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  3. Language Culture and Cognition

This series focuses on the role that language, in both its universal, psychological aspects and its variable, cultural aspects, plays in human cognition. Studies focus on the relation between semantic and conceptual categories and processes, especially as these are illuminated by cross-linguistic and cross-cultural studies, the study of language acquisition and conceptual development, and the study of the relation of speech production and comprehension to other kinds of behaviour in cultural context. Books come principally, though not exclusively, from research associated with the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, and in particular the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group.

  • General Editors: Stephen C. Levinson, Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands

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13 results in Language Culture and Cognition

Demonstratives in Cross-Linguistic Perspective
  • Edited by Stephen C. Levinson, Sarah Cutfield, Michael J. Dunn, N. J. Enfield, Sérgio Meira
  • Published online:
    12 July 2018
    Print publication:
    19 July 2018
  • Demonstratives play a crucial role in the acquisition and use of language. Bringing together a team of leading scholars this detailed study, a first of its kind, explores meaning and use across fifteen typologically and geographically unrelated languages to find out what cross-linguistic comparisons and generalizations can be made, and how this might challenge current theory in linguistics, psychology, anthropology and philosophy. Using a shared experimental task, rounded out with studies of natural language use, specialists in each of the languages undertook extensive fieldwork for this comparative study of semantics and usage. An introduction summarizes the shared patterns and divergences in meaning and use that emerge.

Drawn from the Ground
  • Sound, Sign and Inscription in Central Australian Sand Stories
  • Jennifer Green
  • Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    08 May 2014
  • Sand stories from Central Australia are a traditional form of Aboriginal women's verbal art that incorporates speech, song, sign, gesture and drawing. Small leaves and other objects may be used to represent story characters. This detailed study of Arandic sand stories takes a multimodal approach to the analysis of the stories and shows how the expressive elements used in the stories are orchestrated together. This richly illustrated volume is essential reading for anyone interested in language and communication. It adds to the growing recognition that language encompasses much more than speech alone, and shows how important it is to consider the different semiotic resources a culture brings to its communicative tasks as an integrated whole rather than in isolation.

Questions
  • Formal, Functional and Interactional Perspectives
  • Edited by Jan P. de Ruiter
  • Published online:
    05 November 2012
    Print publication:
    16 August 2012
  • The view that questions are 'requests for missing information' is too simple when language use is considered. Formally, utterances are questions when they are syntactically marked as such, or by prosodic marking. Functionally, questions request that certain information is made available in the next conversational turn. But functional and formal questionhood are independent: what is formally a question can be functionally something else, for instance, a statement, a complaint or a request. Conversely, what is functionally a question is often expressed as a statement. Also, verbal signals such as eye-gaze, head-nods or even practical actions can serve information-seeking functions that are very similar to the function of linguistic questions. With original cross-cultural and multidisciplinary contributions from linguists, anthropologists, psychologists and conversation analysts, this book asks what questions do and how a question can shape the answer it evokes.

Event Representation in Language and Cognition
  • Edited by Jürgen Bohnemeyer, Eric Pederson
  • Published online:
    01 March 2011
    Print publication:
    23 December 2010
  • Event Representation in Language and Cognition examines new research into how the mind deals with the experience of events. Empirical research into the cognitive processes involved when people view events and talk about them is still a young field. The chapters by leading experts draw on data from the description of events in spoken and signed languages, first and second language acquisition, co-speech gesture and eye movements during language production, and from non-linguistic categorization and other tasks. The book highlights newly found evidence for how perception, thought, and language constrain each other in the experience of events. It will be of particular interest to linguists, psychologists, and philosophers, as well as to anyone interested in the representation and processing of events.

Language, Culture, and Mind
  • Natural Constructions and Social Kinds
  • Paul Kockelman
  • Published online:
    04 May 2010
    Print publication:
    18 February 2010
  • Based on fieldwork carried out in a Mayan village in Guatemala, this book examines local understandings of mind through the lens of language and culture. It focuses on a variety of grammatical structures and discursive practices through which mental states are encoded and social relations are expressed: inalienable possessions, such as body parts and kinship terms; interjections, such as 'ouch' and 'yuck'; complement-taking predicates, such as 'believe' and 'desire'; and grammatical categories such as mood, status and evidentiality. And, more generally, it develops a theoretical framework through which both community-specific and human-general features of mind may be contrasted and compared. It will be of interest to researchers and students working within the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy.

Language, Space, and Social Relationships
  • A Foundational Cultural Model in Polynesia
  • Giovanni Bennardo
  • Published online:
    19 August 2009
    Print publication:
    14 May 2009
  • The study of the relationship between language and thought, and how this apparently differs between cultures and social groups, is a rapidly expanding area of enquiry. This book discusses the relationship between language and the mental organisation of knowledge, based on the results of a fieldwork project carried out in the Kingdom of Tonga in Polynesia. It challenges some existing assumptions in linguistics, cognitive anthropology and cognitive science and proposes a new foundational cultural model, 'radiality', to show how space, time and social relationships are expressed both linguistically and cognitively. A foundational cultural model is knowledge that is repeated in several domains and shared within a cultural homogeneous group. These knowledge structures are lenses through which we interpret the world and guide our behaviour. The book will be welcomed by researchers and students working within the fields of psycholinguistics, anthropological linguistics, cognitive anthropology, cognitive psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and cognitive science.

The Anatomy of Meaning
  • Speech, Gesture, and Composite Utterances
  • N. J. Enfield
  • Published online:
    21 July 2009
    Print publication:
    26 March 2009
  • How do we understand what others are trying to say? The answer cannot be found in language alone. Words are linked to hand gestures and other visible phenomena to create unified 'composite utterances'. In this book N. J. Enfield presents original case studies of speech-with-gesture based on fieldwork carried out with speakers of Lao (a language of Southeast Asia). He examines pointing gestures (including lip and finger-pointing) and illustrative gestures (examples include depicting fish traps and tracing kinship relations). His detailed analyses focus on the 'semiotic unification' problem, that is, how to make a single interpretation when multiple signs occur together. Enfield's arguments have implications for all branches of science with a stake in meaning and its place in human social life. The book will appeal to all researchers interested in the study of meaning, including linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists.

Person Reference in Interaction
  • Linguistic, Cultural and Social Perspectives
  • Edited by N. J. Enfield, Tanya Stivers
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    26 April 2007
  • How do we refer to people in everyday conversation? No matter the language or culture, we must choose from a range of options: full name ('Robert Smith'), reduced name ('Bob'), description ('tall guy'), kin term ('my son') etc. Our choices reflect how we know that person in context, and allow us to take a particular perspective on them. This book brings together a team of leading linguists, sociologists and anthropologists to show that there is more to person reference than meets the eye. Drawing on video-recorded, everyday interactions in nine languages, it examines the fascinating ways in which we exploit person reference for social and cultural purposes, and reveals the underlying principles of person reference across cultures from the Americas to Asia to the South Pacific. Combining rich ethnographic detail with cross-linguistic generalizations, it will be welcomed by researchers and graduate students interested in the relationship between language and culture.

Grammars of Space
  • Explorations in Cognitive Diversity
  • Edited by Stephen C. Levinson, David P. Wilkins
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    14 September 2006
  • Spatial language - that is, the way languages structure the spatial domain – is an important area of research, offering insights into one of the most central areas of human cognition. In this collection, a team of leading scholars review the spatial domain across a wide variety of languages. Contrary to existing assumptions, they show that there is great variation in the way space is conceptually structured across languages, thus substantiating the controversial question of how far the foundations of human cognition are innate. Grammars of Space is a supplement to the psychological information provided in its companion volume, Space in Language and Cognition. It represents a new kind of work in linguistics, 'Semantic Typology', which asks what are the semantic parameters used to structure particular semantic fields. Comprehensive and informative, it will be essential reading for those working on comparative linguistics, spatial cognition, and the interface between them.

Space in Language and Cognition
  • Explorations in Cognitive Diversity
  • Stephen C. Levinson
  • Published online:
    03 December 2009
    Print publication:
    20 March 2003
  • Languages differ in how they describe space, and such differences between languages can be used to explore the relation between language and thought. This 2003 book shows that even in a core cognitive domain like spatial thinking, language influences how people think, memorize and reason about spatial relations and directions. After outlining a typology of spatial coordinate systems in language and cognition, it is shown that not all languages use all types, and that non-linguistic cognition mirrors the systems available in the local language. The book reports on collaborative, interdisciplinary research, involving anthropologists, linguists and psychologists, conducted in many languages and cultures around the world, which establishes this robust correlation. The overall results suggest that thinking in the cognitive sciences underestimates the transformative power of language on thinking. The book will be of interest to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers, and especially to students of spatial cognition.

Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development
  • Edited by Melissa Bowerman, Stephen Levinson
  • Published online:
    26 January 2010
    Print publication:
    11 January 2001
  • Recent years have seen a revolution in our knowledge of how children learn to think and speak. In this volume, leading scholars from these rapidly evolving fields of research examine the relationship between child language acquisition and cognitive development. At first sight, advances in the two areas seem to have moved in opposing directions: the study of language acquisition has been especially concerned with diversity, explaining how children learn languages of widely different types, while the study of cognitive development has focused on uniformity, clarifying how children build on fundamental, presumably universal concepts. This book brings these two vital strands of investigation into close dialogue, suggesting a synthesis in which the process of language acquisition may interact with early cognitive development. It provides empirical contributions based on a variety of languages, populations and ages, and theoretical discussions that cut across the disciplines of psychology, linguistics and anthropology.

Language and Gesture
  • Edited by David McNeill
  • Published online:
    07 January 2010
    Print publication:
    03 August 2000
  • This landmark study examines the role of gestures in relation to speech and thought. Leading scholars, including psychologists, linguists and anthropologists, offer state-of-the-art analyses to demonstrate that gestures are not merely an embellishment of speech but are integral parts of language itself. Language and Gesture offers a wide range of theoretical approaches, with emphasis not simply on behavioural descriptions but also on the underlying processes. The book has strong cross-linguistic and cross-cultural components, examining gestures by speakers of Mayan, Australian, East Asian as well as English and other European languages. The content is diverse including chapters on gestures during aphasia and severe stuttering, the first emergence of speech-gesture combinations of children, and a section on sign language. In a rapidly growing field of study this volume opens up the agenda for research into a new approach to understanding language, thought and society.

Language and Conceptualization
  • Edited by Jan Nuyts, Eric Pederson
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 May 1997
  • To what extent is conceptualization based on linguistic representation? And to what extent is it variable across cultures, communities, or even individuals? Of crucial importance in the attempt to develop a comprehensive theory of human cognition, these remain amongst the most difficult of questions in the cognitive sciences. This volume brings together ten new contributions from leading scholars working in a wide cross-section of disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy, with an introduction by the editors which surveys current work in the field. It is one of the first attempts to tackle explicitly the issue of the relationship between linguistic and conceptual representation from a truly interdisciplinary perspective.