Spatial frames of reference in Yucatec: Referential promiscuity and task- specificity

نویسنده

  • Juergen Bohnemeyer
چکیده

A referential communication task conducted with five pairs of native speakers of Yucatec Maya produced evidence of “referential promiscuity” in the selection among spatial frames of reference (FoRs): speakers switched freely between FoRs and pervasively combined multiple types in single descriptions. In contrast, a recall memory experiment conducted with 18 speakers revealed a strong bias towards responses consistent with the use of geocentric, as opposed to egocentric, FoRs. It is argued that referential promiscuity makes FoR selection more taskspecific, preventing the linguistic conditioning of spatial reference in internal cognition that has been predicted for populations with more constrained linguistic usage.

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تاریخ انتشار 2010