Speakers, addressees, and frames of reference: Whose effort is minimized in conversations about locations?

When speakers describe locations, they must choose among taking their own perspective, their addressee's, a shared frame of reference, and a neutral frame of reference that avoids the issue, among other options. This study examines whether speakers choose spatial perspectives that minimize effort for themselves, for their partners, or for both. It also examines whether perspectives are taken for particular individuals, for the speaker or addressee, or for the person who knows the information to be communicated. Three possible models are proposed for exactly how descriptions in a particular perspective are more difficult when speaker and addressee view a scene from different offsets. In a communication task, speakers described locations on a complex display for addressees who shared their vantage point or were offset by 90° or 180°. In these conversations, both partners either took the perspective of the person who did not know the location or used descriptions that helped them avoid choosing one or the ot...

[1]  J. Piaget.  The Language and Thought of the Child , 1927 .

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

[3]  Morton Ann Gernsbacher,et al.  Improving Written Communication Through Perspective-taking. , 1993, Language and cognitive processes.

[4]  W. Levelt.  Speaking: From Intention to Articulation , 1990 .

[5]  G. Logan.  Linguistic and Conceptual Control of Visual Spatial Attention , 1995, Cognitive Psychology.

[6]  W. Klein.  Local deixis in route directions , 1982 .

[7]  G. Lakoff,et al.  Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind , 1988 .

[8]  Michael F. Schober,et al.  Spatial perspective in language use , 1990 .

[9]  E. Clark,et al.  Strategies in the acquisition of deixis , 1978, Journal of Child Language.

[10]  A. Yonas,et al.  Spatial reference systems in perceptual development , 1979 .

[11]  S. Garrod,et al.  Saying what you mean in dialogue: A study in conceptual and semantic co-ordination , 1987, Cognition.

[12]  Willem J. M. Levelt,et al.  Some Perceptual Limitations on Talking About Space , 1984 .

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

[14]  W. Levelt.  Cognitive styles in the use of spatial direction terms , 1982 .

[15]  H. H. Clark,et al.  Understanding by addressees and overhearers , 1989, Cognitive Psychology.

[16]  D. Wunderlich.  How do prepositional phrases fit into compositional syntax and semantics? , 1991 .

[17]  H L Pick,et al.  Children's use of frames of reference in communication of spatial location. , 1990, Child development.

[18]  R. Brown.  How shall a thing be called. , 1958, Psychological review.

[19]  C. Fillmore.  Towards a Descriptive Framework for Spatial Deixis , 1982 .

[20]  D. E. Irwin,et al.  Reference Frame Activation during Spatial Term Assignment , 1994 .

[21]  C. Linde,et al.  Spatial Networks as a Site for the Study of Language and Thought. , 1975 .

[22]  C. Linde.  Focus of attention and the choice of pronouns in discourse , 1979 .

[23]  K. Bock.  Regulating mental energy: Performance units in language production , 1992 .

[24]  Penelope Brown,et al.  Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage , 1989 .

[25]  M. F. Schober.  Spatial perspective-taking in conversation , 1993, Cognition.

[26]  Gudula Retz-Schmidt,et al.  Various Views on Spatial Prepositions , 1988, AI Mag..

[27]  D R Olson,et al.  Language and thought: aspects of a cognitive theory of semantics. , 1970, Psychological review.

[28]  J. Fodor,et al.  Some syntactic determinants of sentential complexity , 1967 .

[29]  R. Shepard,et al.  Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects , 1971, Science.

[30]  Günter Saile,et al.  Sprache und Handlung , 1984 .

[31]  L. B. Ames,et al.  The development of verbalized space in the young child. , 1948, The Journal of genetic psychology.