Language and Space

Description

MIT Press, 1996. — 603 pp.The study of the relationship between natural language and spatial cognition has the potential to yield answers to vexing questions about the nature of the mind, language, and culture. The fifteen original contributions in Language and Space bring together the major lines of research and the most important theoretical viewpoints in the areas of psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience, providing a much needed synthesis across these diverse domains. Each chapter gives a clear up-to-date account of a particular research program. Overall, they address such questions as: how does the brain represent space, how many kinds of spatial representations are there, how do we learn to talk about space and what role does culture play in these matters, should experimental tests of the relations between space and language be restricted to closed-class linguistic elements or must the role of open-class elements be considered as well? Throughout authors speak to each other's arguments, laying bare key areas of agreement and disagreement.The Architecture of the Linguistic-Spatial Interface How Much Space Gets into Language? Perspective Taking and Ellipsis in Spatial Descriptions Frames of Reference and Molyneux's Question: Crosslingnistic Evidence The Confluence of Space and Language in Signed Languages Fictive Motion in Language and "Ception" The Spatial Prepostions in English. Vector Grammar, and the Cognitive Map Theory Multiple Geometric Representations of Objects in Languages and Language Learners Preverbal Representation and Language Learning How to Structure Space for Language: A Crosslinguistic Perspective Space to Think Spatial Perspective in Descriptions A Computational Analysis of the Apprehension of Spatial Relations The Language-to-Object Perception Interface: Evidence from Neuropsychology Space and Language