Space, agency and word order: Evidence from Greek

Space, agency and word order: Evidence from Greek Spyridoula Cheimariou (spyridoula-cheimariou@uiowa.edu) Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa 250 Hawkins Drive, Iowa City, IA 52242 USA Sonia Loui (sonialoui@gmail.com) Department of Philosophy & History of Science (MITHE), Ano Ilissia University Campus GR-15771 Zografos, Greece Abstract We examined the role of spatial representations and word order on thematic role assignment in Greek. Previous studies suggest that spatial representations influence thematic role assignment; agent is typically depicted on the left, and patient on the right. Here, we address this issue using a language with flexible word order which allows us to manipulate sentence structure (SVO–OVS) orthogonally to thematic role. Greek speakers heard SVO/OVS sentences while viewing depictions of actions involving two characters and they judged whether sentence and picture matched in meaning. The agent’s position in the picture was directly manipulated. The results support the effect of left bias on language processing. However, this bias may be better understood when its interaction with other sources of information and language- specific constraints are taken into account. Theories of prediction may help us illuminate how spatial biases and linguistic factors interactively affect the way we process our world. Keywords: spatial representation, language, thematic role assignment, word order, sentence comprehension, prediction, Greek. Introduction The combinatory study of language and space aims to shed light on how an analog, geometric and continuous representation is encoded into a propositional algebraic and discrete representation (Jackendoff, 1992; Geminiani, Bisiach, Berti & Rusconi, 1995; Hayward & Tarr, 1995; Jackendoff, 1996; Chatterjee, Southwood & Basilico, 1999; Levinson, 2003; Papafragou, Hulbert & Trueswell, 2008, among others). Recent research has inaugurated a discussion on how language structures are constrained by spatial biases (Chatterjee, Maher, Gonzales-Rothi, & Heilman, 1995; Chatterjee, Southwood, & Basilico, 1999). Researchers (Chatterjee et., al, 1995; Chatterjee, Southwood, & Basilico, 1999; Chatterjee, 2001; 2008) have entertained the claim that events are conceptualized spatially and prelinguistically proceeding from left towards the right. They assume that language development exploits systems meant for left-to- right spatial attention in the left hemisphere. Therefore, the left-to-right directional bias indicates primitive spatial representations and reflects a prelinguistic neural encoding of events and actions. Evidence for this claim comes from case studies in agrammatic speech (Caplan & Futter, 1986; Caramazza & Miceli, 1991). In these studies, the person with agrammatism systematically assigned agency to the first noun heard or to the one located to the left of the verb. Chatterjee and colleagues (Chatterjee, et al. 1995; Chatterjee, Southwood, & Basilico, 1999), based on the Jacksonian notion that primitive cognitive functions are overlaid with more complex functions, hypothesized that people with agrammatic aphasia tend to follow a temporal or spatial strategy based on those primitive spatial representations in order to interpret a sentence once their more complex linguistic abilities fail. To test for their assumption they conducted studies in typical population (Chatterjee et al., 1995; Chatterjee, Southwood, & Basilico, 1999; Barrett & Craver-Lemley, 2008). In these studies, participants were asked to depict sentences describing an action with two persons involved or to match sentences to pictures. Participants tended to draw the agent of an action closer to the left side of the picture. For example, in the sentence «The girl chased the boy», it was more probable for the participants to depict the girl on the left side of the picture and the boy on the right side. Also, participants responded faster when the agent was located on the left side in sentence-picture matching tasks. According to an alternative explanation, the left-to-right directional bias is culturally determined by the directionality of the reading/writing system (Maass & Russo, 2003; Chan & Bergen, 2005; Dobel, Diesendruck, & Bolte, 2007). Specifically, Maass and Russo (2003) investigated spatial biases in thematic role assignment in directionally opposite writing system, such as Italian (left-to-right) and Arabic (right-to-left). They found that Italian speakers tended to assign the agent on the left, while Arabic speakers had the reverse tendency. Furthermore, the more years Arabic speakers had spent abroad exposed to the opposite writing system, the more mitigated their right-to-left bias was. Furthermore, Dobel, Diesendruck, and Bolte (2007) strengthened this argument by showing that the left or right bias in depicting agency is based not only on reading and writing practices, but also on the degree of exposure on those practices. Specifically, they tested spatial biases in German- and Hebrew-speaking adults and preschool children. They found that the writing system influenced thematic role assignment in adults, that is, German-speaking adults had a left-to-right spatial bias, while Hebrew- speaking adults had the opposite bias. However, this was not observed for preschool children who had no exposure to the reading and writing systems of their language.