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Demonstratives, Frames of Reference, and Semantic Universals of Space
Author(s) -
Diessel Holger
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
language and linguistics compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.619
H-Index - 44
ISSN - 1749-818X
DOI - 10.1111/lnc3.12066
Subject(s) - problem of universals , linguistics , cognitive linguistics , space (punctuation) , linguistic universal , deixis , frame of reference , perspective (graphical) , cognition , class (philosophy) , interpretation (philosophy) , spatial cognition , psychology , linguistic typology , cognitive science , typology , theoretical linguistics , computer science , sociology , artificial intelligence , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , anthropology
There is a large body of research indicating that speakers of (familiar) European languages tend to encode and conceptualize space from an egocentric perspective, but linguistic fieldworkers have shown that speakers of certain other languages (e.g. Tzeltal) often describe the same spatial scenes based on fixed coordinates of the environment. This has led some researcher to challenge long‐standing assumptions about semantic universals of space and the uniformity of spatial cognition. Specifically, Levinson and colleagues have questioned the hypothesis that there is a universal preference for egocentric, body‐oriented representations of space in language and cognition. It is the purpose of the present paper to reconsider this hypothesis in light of an important class of spatial terms that has been disregarded in this research: demonstratives such as English this and that and here and there . The paper shows that the semantic interpretation of demonstratives presupposes a coordinate system with the same conceptual constituents as body‐based expressions such as left and right or up and down . Combining evidence from linguistic typology with psychological research on joint attention, it is argued that demonstratives constitute a universal class of spatial terms that invoke an egocentric, body‐anchored frame of reference grounded in basic principles of spatial and social cognition.