conceptualization processes.

Space is a semantic concept that includes the locations and motions of entities in space, and the human being as an observer. Spatial language, which is the study area of spatial semantics, contains spatial expressions, which are the conventional specifications of the location or translocation of a certain entity. Metaphors or conversational implicatures do not count as spatial expressions. Frames of spatial reference have an important place in the center of spatial expressions based on the relationship between figure and ground. Angular aspects of the "ground", which is the reference in positioning the "figure", can be mentioned by means of frames. In many Turkish sources that use prescriptive grammar methods, the place given to the subject of space is limited. The number of linguistic studies on spatial language in Turkish is also low. The aim of this study is to contribute theoretically to the literature from a linguistic perspective and to present data to typological studies. Which spatial references are used in the expression of spatial knowledge in Turkish? What are the stages, instruments, and relations in the coding of this knowledge as a linguistic category? In order to answer these questions, the conceptual framework is explained and the grammatical coding patterns of spatial references are described. In the study, in which the document analysis method was followed, 775 spatial expressions containing frames of spatial reference were detected in Yashar Kemal's work The Undying Grass and classified according to sub-categories. 607 of the classified expressions are on the horizontal axis, and 168 are on the vertical axis. It has been determined that three frames of spatial reference; intrinsic (n=509), absolute (n=62), and relative (n=36) are used to solve the spatial complexity on the horizontal axis. Spatial frames designate angled spatial nominals (front, back, right, left, etc.) that complement "ground phrase". They pass into the "location" (n=301) in the static spatial relation, the "goal" (n=342) or the "source" state (n=132) in the dynamic spatial relation. Noun phrase-based ground coding strategy is dominant in Turkish. The morphemes +DA, +DAki, +ki in static relation and, the morphemes +A, +DAn in dynamic relation are effective in "ground" conjugation. The spatial relationship is established not only with the case category, but also with word types (spatial nominals, postpositions, adverbs and verbs), word groups (noun and adjective phrase) and spatial texts that are larger than sentences.

Dasen, P.R., Mishra, R.C. & Wassmann, J. (2018). Quasi-experimental research in culture-sensitive psychology. Culture & Psychology, 24(3), 327-342.     
The research presented in this article follows up on several aspects of Gustav Jahoda's long and fruitful career: (1) his early fieldwork on cognitive development in Africa, particularly in the area of spatial skills; (2) his interest in cross-cultural psychology as a research method; and (3) his insistence on bringing anthropology and psychology together. The topic of our research is the development of a so-called "geocentric" frame of spatial reference. This is a cognitive style, in which individuals describe and represent small-scale table-top space in terms of large-scale geographic dimensions. We explore the development with age of geocentric language and cognition, and the relationships between the two. We also explore the many environmental and socio-cultural variables that favor the use of this frame. We demonstrate how we untangled several of these variables by using a succession of within-society group comparisons, in several societies where a geocentric frame is in common usage (Bali, Indonesia, India, and Nepal). Our research program unfolds like a detective story, where one finding that is difficult to interpret because of several confounded variables leads to another quasi-experimental group comparison that suggests another hypothesis, which is then tested in a further session of fieldwork. In each case, we emphasize how important it was to have extensive linguistic and ethnographic knowledge before implementing psychological tests.

ÖZ: Bu çalışma uzamsal referans çerçeveleri üzerine Türkçeden bakıldığında ne tür görünümlere erişilebileceği sorusundan hareketle yapılmıştır. Türkçe için kullanılan uzamsal referans çerçevelerini tespit etmek amacıyla gerçekleştirilen uygulamada, konumlanış ilişkisi aktaran ikili nesne düzenlemelerinden oluşan dört farklı üretim görevi (production task) 40 kadın ve 40 erkek olmak üzere toplam 80 katılımcı tarafından yerine getirilmiştir. Çalışma, bu uygulamada katılımcıların yerine getirdiği üretim görevlerinden elde edilen verilere dayalı bir tartışma sunmaktadır.

Çalışmanın öne çıkardığı bulguların ilki Türkçede iki nesne arasındaki konumlanış ilişkisini aktarmak amacıyla içsel (intrinsic) ve göreli (relative) referans çerçevelerinin kullanılıyor oluşudur. Öte yandan, konumlanan ile konumlayan olan nesnelerin özelliklerinin uzamsal referans çerçevesi seçimini Türkçede de doğrudan etkilemekte olduğu çalışmanın bir diğer bulgusunu oluşturmuştur. Öyle ki, kullanım sıklıkları, konumlanan ve konumlayan olan nesnelerin özelliklerine göre ve nesne düzenlemelerine göre farklılık göstermektedir. Bu çalışmanın araştırma soruları çerçevesinde cinsiyetin uzamsal referans çerçevesi seçiminde bir değişken olmadığı saptanmıştır. Bunun yanında fen bilimleri ile sosyal bilimlerden gelen katılımcılar arasında göreli referans çerçevesi kullanımı açısından anlamlı bir fark olmazken içsel referans çerçevesi kullanma eğilimi fen bilimlerinden gelen katılımcılarda daha fazladır.

ABSTRACT: This study was carried out to answer what kind of representations in Turkish could be obtained on spatial frames of reference. In the experiment which was conducted to determine spatial frames of reference used in Turkish, four different production tasks consisting of two object arrangements which indicate localization were done by total 80 participants 40 of whom were female and 40 of whom were male. This study presents a discussion based on the data which were obtained from the production tasks by the participants.

The first highlighted finding of this study is that intrinsic and relative frames of reference are used to convey the relation of localization between two objects in Turkish. On the other hand, the features of objects which are figure and ground affect directly the selection of spatial frames of reference in Turkish is the other finding of this study. So much so that frequency of their usage varies according to the features of objects which are figure and ground and their arrangements. It was determined that gender was not variable in the selection of spatial frames of reference within the scope of research questions of this study. Besides that, there was not a significant difference in terms of relative frame of reference usage between the participants from social science and physical science, tendency of intrinsic frame of reference usage was higher in the participants from physical science.

Li and Gleitman (Turning the tables: language and spatial reasoning. Cognition, in press) seek to undermine a large-scale cross-cultural comparison of spatial language and cognition which claims to have demonstrated that language and conceptual coding in the spatial domain covary (see, for example, Space in language and cognition: explorations in linguistic diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press; Language 74 (1998) 557): the most plausible interpretation is that different languages induce distinct conceptual codings. Arguing against this, Li and Gleitman attempt to show that in an American student population they can obtain any of the relevant conceptual codings just by varying spatial cues, holding language constant. They then argue that our findings are better interpreted in terms of ecologically-induced distinct cognitive styles reflected in language. Linguistic coding, they argue, has no causal effects on non-linguistic thinking – it simply reflects antecedently existing conceptual distinctions. We here show that Li and Gleitman did not make a crucial distinction between frames of spatial reference relevant to our line of research. We report a series of experiments designed to show that they have, as a consequence, misinterpreted the results of their own experiments, which are in fact in line with our hypothesis. Their attempts to reinterpret the large cross-cultural study, and to enlist support from animal and infant studies, fail for the same reasons. We further try to discern exactly what theory drives their presumption that language can have no cognitive efficacy, and conclude that their position is undermined by a wide range of considerations.

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.

The paper focuses on the role of the Swedish spatial particles upp 'up' and ner 'down' to signal the endpoint-of-motion in the description of motion situations and is based on Swedish original fiction texts and their translations into English, German, French and Finnish. Frequently the endpoint is marked with a locative preposition such as på 'on' or i 'in', and then a particle is required to signal change-of-place. In German and Finnish, the particle is often zero translated and change-of-place is indicated by case. The particle is often zero translated also in French, a V(erb)-framed language. This leads to contrasts at the conceptual level since verticality is not expressed. The result points to radical intra-typological differences between S(atellite)-framed languages in the expression of Path depending on general morpho-syntactic differences. Another important conclusion is that several different classes of motion verbs must be distinguished even in S-languages to describe the expression of change-of-place.

Rather than specifying spatial relations with a closed-class set of prepositions, American Sign Language (ASL) encodes spatial relations using space itself via classifier constructions. In these constructions, handshape morphemes specify object type, and the position of the hands in signing space schematically represents the spatial relation between objects. A [ 15 O]water PET study was conducted to investigate the neural regions engaged during the production of English prepositions and ASL locative classifier constructions in hearing subjects with deaf parents (ASL-English bilinguals). Ten subjects viewed line drawings depicting a spatial relation between two objects and were asked to produce either an ASL locative classifier construction or an English preposition that described the spatial relation. The comparison task was to name the figure object (colored red) in either ASL or in English. Describing spatial relations in either ASL or English engaged parietal cortex bilaterally. However, an interaction analysis revealed that right superior parietal cortex was engaged to a greater extent for ASL than for English. We propose that right parietal cortex is involved in the visual-motoric transformation required for ASL. The production of both English prepositions and ASL nouns engaged Broca's area to a greater extent than ASL classifier constructions. We suggest that Broca's area is not engaged because these constructions do not involve retrieval of the name of an object or the name of a spatial relation. Finally, under the same task conditions, only left parietal activation was observed for monolingual English speakers producing spatial prepositions (H. Damasio et al., 2001, NeuroImage, 13). We conclude that the right hemisphere activation observed for ASL-English bilinguals was due to their lifelong experience with spatial language in ASL. D

Abstract. A novel approach to shape and spatial representation and reasoning is proposed in this paper. We develop (i) a schema for qualitatively encoding two-dimensional design diagrams; and (ii) methods of recognition and classification for design reasoning. The schema is founded on boundary-and graph-based landmarks and utilizes qualitative feature based (QFB) representation techniques. The encoder invokes a qualitative schema describing morphological, topological and mereological features. The generic encoding ...

Like other languages of the Western Sichuan linguistic area, the Yonghe variety of Qiang has robust grammatical systems for spatial concepts. Within the noun phrase, there are specialized locative casemarkers for different degrees of distance of the object being located. There is also a set of locational nouns, which are structured based on an intrinsic frame of reference, at least for some speakers. In the verb phrase, there is a system of five existential verbs, four of which have locational semantics; choice of existential depends on containment and attachment, then secondarily on the animacy of the referent being located. There is also a set of eight directional prefixes. These have different discourse frequencies, reflecting different levels of prefix-verb collocation. In addition, the prefixes primarily occur in perfective clauses and imperatives; however, they are optional when an adverbial phrase is also used. Thus, the system approximates derivation rather than inflection. These patterns of distribution, together with comparative data from other Western Sichuan languages, suggest a grammaticalization pathway from directional prefix to perfective to imperative.

This paper presents the results of a preliminary survey on absolute directional systems across Australia using published and unpublished material as well as fieldwork data. It aims to provide the first systematic overview of such systems in Australia and forms the basis for a larger-scale project to investigate cultural and geographic salience of absolute systems across the continent. My sample currently includes 112 languages and varieties covering diverse landscapes. The systems show variation within and across languages. For example, many languages make use of more than one absolute system; e.g. in Bilinarra (Meakins and Nordlinger, 2014) a river drainage exists alongside a compass system. Consequently, this paper sets out to create a systematic typological overview of absolute directionals in Australia taking into account cultural (Hoffmann, under review) and geographic salience (Palmer, 2015) and revisiting existing classifications of absolute systems.

A vibrotactile N-back task was used to generate cognitive load while participants were guided along virtual paths without vision. As participants stepped in place, they moved along a virtual path of linear segments. Information was provided en route about the direction of the next turning point, by spatial language ("left," "right," or "straight") or virtual sound (i.e., the perceived azimuth of the sound indicated the target direction). The authors hypothesized that virtual sound, being processed at direct perceptual levels, would have lower load than even simple language commands, which require cognitive mediation. As predicted, whereas the guidance modes did not differ significantly in the no-load condition, participants showed shorter distance traveled and less time to complete a path when performing the N-back task while navigating with virtual sound as guidance. Virtual sound also produced better N-back performance than spatial language. By indicating the superiority of virtual sound for guidance when cognitive load is present, as is characteristic of everyday navigation, these results have implications for guidance systems for the visually impaired and others.

Beginning with Talmy's work in the late 1970's and early1980's, cognitive linguists have argued that fictive motion-roughly, mentally simulated motion along a path or linear configuration-motivates the use and structure of a class of figurative uses of motion verbs. On this view, a motion verb describes an inherently static scene, as in The road runs along the coast or A trail goes through the desert, but evokes the simulation of "movement" or "scanning" along a trajectory through imagined space. The imagery is believed to be subjective in that the conceptualizer enacts the movement or scanning, and its purpose is believed to be functionalallegedly, simulating motion allows the language user to infer or convey information about the physical layout of a scene, especially the configuration and position of the path or trajectory (e.g., road). The goal of this chapter is to examine the linguistic behavior of fictive motion constructions (e.g., The road runs along the coast), and to discuss whether simulated motion and scanning motivates the use and comprehension of fictive motion constructions. Central to the discussion is relevant work from psychology, * Acknowledgments: Many thanks to Herb Clark, Dan Schwartz, and Leonard Talmy for many enlightening discussions, and to Ravid Aisenmann, Ben Bergen, Frank Brisard, Maria Cristobol, and Paul Maglio, for insightful comments on early drafts. Thanks also goes to Michel Achard, Adrian Bangerter, Alex Cozzi, and Pernilla Quarfordt for non-English linguistic examples, and to my research assistants for helping with the experiments discussed in this paper. A special thanks is extended to Günter Radden, co-editor of the volume, who provided many helpful suggestions.

Abstract Dynamic conceptualization is a fundamental notion in cognitive linguistics. Abstract motion is one type of dynamic conceptualization. It is said to structure descriptions of static scenes such as 'The mountain range goes from Mexico to Canada', and in doing so, invokes a subjective sense of motion or state change.

The paper presents a new model for contextdependent interpretation of linguistic expressions about spatial proximity between objects in a natural scene. The paper discusses novel psycholinguistic experimental data that tests and verifies the model. The model has been implemented, and enables a conversational robot to identify objects in a scene through topological spatial relations (e.g. “X near Y”). The model can help motivate the choice between topological and projective prepositions. 1

Development of a comprehensive model of spatial relations is important to improved geographic information and analysis systems, and also to cognitive science and behavioral geography. This paper first reviews concepts of space. A critical distinction is between small-scale spaces, whose geometry can be directly perceived through vision and other senses, and large-scale space, which can be perceived only in relatively small parts. Fundamental terms for spatial relations often are based on concepts from small-scale space, and are metaphorically extended to large-scale (geographic) space. Reference frames, which form an important basis both for spatial language and for spatial reasoning, are discussed. Lastly, we set as a short term but important goal a search for geometries of spatial language.

The aim of the current study is to investigate cross-linguistic differences in the encoding of motion events and the distribution of their constituent parts, i.e. the manner as well as the path focusing mainly on the Goal component. In the abundant literature on the effect of the lexicalization pattern of a language (Sat-ellite-vs. Verb-framed), only few studies have systematically taken into account the specific properties of the situation underlying a verbalization. With a focus on German and Greek, we analyze verbal descriptions of motion events presented in video clips and link the linguistic characteristics of the different ver-balizations to the salience of the Goal point. We find that in situations containing highly evident Goals towards which the motion is targeted, German speakers tend to realize Goals more often than Greek speakers. This finding is complemented with a cross-linguistic examination of the inventory for expressing manner and path of motion as well as by an analysis of the type of information expressed in the verbalizations. We discuss both in the context of the continuum between Satellite-and Verb-framed languages.

In recent decades there has been an outpouring of research into spoken and signed languages all over the planet. This research makes it evident that regardless of diversity of form, and regardless of expression in the vocal or manual modality, all human languages demonstrate common construction principles.

Grammatical aspect is known to shape event understanding. However, little is known about how it interacts with other important temporal information, such as recent and distant past. The current work uses computer-mouse tracking (Spivey et al.,2005) to explore the interaction of aspect and temporal context. Participants in our experiment listened to past motion event descriptions that varied according to aspect (simple past,past progressive) and temporal distance (recent past,distant past) while viewing scenes with paths and implied destinations. Participants used a computer mouse to place characters into the scene to match event descriptions. Our results indicated that aspect and temporal context interact in interesting ways. When aspect placed emphasis on the ongoing details of the event and the temporal context was recent( thus, making fine details available in memory), this match between conditions elicited smoother and faster computer mouse movements than when conditions mismatched. Likewise, when aspect placed emphasis on the less detailed end state of the event and temporal context was in the distant past (thus,making fine details less available), this match between conditions also elicited smoother and faster computer mouse movements.

Languages encode space in strikingly different ways : Satelliteframed languages (e.g., English) lexicalize Manner in verb roots and express Path in satellites, whereas Verb-framed languages (e.g., French) lexicalize Path in verb roots, leaving Manner implicit or peripheral; other languages present parallel systems in which both Verb-and Satellite-framed structures are available (e.g., Greek). The present study investigates how speakers of three typologically different languages, English, French and Greek, performed a production task and allocated their visual attention while exploring and describing visual scenes involving motion -movement fixations differed substantially as a function of language-specific factors, arguing that typological constraints have a clear impact not only on linguistic but also on non-linguistic behaviours.