Vision Verbs Emerge First in English Acquisition but Touch, not Audition, Follows Second

Words that describe sensory perception give insight into how language mediates human experience, and the acquisition of these words is one way to examine how we learn to categorize and communicate sensation. We examine the differential predictions of the typological prevalence hypothesis and embodiment hypothesis regarding the acquisition of perception verbs. Studies 1 and 2 examine the acquisition trajectories of perception verbs across 12 languages using parent questionnaire responses, while Study 3 examines their relative frequencies in English corpus data. We find the vision verbs see and look are acquired first, consistent with the typological prevalence hypothesis. However, for children at 12–23 months, touch—not audition—verbs take precedence in terms of their age of acquisition, frequency in child‐produced speech, and frequency in child‐directed speech, consistent with the embodiment hypothesis. Later at 24–35 months old, frequency rates are observably different and audition begins to align with what has previously been reported in adult English data. It seems the initial orientation to verbalizing touch over audition in child–caregiver interaction is especially related to the control of physically and socially appropriate behaviors. Taken together, the results indicate children's acquisition of perception verbs arises from the complex interplay of embodiment, language‐specific input, and child‐directed socialization routines

The grammar of engagement II: typology and diachrony

Engagement systems encode the relative accessibility of an entity or state of affairs to the speaker and addressee, and are thus underpinned by our social cognitive capacities. In our first foray into engagement (Part 1), we focused on specialised semantic contrasts as found in entity-level deictic systems, tailored to the primal scenario for establishing joint attention. This second paper broadens out to an exploration of engagement at the level of events and even metapropositions, and comments on how such systems may evolve. The languages Andoke and Kogi demonstrate what a canonical system of engagement with clausal scope looks like, symmetrically assigning ‘knowing’ and ‘unknowing’ values to speaker and addressee. Engagement is also found cross-cutting other epistemic categories such as evidentiality, for example where a complex assessment of relative speaker and addressee awareness concerns the source of information rather than the proposition itself. Data from the language Abui reveal that one way in which engagement systems can develop is by upscoping demonstratives, which normally denote entities, to apply at the level of events. We conclude by stressing the need for studies that focus on what difference it makes, in terms of communicative behaviour, for intersubjective coordination to be managed by engagement systems as opposed to other, non-grammaticalised means

The grammar of engagement I: framework and initialexemplification

Human language offers rich ways to track, compare, and engage the attentional and epistemic states of interlocutors. While this task is central to everyday communication, our knowledge of the cross-linguistic grammatical means that target such intersubjective coordination has remained basic. In two serialised papers, we introduce the term ‘engagement’ to refer to grammaticalised means for encoding the relative mental directedness of speaker and addressee towards an entity or state of affairs, and describe examples of engagement systems from around the world. Engagement systems express the speaker’s assumptions about the degree to which their attention or knowledge is shared (or not shared) by the addressee. Engagement categories can operate at the level of entities in the here-and-now (deixis), in the unfolding discourse (definiteness vs indefiniteness), entire event-depicting propositions (through markers with clausal scope), and even metapropositions (potentially scoping over evidential values). In this first paper, we introduce engagement and situate it with respect to existing work on intersubjectivity in language. We then explore the key role of deixis in coordinating attention and expressing engagement, moving through increasingly intercognitive deictic systems from those that focus on the the location of the speaker, to those that encode the attentional state of the addressee.For institutional support of the research underlying it, we are grateful to the Australian Research Council (grants DP0878126 ‘Language and Social Cognition: the Design Resources of Grammatical Diversity’ and FL130100111 ‘The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity’), the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Anneliese Maier Forschungspreis to Evans), the Swedish Research Council (dnr. 2011-2274), and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), Veni award 275-89-024, ‘Learning the senses: Perception verbs in child–caregiver interaction’, as well as to our respective host institutions: the Australian National University, Stockholm University, and Radboud Universiteit in Nijmege

Forests : the cross-linguistic perspective

Do all humans perceive, think and talk about tree cover (‘forests’) in more or less the same way? International forestry programs frequently seem to operate on the assumption that they do. However, recent advances in the language sciences show that languages vary greatly as to how the landscape domain is lexicalized and grammaticalized. Different languages segment and label the large-scale environment and its features according to astonishingly different semantic principles, often in tandem with highly culture-specific practices and ideologies. Presumed basic concepts like mountain, valley and river cannot in fact be straightforwardly translated across languages. In this paper we describe, compare and evaluate some of the semantic diversity observed in relation to forests. We do so on the basis of first-hand linguistic field data from a global sample of indigenous categorization systems as they are manifested in the following languages: Avatime (Ghana), Duna (Papua New Guinea), Jahai (Malay Peninsula), Lokono (the Guianas), Makalero (East Timor), and Umpila/Kuuku Ya’u (Cape York Peninsula). We show that basic linguistic categories relating to tree cover vary considerably in their principles of semantic encoding across languages, and that forest is a challenging category from the point of view of inter-cultural translatability. This has consequences for current global policies and programs aimed at standardizing forest definitions and measurements. It calls for greater attention to categorial diversity in designing and implementing such agendas, and for receptiveness to and understanding of local indigenous classification systems in communicating those agendas on the ground

Universal meaning extensions of perception verbs are grounded in interaction

Apart from references to perception, words such as see and listen have shared, non-literal meanings across diverse languages. Such cross-linguistic meanings have not been systematically investigated as they appear in their natural home-informal spoken interaction. We present a qualitative examination of the semantic associations of perception verbs based on recorded everyday conversation in thirteen diverse languages. Across these diverse communities, spontaneous interaction provides evidence for two commonly-discussed extensions of perception verbs-perception~cognition, hearing~linguistic communication-as well as illustrating other meanings and functions (e.g., the use of perception verbs as discourse markers) that have been less appreciated heretofore. The range of usage that is readily observable in informal conversation makes it clear that this type of data must take center stage for the empirically grounded study of semantics. Moreover, these data suggest that commonalities in polysemous meanings may rely not only on universal cognition, but also on the universal exigencies of social interaction

Part Two INHERITANCE, CONTACT AND CHANGE IN THE NEW GUINEA HIGHLANDS EVIDENTIALITY AREA

ABSTRACT The Highlands of Papuan New Guinea is the location of an evidential Sprachbund that includes at least fourteen languages from six language families with grammaticized evidentiality. As with other linguistic features in New Guinea, evidentiality has spread across genealogical boundaries through repeated language contact. In this paper, we examine likely paths of development of the various subsystems and the spread of evidentiality as a whole. The evidence presented here points toward the Engan language family as the most likely source for at least some of the evidential markers and distinctions found in the region, supporting previous suggestions by other researchers

Duna (Yuna) recordings

Audio and some video material of Duna (Yuna), recorded in the Lake Kopiago region. Includes traditional narratives, life stories, descriptions, day and event recounts, interviews, casual conversation, et alia

Place Reference In Interaction

The language of place and space has been intensively studied in relation to grammatical characteristics, cross-linguistic variation, and cognition, as well as with regard to further questions central to social anthropology, psychology, and more. With this special issue, we focus on the pragmatic functions of references to places, as observed in informal social interaction. When people make reference to places in casual, everyday conversation, how do they do it, in what situations, and to what ends? We offer the first collection of findings from research on place reference in spontaneous, multi-party speech, with studies based on conversations recorded in the diverse geographic and cultural environments of outback Australia, highland New Guinea, island Indonesia and rural Mexico. The authors explore, from a range of angles, how and why people talk about place, for example, in regard to the vocabulary and grammar that a language has available to categorise space, and how people choose from among referential options in situated conversation to achieve communicative, social, and practical goals

Music and Language in Duna Pikono

[Extract] The relationship between music and language has been a topic of scholarship for many years, across the academic world. In the Duna �sung story� genre of pikono, systems of music and language are interdependent and it is this relationship that our chapter explores. In keeping with the topic of this volume, our discussion only relates to pikono that is sung. Sung pikono is considered by the Duna to be the height of the craft, and this is the mode of delivery for male performances. Women also create pikono, however the performance context and their delivery of pikono is much different. Men typically sing pikono to groups of men in men�s houses at night (see Kendoli, this volume). Women, on the other hand, tell (rather than sing) pikono to other women or to children, often in their homes, as reported by Modjeska (1977:332). We have found that often the pikono told by women feature sections of sung text that most commonly illustrate a musical event of some kind, such as a courting song or a lament, which occurs within the story. Predominantly, however, women�s pikono are in spoken form, and as such will not be discussed here.1We focus on men�s sung performance of pikono, but in particular we examine a performance of pikono by one man, Kiale Yokona, whom we met in March 2005 at Hirane parish2in the Kopiago area, where we were both conducting our doctoral research. Kiale arrived from the neighbouring parish of Mbara, and word quickly spread that he would be telling a pikono at the Hirane men�s house that night. We dropped by the men�s house briefly and, conforming to the gender rules governing the space, arranged for him to perform for us the next evening in another location