Grounding spatial language in non-linguistic cognition: Evidence for universal and relative spatial semantics in thought

Grounding spatial language in non-linguistic cognition: Evidence for universal and relative spatial semantics in thought Michael Pacer* (mpacer@berkeley.edu) Alexandra Carstensen* (abc@berkeley.edu) Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 USA Terry Regier (terry.regier@berkeley.edu) Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science Program, University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 USA similar to those expressed by in and on in English. She demonstrated that these primitives could be conjoined to form the linguistic spatial categories observed in diverse languages, accounting for both universal similarities and variation across languages. Xu and Kemp (2010) have since expanded on Feist‟s attributes, constructing their own set of universal primitives and demonstrating that conjunctions of these primitives can be used to describe a wide range of variation in the ways that languages partition the semantic space of spatial relations. Primitive-based accounts have been demonstrated to characterize spatial terms across languages, capturing distinctions in both the intensional meanings and extensional uses of spatial words. However, the central issue in this debate is about cognition—not language. It is unclear whether these primitives accurately characterize the structure of thought as well. Despite the assumption in the literature that semantic primitives are universal components of spatial cognition, these proposed units of thought have been developed and tested exclusively on the basis of linguistic data. Primitives of spatial cognition are typically inferred top-down from observations of cross-language variation in spatial terms, and evaluated on their ability to explain that variation. Importantly, this is generally done without direct reference to non-linguistic cognition. Consequently, we know little about how the semantic primitives of spatial language relate to spatial cognition. While the primitives derived from language could plausibly account for variation in spatial cognition, they clearly suggest a subsequent inquiry: would it be possible to infer spatial primitives more directly from measures of nonlinguistic cognition? If so, would these cognitive primitives similarly account for the varying semantic systems across languages? Would they reflect language- specific influences as well? Abstract The categories named by spatial terms vary considerably across languages. It is often proposed that underlying this variation is a universal set of primitive spatial concepts that are combined differently in different languages. Despite the inherently cognitive assumptions of this proposal, such spatial primitives have generally been inferred in a top-down manner from linguistic data. Here we show that comparable spatial primitives can be inferred bottom-up from non-linguistic pile- sorting of spatial stimuli by speakers of English, Dutch, and Chichewa. We demonstrate that primitives obtained in this fashion explain meaningful cross-linguistic variation in spatial categories better than primitives designed by hand for that purpose, and reflect both universal and language-specific spatial semantics. Keywords: Language and thought; spatial cognition; semantic primitives; semantic universals; linguistic relativity. Spatial language and semantic primitives 1 Languages categorize spatial relations differently, and the significance of this cross-language variation for spatial cognition is a topic of ongoing debate (e.g. Bowerman & Pederson, 1992; Feist, 2000; Hespos & Spelke, 2004; Khetarpal et al., 2010; Levinson & Meira, 2003; Majid et al., 2004; see also e.g. Boroditsky & Gaby, 2010 on spatial structuring of non-spatial domains). This debate has traditionally pitted two views against each other. On the one hand, some have argued (e.g. Majid et al., 2004) that language structures spatial cognition, such that cross- language differences in spatial categorization cause underlying cognitive differences in speakers of those languages. On the other hand, others have suggested (e.g. Levinson & Meira, 2003) that the cross-language variation may reflect different partitions of a universal underlying conceptual representation. An influential version of the universalist view holds that a set of semantic primitives (e.g. Wierzbicka, 1996) is universally available to human cognition, and that spatial categories in different languages can be obtained by composing such spatial semantic primitives in different ways. Feist (2000) proposed a set of spatial attributes characterizing cross-linguistic uses of spatial relations Spatial primitives in language and cognition To determine whether proposals of semantic primitives are supported by direct evidence from nonlinguistic cognition, we would ideally want to obtain both cognitive and linguistic data from speakers of differing languages, extract primitives from the cognitive data of each group of *The first two authors contributed equally to this work.