Language and Cognition: The Cognitive Consequences of Spatial Description in Guugu Yimithirr

This article explores the relation between language and cognition by examining the case of "absolute" (cardinal direction) spatial description in the Australian aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr. This kind of spatial description is incongruent with the "relative" (e.g., leftlrightjfrontfback) spatial description familiar in European languages. Building on Haviland's 1993 analysis of Guugu Yimithirr directionals in speech and gesture, a series of informal experiments were developed. It is shown that Guugu Yimithirr speakers predominantly code for nonverbal memory in "absolute" concepts congruent with their language, while a comparative sample of Dutch speakers do so in "relative" concepts. Much anecdotal evidence also supports this. The conclusion is that Whorfian effects may in fact be demonstrable in the spatial domain.

[1]  E. Batschelet.  Circular statistics in biology , 1981 .

[2]  S. Levinson,et al.  'Uphill' and 'downhill' in Tzeltal , 1993 .

[3]  David Lewis,et al.  OBSERVATIONS ON ROUTE FINDING AND SPATIAL ORIENTATION AMONG THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLES OF THE WESTERN DESERT REGION OF CENTRAL AUSTRALIA , 1976 .

[4]  S. Levinson.  Pragmatics and the grammar of anaphora: a partial pragmatic reduction of Binding and Control phenomena , 1987, Journal of Linguistics.

[5]  D. Slobin.  Learning To Think For Speaking: Native Language, Cognition, And Rhetorical Style , 1991 .

[6]  D. Slobin,et al.  The development of locative expressions in English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish , 1977, Journal of Child Language.

[7]  Learning how to become an interlocutor. The verbal negotiation of common frames of reference and actions in dyads of 7–14 year old children , 1986 .

[8]  M. Bowerman.  The origins of children's spatial semantic categories: Cognitive vs. linguistic determinants , 1996 .

[9]  P. Johnson-Laird,et al.  Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness , 1985 .

[10]  J. Lucy,et al.  Grammatical categories and cognition: References , 1992 .

[11]  W. Levelt,et al.  Speaking: From Intention to Articulation , 1990 .

[12]  S. Levinson,et al.  LANGUAGE AND SPACE , 1996 .

[13]  S. Levinson,et al.  Rethinking Linguistic Relativity , 1991, Current Anthropology.

[14]  Nicholas Evans,et al.  A Grammar Of Kayardild , 1995 .

[15]  M. Bowerman,et al.  Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns , 1991, Cognition.

[16]  H. H. Clark,et al.  Referring as a collaborative process , 1986, Cognition.

[17]  G. Miller,et al.  Language and Perception , 1976 .