Publications

Abstract

Speakers of the Mayan language Tzeltal use two frames of reference for spatial reckoning: an absolute system (based on the south/north axis abstracted from the overall slope of the land) and an intrinsic system utilizing spatial axes of the reference object to establish body parts. This paper examines the use of absolute, intrinsic, and landmark cues in descriptions of spatial relations by 22 pairs of Tzeltal children aged between 5 and 17. The data are drawn from interactive space games, where a Director describes a spatial layout in a photo and the Matcher reproduces it with toys. The paper distinguishes use of ad hoc landmarks ('Red Cliffs', 'the electricity post') from genuine absolute reference points ('uphill'/'downhill'/’across’), and shows that adults in this task use absolute ('cow uphill of horse'), intrinsic ('at the tree's side') and landmark ('cow facing Red Cliffs') descriptions to communicate the spatial relations depicted. The youngest children, however, do not use landmark cues at all but rely instead on deictics and on the absolute 'uphill/downhill' terms; landmark terms are still rare at age 8-10. Despite arguments that landmarks are a simpler, more natural, basis for spatial reckoning than absolute terms, there is no evidence for a developmental progression from landmark-based to absolute-based strategies. We relate these observations to Slobin’s ‘thinking for speaking’ argument.

Abstract

Semplates are a new descriptive and theoretical concept in lexical semantics, borne out of recent L&C work in several domains. A semplate can be defined as a configuration consisting of distinct layers of lexemes, each layer drawn from a different form class, mapped onto the same abstract semantic template. Within such a lexical layer, the sense relations between the lexical items are inherited from the underlying template. Thus, the whole set of lexical layers and the underlying template form a cross-categorial configuration in the lexicon. The goal of this task is to find new kinds of macrostructure in the lexicon, with a view to cross-linguistic comparison.

Abstract

People of all cultures have some degree of concern with categorizing types of communicative social action. All languages have words with meanings like speak, say, talk, complain, curse, promise, accuse, nod, wink, point and chant. But the exact distinctions they make will differ in both quantity and quality. How is communicative social action categorised across languages and cultures? The goal of this task is to establish a basis for cross-linguistic comparison of native metalanguages for social action.

Abstract

Human actions in the social world – like greeting, requesting, complaining, accusing, asking, confirming, etc. – are recognised through the interpretation of signs. Language is where much of the action is, but gesture, facial expression and other bodily actions matter as well. The goal of this task is to establish a maximally rich description of a representative, good quality piece of conversational interaction, which will serve as a reference point for comparative exploration of the status of social actions and their formulation across language

Abstract

Relatively little work has examined the function of gaze in interaction. Previous research has mainly addressed issues such as next speaker selection (e.g. Lerner 2003) or engagement and disengagement in the conversation (Goodwin 1981). It has looked for gaze behavior in relation to the roles participants are enacting locally, (e.g., speaker or hearer) and in relation to the unit “turn” in the turn taking system (Goodwin 1980, 1981; Kendon 1967). In his seminal work Kendon (1967) claimed that “there is a very clear and quite consistent pattern, namely, that [the speaker] tends to look away as he begins a long utterance, and in many cases somewhat in advance of it; and that he looks up at his interlocutor as the end of the long utterance approaches, usually during the last phase, and he continues to look thereafter.” Goodwin (Goodwin 1980) introducing the listener into the picture proposed the following two rules: Rule1: A speaker should obtain the gaze of his recipient during the course of a turn of talk. Rule2: a recipient should be gazing at the speaker when the speaker is gazing at the hearer. Rossano’s work (2005) has suggested the possibility of a different level of order for gaze in interaction: the sequential level. In particular he found that gaze withdrawal after sustained mutual gaze tends to occur at sequence possible completion and if both participants withdraw the sequence is complete. By sequence here we refer to a unit that is structured around the notion of adjacency pair. The latter refers to two turns uttered by different speakers orderly organized (first part and second part) and pair type related (greeting-greeting, question-answer). These two turns are related by conditional relevance (Schegloff 1968) that is to say that the first part requires the production of the second and the absence of the latter is noticeable and accountable. Question-anwers are very typical examples of adjacency pairs. In this paper we compare the use of gaze in question-answer sequences in three different populations: Italians, speakers of Mayan Tzeltal (Mexico) and speakers of Yeli Ndye (Russel Island, Papua New Guinea). Relying mainly on dyadic interactions and ordinary conversation we will provide a comparison of the occurrence of gaze in each turn (to compare with the claims of Goodwin and Kendon) and we will describe whether gaze has any effect on the other participant response and whether it persists also during the answer. The three languages and cultures that will be compared here belong to three different continents and have been previously described as potentially following opposite rules: for speakers of Italian and Yeli Ndye unproblematic and preferred engagement of mutual gaze while for speakers of Tzeltal strong mutual gaze avoidance. This paper tries to provide an accurate description of their gaze behavior in this specific type of sequential conversation.

Abstract

The task is designed to elicit vocabulary for simple sounds. The primary goal is to establish how people describe sound and what resources the language provides generally for encoding this domain. More specifically: (1) whether there is dedicated vocabulary for encoding simple sound contrasts and (2) how much consistency there is within a community in descriptions. This develops on materials used in The language of sound

Abstract

This Field Manual entry has been superceded by the 2008 version: https://doi.org/10.17617/2.492932

Abstract

This article is a reprint of parts of chapters 2 and 3 from Brown and Levinson (1987) discussing the concept of 'Face Threatening Acts'.

Abstract

Research on video- and audio-recordings of spontaneous naturally-occurring conversation in English has shown that conversation is a rule-guided, practice-oriented domain that can be investigated for its underlying mechanics or structure. Systematic study could yield something like a grammar for conversation. The goal of this task is to acquire a corpus of video-data, for investigating the underlying structure(s) of interaction cross-linguistically and cross-culturally.

Abstract

This chapter explicates the requirement in person–reference for balancing demands for recognition, minimalization, explicitness and indirection. This is illustrated with reference to data from repair of failures of person–reference within a particular linguistic/cultural context, namely casual interaction among Rossel Islanders. Rossel Island (PNG) offers a ‘natural experiment’ for studying aspects of person reference, because of a number of special properties: 1. It is a closed universe of 4000 souls, sharing one kinship network, so in principle anyone could be recognizable from a reference. As a result no (complex) descriptions (cf. ‘ the author of Waverly’) are employed. 2. Names, however, are never uniquely referring, since they are drawn from a fixed pool. They are only used for about 25% of initial references, another 25% of initial references being done by kinship triangulation (‘that man’s father–in–law’). Nearly 50% of initial references are semantically underspecified or vague (e.g. ‘that girl’). 3. There are systematic motivations for oblique reference, e.g. kinship–based taboos and other constraints, which partly account for the underspecified references. The ‘natural experiment’ thus reveals some gneral lessons about how person–reference requires optimizing multiple conflicting constraints. Comparison with Sacks and Schegloff’s (1979) treatment of English person reference suggests a way to tease apart the universal and the culturally–particular.

Abstract

This article is a reprint of chapter 1, the introduction to Brown and Levinson, 1987, Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Cambridge University Press).

Abstract

Demonstratives are key items in understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. They are also multi-functional, with applications to non-spatial deictic fields such as time, perception, person and discourse, and uses in anaphora and affect marking. This item consists of an overview of theoretical distinctions in demonstrative systems, followed by a set of practical queries and elicitation suggestions for demonstratives in “table top” space, wider spatial fields, and naturalistic data.

Abstract

The world’s languages encode a diverse range of topological relations. However, cross-linguistic investigation suggests that the relations IN, AT and ON are especially fundamental to the grammaticised expression of space. The purpose of this questionnaire is to collect information about adpositions, case markers, and spatial nominals that are involved in the expression of core IN/AT/ON meanings. The task explores the more general parts of a language’s topological system, with a view to testing certain hypotheses about the packaging of spatial concepts. The questionnaire consists of target translation sentences that focus on a number of dimensions including animacy, caused location and motion.

Abstract

Languages differ widely in terms of how they encode the fundamental concepts of location and position. For some languages, verbs have an important role to play in describing situations (e.g., whether a bottle is standing or lying on the table); for others, verbs are not used in describing location at all. This item outlines certain hypotheses concerning four “types” of languages: those that have verbless basic locatives; those that use a single verb; those that have several verbs available to express location; and those that use positional verbs. The document was originally published as an appendix to the 'Picture series for positional verbs' (https://doi.org/10.17617/2.2573831).