Spatial Description

12 Key excerpts on "Spatial Description"

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  Space and Spatial Cognition

  A Multidisciplinary Perspective

  • Michel Denis(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Beyond the arguments provided by comparative psycholinguistics, interfacing between spatial language and the expression of spatial knowledge and capacities is attested by developmental studies. For instance, it is well established that children whose parents make use of large amounts of spatial vocabulary have linguistic productions that are richer in spatial terms than children of the same age less exposed to spatial terminology. Still more remarkably, these children are more likely to perform better at a later age in tasks requiring good control of visuo-spatial capacities, such as figure transformations or discovery of spatial analogies (see Pruden, Levine, & Huttenlocher, 2011). In complement to sensorimotor experience, spatial language does contribute to improving the quality of people’s spatial thinking.

  Passage contains an image p.132 11 Spatial DescriptionS

  It is classic to point to the contrast between the multidimensional structure of space and the unidimensional organization of language. Whereas spatial objects are distributed over at least two dimensions, it is inherent to language to convey information in successive pieces, according to sequences governed by a set of syntactic rules. By construction, the full set of statements that are combined to verbally account for a situation can only be delivered sequentially. This constraint obliges the speaker to decide the order in which the components of a linguistic message will be stated and thus communicated to an interpreting agent. This is true of every subject of discourse, but in the case of space, a set of particular decisions will have to be made with the objective of finding a sequence that gives the addressee the possibility of building a coherent and informationally valid representation.

  To start with, from which point of a configuration, from which object in a scene should a description be initiated? Then, which further object should be posited by reference to the first one, and so on? For even a small set of objects that compose a scene, there is a huge number of theoretically possible sequentializations. This situation creates a challenge for the art of description, although it soon appears that a narrower set of options is eventually retained by speakers/writers. Which factors constrain describers to finally converge on a limited number of descriptive sequences?

  To describe a scene is not a self-evident exercise. The activity is likened to the resolution of the so-called “ill-defined” problems, that is, problems which do not allow for a single solution, but several possible ones. These solutions, in the case of Spatial Descriptions, can be hierarchized and classified as “more or less” adequate in terms of clarity and communicative value. Will we identify some descriptive sequences as more sound than others to communicate information and optimize the chances of an addressee acquiring new knowledge in good cognitive conditions?

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  Imagery, Language and Visuo-Spatial Thinking

  • Michel Denis, Robert Logie, Cesare Cornoldo, Manuel de Vega, Johannes EngelKamp(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER FIVE The interface between language and visuo-spatial representations

  Manuel de Vega

  Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands

  Marguerite Cocude and Michel Denis

  LIMSI-CNRS, Université de Paris-Sud, Orsay, France

  Maria José Rodrigo

  Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands

  Hubert D. Zimmer

  Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken Germany

  INTRODUCTION

  Some animals develop a sophisticated spatial knowledge necessary for way-finding, migrating, establishing the boundaries of their territory, nesting and so on. However, only humans are able to share their spatial knowledge by using language to communicate. This chapter addresses the issue of spatial communication with a focus on the mental representations that underlie our locative expressions and, more generally, spatial discourse. All languages have a rich vocabulary of locative terms that cover several linguistic categories. For instance, in English and in most Indo-European languages there are spatial adverbials (e.g., “here”, “there”, “behind”, “below”), prepositions (e.g., “in”, “on”, “from”, “near”), adjectives (e.g., “big”, “short”, “large”), pronouns (e.g., “this”, “that”), nouns (e.g., “circle”, “square”, “triangle”), and verbs (e.g., “to enter”, “to leave”, “to jump”, “to cross”, “to support”, “to contain”). Some of these locatives are particularly important because they are closed-class words (e.g., prepositions) or, in some languages like German, morphological flexions (case affixes) that convey spatial meaning. Closed-class words and morphological flexions correspond to concepts incorporated into the grammar of a language, and their use is frequently mandatory in sentences. Only a few concepts enter the closed-class category of words or become grammaticalised. Thus, in many languages, time, person, quantity, or gender are incorporated into the grammar. Some spatial concepts also belong to this privileged “club” although their use in each sentence is generally optional rather than mandatory (unlike other concepts such as time incorporated in verb tenses, or quantity implicit in number morphemes).

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  Marquesan

  A Grammar of Space

  • Gabriele H. Cablitz(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  The position taken by representatives of the linguistic relativity hypothesis is that conceptualisation is not innate, but rather emerges through the use of particular linguistic expressions in specific situations 232 (Gumperz and Levinson 1996; Levinson 1996, 1997; Lucy 1992; see also ch. 1, § 2). According to Levinson (1997) conceptual and semantic (i.e. linguistic) representations are not essentially different representational systems. These researchers believe that our experience with a specific world or environment plays a crucial role in the way we express ourselves through language. As for the investigation of spatial language we therefore want to know how language relates to our spatial knowledge and conceptualisations. Spa-tial knowledge comprises our knowledge about a certain local environment (e.g. a city, a village), about objects as well as the various spatial relations they can hold to each other (Lang 1990; Vater 1991). The environment we perceive around us has certain properties, such as natural 233 and man-made 234 landmarks. In order to be able to orientate oneself sensibly in an environ-ment, we have to learn how landmarks are related to each other. Spatial knowledge about a particular environment is called a cognitive map (Downs and Stea 1982: 24). Although we need specific knowledge of the local environment we live in, we also have to be able to adapt to new envi-ronments, and to be able to orientate ourselves in new environments we Space, spatial language and spatial conceptualisation 215 have to assume that we structure space according to some principles or cognitive processes. Thus our brain has to decide which of the numerous spatial information we receive through our perceptual organs is important and which is not. We therefore have to assume some kind of mental struc-ture of space by selecting particular spatial features. These selected spatial features form part of our spatial conceptualisations and non-linguistic knowledge about space.

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  The Construal of Space in Language and Thought

  • Martin Pütz, René Dirven, Martin Pütz, René Dirven(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  The linguistic, cognitive and cultural variables of the conceptualization of space Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky 1. Introduction Space is a fundamental concept in human cognitive and linguistic systems, since every human being is necessarily aware, consciously or subcon-sciously, of his/her spatial location. Therefore, it is only natural for lan-guage users to approach the notion of space in an egocentric fashion. Con-sequently, the deictic paradigms operating in natural language do not reflect any abstract spatial relations but are conceptualized and codified in terms of proximity and distance from the speaker's zero point, the Origo. The cen-trality of spatial cognition has long been recognized by researchers. Bühler was the first to suggest the basic role of the local dimension in his theory of the Zeigefeld der Sprache (Bühler 1934). Lyons (1977) and Fillmore (1975) have shown that all three deictic dimensions can be characterized by the lo-cal expressions proximal/distal. From a broader perspective, Traugott (1978) has offered a universalist explanation of how spatial terms are used to express temporal relations, apparently in all languages. Thus, in the se-quencing of events some languages use the front/back pair of spatial deictics and some employ, in addition, a vertical up/down distinction. Similarly, Rauh (1983: 12) has stated that the same descriptive system un-derlies various dimensions, i.e. egocentric-localistic, and therefore deictic dimensions are determined analogously to the local deictic dimension. Levinson (1992: 5) puts this in a nutshell by emphasizing that spatial thinking intrudes into thinking about almost all other domains: when an in-tellectual problem can be spatialised, it can be conceived clearly. It will be shown below how languages differ as to the ways they con-ceptualize and grammaticalize the notion of space. To account for these contrasts, I will make the following claims:

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  Spatial Semiotics and Spatial Mental Models

  Figure-Ground Asymmetries in Language

  • Martin Thiering(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  The issue here is the various degrees of specificity speakers assign to different figure-ground asymmetries. Results from a visually based elicitation procedure indicate differences in the encoding of spatial topological relations between speakers and between languages. As such, this research echoes numerous studies on language variation in spatial semantics as known from typological and cognitive semantic approaches. The different degrees of specificity result from different practices chosen by speakers. The data supports the idea that linguistic meaning reflects degrees of specificity of social practices or language games.

  The linguistic phenomenon known as degree of specificity of the figure’s location in relation to the ground refers to the amount of detailed expressive content with which spatial relations are described in various languages (Svorou 1993). This chapter subscribes to the idea that “linguistic meaning is inextricable from the social practices (language games) in which language is used” (Zlatev 1997: 5; “language games” is adapted from the later Wittgenstein and highlights the pragmatic function of language and meaning; see Wittgenstein 2006). It is interesting that speakers choose to encode the same situation in very different ways (i.e., use different degrees of specificity). This is not only the case between languages (interlingual), but also within a single language (intralingual).

  Results from the visually based elicitation tool offer insights into the spatial topological semantics of the two languages . As outlined above, the Topological Relations Markers series of 71 simple black and white drawings was used to elicit the usage of spatial language (Pederson, Wilkins and Bowerman 1998).78

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  Human Spatial Cognition and Experience

  Mind in the World, World in the Mind

  • Toru Ishikawa(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 7

  Communicating information about space

  The foregoing chapters mainly dealt with internal representations of the environment; that is, what is contained in the knowledge about the environment and how it is represented in the human mind. This chapter focuses on external representations of the environment, namely expressions of the knowledge about the environment in words or as visual representations, particularly in the context of communicating knowledge about surrounding environments to other people and assisting people in navigation and wayfinding. The first section looks at spatial language as a medium of communicating knowledge about space—verbal descriptions or navigational directions—by clarifying the concept of spatial frames of reference as it pertains to the conceptualization of space. The second section discusses the understanding and use of maps, a major medium of geographic knowledge since antiquity, particularly the characteristics and potential difficulty of spatial orientation with maps in the environment. The third section discusses recent technologies of navigation assistance, or satellite navigation systems and applications, and the characteristics of spatial behavior by users of such advanced geospatial tools.

  Spatial language

  Spatial frames of reference

  When you are asked directions to the nearest restroom, you say, “Go down the hall and make a right, then you will see it on your left.” When you tell your partner where you are waiting at the airport, you say on the cellphone, “I am in the North Terminal, standing in front of a cafe on the second floor.” When you give directions to a taxi driver, you say, “Go down south on Smith Avenue and take the freeway up to Turnpike; the third house after the exit is my place.” To describe where you are, where an object is, and where a place is, you need to specify the location of yourself, the object, and the place. How do you specify the location, then?—you do so in relation to “something” in space. The something may be a person (e.g., on your left), a concrete object (e.g., in front of a cafe), or an abstract framework imposed onto the environment such as cardinal directions (e.g., down south) or latitude and longitude (e.g., you say “see you at 35° 42′ north and 139° 45′ east tomorrow,” if appropriate). In essence, this is a process of describing “where something is with respect to something else” (Levinson, 1996, p. 110). The way in which the something and something else are related constitutes a system of spatial localization, called a frame of reference

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  Language Learning Environments

  Spatial Perspectives on SLA

  • Phil Benson(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  Chomskyan linguists have spatialised grammar to an extraordinary degree, beginning with Chomsky’s ‘transformations’, which are essentially spatial rearrangements of the grammatical components of written sentences, although they are assumed to take place deep within the mind. Lantolf (1996: 727) noted a list of terms used by Chomskyan linguists, including ‘dominance’, ‘command’, ‘government’, ‘binding’, ‘subjacency’, ‘barriers’, ‘constraints’, ‘dependency’ and ‘chains’. For Lantolf, these were ‘conceptual metaphors of power and control’. They are also metaphors of space that illustrate the dependency of modern linguistics on spatial representations of language. Halliday (2003) is a retrospective overview of his key ideas on language titled ‘On the “Architecture” of Human Language’. The inverted commas around ‘architecture’ suggest that Halliday did not think that language was actually designed in the fashion of a building. Yet, there is ample evidence in the article of a highly spatialised lexicogrammar. Simple sign systems, Halliday (2003: 5) suggests, can be ‘expanded’ on four ‘dimensions’: they can be ‘combined’, ‘uncoupled’, ‘layered’ or ‘networked’. The systems that make up networks of choice are described as ‘organizational spaces’, and lexical items are described as occupying ‘the more delicate regions of one continuous lexicogrammatical space’. The evolutionary development from protolanguage to language, in which language lost its dependence on the ecosocial environment, is described in explicitly spatial terms: ‘a space was created in which meanings could be organised in their own terms, as a purely abstract network of interrelations’ (Halliday, 2003: 14)

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  Spatial Concepts in Slavic

  A Cognitive Linguistic Study of Prepositions and Cases

  • Ljiljana Saric(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Harrassowitz Verlag

    (Publisher)

  Studies of prepositional semantics have concentrated on the geometric relations involved in spatial scenes (H ERSKOVITS 1986; L ANDAU , J ACKENDOFF 1993). The relation of the spatial lan-guage and geometric relations in the scene being described is certainly an important factor. However, an account must also be sought that takes into consideration how objects interact with each other, the forces they exert on each other, and the concep-tual relation between the objects. The advantages of such an account are illustrated in, for example, C OVENTRY and G ARROD ’s (2004) “functional geometric frame-work”. 1.5.2 Extensions of and from a spatial prototype Consider the Croatian preposition na ‘on, at; to, onto’, which will be elaborated in detail in Chapter 2 as an example of what a spatial prototype is and how it can be extended. Extension of a spatial prototype can affect the spatial domain, implying that a use of a preposition considered prototypical or central extends into less typical situations via some kind of resemblance with the central or prototypical situation. Moreover, metaphorical extensions map spatial usages onto non-spatial domains. First, consider some examples in which extensions within the spatial domain can be ated with words are open-ended and highly dependent on the utterance context. The presented theory of lexical concept integration (the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models, or LCCM Theory) is an attempt to establish a cognitively realistic theory of lexical representation. © 2014, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-05806-3 ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19184-5 Spatial metaphors as a basis for meaning extensions 19 followed.

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  Bridges Between Psychology and Linguistics

  A Swarthmore Festschrift for Lila Gleitman

  • Donna Jo Napoli, Judy Anne Kegl, Judy Kegl, Donna Jo Napoli, Judy Anne Kegl, Judy Kegl(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  A last point on the disparity between the expressive power of the two systems: Rueckl, Cave, and Kosslyn’s (1988) study involved a stimulus space containing only nine different shapes, each of which could occur in nine partially overlapping locations. Within this tiny system, it was found that the optimal allocation of resources between the “what” and “where” systems used over three times as many “what” units as “where” units. Although it is hard to know how this case generalizes to a more realistic system, the disparity is reminiscent of that found between the noun and the preposition system. However, Rueckl, Cave, and Kosslyn argue that the disparity can only increase as one moves to a more realistic system. Thus our conjecture of the Poverty of Spatial Representation is suggestively supported on computational grounds.

  3.4 Directions for Research

  If our conjecture is correct, we have found a bifurcation in the expressive power of language that corresponds to a bifurcation in the functional and anatomical systems of the brain. This is, to our knowledge, the first time within cognitive science that a correlation has been made between a property of grammar and a property of a nonlinguistic part of the brain. What is exciting about this correlation is that, where previous studies have documented the tasks performed by the two systems, linguistic evidence can now provide a window on the actual forms of information the systems encode.

  This possibility has suggested two programs of research currently being conducted by one of us (B.L.). The first stems from the asymmetry of spatial relations. According to the linguistic evidence, a spatial relation defines a region in terms of a reference object; the figural object is then located in the region. The implication is that regions are in some sense psychologically real—that one can investigate their properties experimentally. Studies currently under way suggest that adults and children as young as 3 years old make systematic judgments that reveal highly structured regions surrounding reference objects. For example, when asked to make repeated judgments as to whether one object is near

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  Ontolinguistics

  How Ontological Status Shapes the Linguistic Coding of Concepts

  • Andrea C. Schalley, Dietmar Zaefferer, Andrea C. Schalley, Dietmar Zaefferer(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  plenty of neurobio-logical evidence (cf. Bloom et al. 1996; Deacon 1997). 15 In ending this section let us also note that that the advantage of the univer-sal ‘domains’ with the language speci fi c realizations of features within these domains as well as the language speci fi c patterning of these features pro-posed in this work is that they seem to allow for crosslinguistic diversity (i.e. seems to justify semantic variability within the category of prepositions at the crosslinguistic level) while still – through the universality of domains – main-taining (and justifying the view of) the cognitively based view of language. This view is further developed in the conclusive remarks of this paper. 4. Conclusion Following Piaget and Inhelder (1956), most analyses of spatial language have assumed that the simplest spatial notions are topological and universal. Fur-thermore, it has been generally assumed that languages provide a set of closed class words for the linguistic coding of these topological, universal concepts Spatial ‘on’ – ‘in’ categories 321 (e.g. Talmy 2000). Recent psycholinguistic work (e.g. studies by the Max-Planck-Institute Space and Cognition Group), focusing on crosslinguistic se-mantic coding of spatial adpositions, has partly undermined these assump-tions. The aim of this paper has been to try and a) propose a uni fi ed analysis (for the ‘on’ – ‘in’ range) that would account for crosslinguistic variation i.e. categorical (semantic) differences while not undermining linguistic univer-sality, and b) suggest that the mechanism proposed for the analysis of the ‘on’ – ‘in’ range, or rather, the domains and features proposed in Section 3.2. should, if correct, work for other (closed-class) crosslinguistic semantic cat-egorial distinctions (spatial but perhaps also non spatial). One of the key questions of this volume is: what is the relation between the ontologies (systems of conceptualizations) in our minds and the various languages we speak.

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  From Perception to Meaning

  Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics

  • Beate Hampe(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  The fundamental system of spatial schemas in language Leonard Talmy Abstract Linguistic Research to date has determined many of the factors that govern the structure of the spatial schemas found across spoken languages. We can now inte-grate these factors and propose the comprehensive system they comprise for spa-tial structuring in language.This system is characterized by several features. At a componential level, it has a relatively closed universally available inventory of fundamental spatial elements. These elements group into a relatively closed set of spatial categories. And each category includes only a relatively closed small num-ber of particular elements:the spatial distinctions that each category can ever mark. At a composite level, elements of the inventory combine in particular ar-rangements to form whole spatial schemas.Each language has a relatively closed set of ÿpre-packagedþ schemas of this sort. Finally, the system includes a set of properties that can generalize and processes that can extend or deform pre-packaged schemas and thus enable a languageýs particular set of schemas to be applied to a wider range of spatial structures. Keywords : spatial schema, spatial structure, spatial primitives 1. Introduction 1.1. Overview of the system of spatial schemas Linguistic research to date has determined many of the principles that gov-ern the structure of the spatial schemas represented by closed-class forms across the worldýs languages. Contributing to this cumulative understanding have, for example, been Gruber (1965), Fillmore (1968), Leech (1969), Clark (1973), Bennett (1975), Herskovits (1982), Jackendoff (1983), Zubin and Svorou (1984), as well as myself (Talmy 1983, 2000a, 2000b). It is 200 Leonard Talmy now feasible to integrate these principles and to determine the comprehensive system they belong to for spatial structuring in spoken language.

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  Space in Language and Linguistics

  Geographical, Interactional, and Cognitive Perspectives

  • Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  It became apparent that there is enor-mous variation across cultures in terms of which reference frames their members prefer for solving a given task. And this variation was found to have profound consequences for spatial cognition. Frames of reference are not mutually translatable: if one remembers a ball exclusively as being ‘west of ’ a chair, this will not allow one to determine later where it was with re-spect to the chair from the perspective of the observer. Conversely, if the lo-cation of the ball is remembered in egocentric terms, its location in absolute or geocentric space cannot be inferred from this representation. Conse-quently, people tend to memorize spatial information in the same frames they prefer to communicate it linguistically. These findings raise important questions about the boundary between in-nate and cultural knowledge in spatial cognition and the relationship be-tween spatial cognition and language. In order to be able to address these questions, it is vitally important to survey the linguistic systems and cognitive styles used by the speakers of different languages according to standardized scientific methods and protocols. This is the job of semantic typology, a sub-field of linguistic typology. The members of the research project Spatial lan- 640 Jürgen Bohnemeyer & Randi Tucker guage and cognition in Mesoamerica (“MesoSpace”; NSF Award # BCS-0723694) have been undertaking the largest and most comprehensive survey of the use of spatial frames of reference in a large multilingual and multicultural geo-graphic area to date. In doing so, they have also pioneered the application of methods of semantic typology to such an area. This areal approach to typol-ogy opens up unique opportunities for isolating linguistic, cultural, and to-pographic/environmental factors influencing spatial cognition. A growing controversy has arisen around the demonstration in Levinson (1996, 2003a) and Pederson et al.

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