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Language and thought: The relativity issue in the light of contemporary psycholinguistics Talk at the Cultures in inter

Universality and relativity in perspective . Hermeneutic circle in Whorfian reasoning Different surfaces in the language-thought interfaceResearch vogues: relative- univ- relativeProcessing relativityLanguage of space: brain to cultureDisorders, languages and brains . Whorfian circles. Langua

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Language and thought: The relativity issue in the light of contemporary psycholinguistics Talk at the Cultures in inter

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    1. Language and thought: The relativity issue in the light of contemporary psycholinguistics Talk at the ‘Cultures in interaction’ conference, 6th European Congresss International Association for Cross-Cultural Pychology, Budapest, 12th July, 2003 Csaba Pléh Center for Cognitive Science, Budapest U. of Technology and Economics pleh@itm.bme.hu

    2. Universality and relativity in perspective Hermeneutic circle in Whorfian reasoning Different surfaces in the language-thought interface Research vogues: relative- univ- relative Processing relativity Language of space: brain to culture Disorders, languages and brains

    3. Whorfian circles Language determines thought This is seen in differences of expressions in different languages Lexical and grammatical relativity Trivially circular: need for behavioral measures Language, thought, and determines issues

    4. Research fashions over half century ’50s: large differences, overall relativity Chomskyan revolution: universalism and modularity, no determination ’80s: typological differences, parameters, processing types Recently: constrained relativity and contextualized universality

    5. Processing relativity Languages differ in the way they approach the linguistic taks of understanding Language-to-language relativity Languages also differ in their use of universal resources Debates on when and how this is fixed

    6. An example: Interpretation of simple transitive sentences, Bates - MacWhinney, 1989, ‘competition’

    7. Explanatory power of factors in Hungarian Var Expl

    8. Learning the saliency of case and unlearning animacy in Hungarian

    9. Consequences of an increased role of morphology (Gergely and Pléh) Rich morphology Fast decisions Non-configurational Localistic model Memory over words Poor morphology Slow decisons Configurational Holistic model Memory over phrases

    10. Language and space: Universal and specific The model of Landau-Jackendoff 100 spatial markers, low shape sensitivity DORSAL STREAM 10.000 nouns, high shape sensitivity VENTRAL STREAM Universal features, some variations

    11. Main issues in our space language research Theoretical background: Jackendoff and Landau (1993) The early use pattern: container and goal preference Artificial spatial markers: primacy of goals and the ease of suffixes Dissociation between language of space and agreemnt morphology in WMS

    12. The language of space in Hungarian Suffixes, postpositions and object part names in the NPs Obligatory distinctions along the path Three markers for GOAL, SOURCE, LOCATION Prefix system in VPs (in-go,out-go etc.)

    13. Preference for GOALS in earliest use From the data of MacWhinney (1978) distribution of 612 spatial suffixes, betwwen 1;8 an 2;4 (Pléh, Vinkler and Kálmán, 1996) A difficult issue: all of this might be due to frequency in inputA difficult issue: all of this might be due to frequency in input

    14. Artificial spatial language-learning paradigm Children between 3;6 and 5;6 Learn artificial suffixes part names postpositions With different visual targets vertical diagonal under With different path directionality

    15. Visual arrangements for learning artificial spatial terms

    16. Learning of three spatial expression types and age Clear learning in suffixes Increases with age Postpositions and part names are more difficult

    17. The effect of visual relation on learning Vertical is by far the easiest to learn Diagonal is not learned Part name is learnable with under

    18. GOAL preference in artificial spatial markers

    19. Some aspects of goal preference GOAL preference is strong It is strong with postpositions as well It becomes stronger with age

    20. Arrangement for the perspective reversal task (Levinson)

    21. Percent of egocentric choice

    22. Some relevance of the reversal task The language related egocentric choice develops It has many contextual determinants A simple reletivity cannot be hold here

    23. Disordered populations and cross-linguistic comparisons Is the behavioral disorder the same in different language contexts ? Williams syndrome: spatial disorder good language How is space language effected? The relevance of Hungarian: more qualitative data

    24. Spatial morphology and the role of trajectory (Ágnes Lukács)

    25. Some tentative conclusions Languages differ in the language processing strategies they use, and this is related to the use of common resources according to language structure. Language shapes the selection between alternative representations, but is not the source of these representations. Space preferences are formed prelinguistically. Comparative studies help us to clarify the issue of qualitative disorders in the case of some developmental pathologies.

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