1. Meaning we learn earliest? -- Equipment is something you play on

2. Most concrete (physical)?

3. Most Frequent?

4. Historically earliest?

We always have an intuition of what people are saying when it comes to literal and figurative language and we can figure out the difference between the two

It's used in prose, poetry, formal, informal, written, and spoken language

It tells us about the mind and how we understand and figure things out

Using language that primarily denotes concrete things to describe more abstract things

yank the economy out of the recession

bring the deficit down

Using language that primarily denotes one thing to refer to a related thing

the cowboy hat wants two pretzels

the chief wants three strong backs

Using language that primarily denotes motion to describe spatial configurations

the crack runs all the way across the windshield

TAKE LANGUAGE FROM THE RIGHT AND TALK ABOUT THE LEFT

MORE IS UP

prices rose

AFFECTION IS WARMTH

he's a warm person

SOCIETY IS A CONTAINER

cast out of society

MORAL IS CLEAN

got his hand dirty

Used to describe abstract things in terms of more concrete things

i.e.

HEIGHT

LOCATION

DESTINATION

FORWARD MOTION

IMPEDIMENTS

They are things we know lots about and can easily talk about

Things that are hard for us to talk about so we MAP them metaphorically

i.e.

STATES

GOALS

PROGRESS

DIFFICULTIES

There is a certain way to map things out metaphorically where only certain things can work together

Goals are never described as impediments

Difficulties are never described in forward motion

Maybe people not only talk about abstract things as though they were concrete things; perhaps they think this way as well

metaphorical expression

a linguisticexpression (a word, phrase, or sentence) that is the surface realization of such a cross- domain mapping (this is what the word metaphor referred to in the old theory). 

Traditional false assumptions of LITERAL LANGAGE

• All everyday conventional language is literal, and none is metaphorical.

• All subject matter can be comprehended literally, without metaphor.

• Only literal language can be contingently true or false.

• All definitions given in the lexicon of a language are literal, not metaphorical.

• The concepts used in the grammar of a language are all literal; none are metaphorical.

-Generalizations governing polysemy, that is, the use of words with a number of related meanings.

-Generalizations governing inference patterns, that is, cases where a pattern of inferences from one conceptual domain is used in another domain.

-Generalizations governing novel metaphorical language (see, Lakoff & Turner, 1989).

-Generalizations governing patterns of semantic change (see, Sweetser, 1990).

-Psycholinguistic experiments (see, Gibbs, 1990, this volume).

TARGET- DOMAIN IS SOURCE-DOMAIN

TARGET-DOMAIN AS SOURCE- DOMAIN

• Polysemy generalization: A generalization over related senses of linguistic expressions, e.g., dead-end street, crossroads, stuck, spinning one’s wheels, not going anywhere, and so on.

• Inferential generalization: A generalization over inferences across different conceptual domains.

THIS ANSWERS:

 -Why are words for travel used to describe love relationships?

-Why are inference patterns used to reason about travel also used to reason about love relationships. 

 Correspondingly, from the perspective of the linguistic analyst, the existence of such cross-domain pairings of words and of inference patterns provides evidence for the existence of such mappings.

Novel extensions of conventional metaphors

LOVE IS A JOURNEY 

explains why new and imaginative uses of the mapping can be understood instantly, given the ontological correspondences and other knowledge about journeys

SIMILARITY

Metaphor is a linguistic device describing similarity between two things

Metaphors a UNIDIRECTIONAL

i.e.

LOVE AS A JOURNEY

They are going through a rough patch

but not

A JOURNEY AS LOVE

The car went through a break up

1. Systematic (more is always up, less is never up)

2. Talks about abstract things (target-love) as though they were concrete (source-journey)

3. Unidirectional

4. At work in novel metaphorical expressions (because we get the general idea, we can understand this brand new metaphor)

Views metaphor as principally conceptual phenomenon, with linguistic manifestation

DISTINGUISHES BETWEEN:

1. metaphorical linguistic expressions, the linguistic expressions (words and sentences) that are used

2. conceptual metaphors, connections in people's minds between the two conceptual domains

CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS SYSTEMATICALLY AND UNIDIRECTIONALLY CONNECT THE SOURCE AND TARGET DOMAINS SO YOU CAN THINK OF THE TARGET IN TERMS OF THE SOURCE

nope.

Unidirectional? nope.

(Y is not as similar to X as X is to Y)

society = container? wrong.

love = journey? negatron.

Target can be explained metaphorically in terms of many different source domains

(Must be similar to lots of very different things)

1. Based on early life co-experiencing of source and target domain

Ex. Purposeful activities and goal-directed motion

Affection is warmth

More is up

1. Cross-domain mappings motivate or underlie metaphorical linguistic expressions

2. Pervasive

3. Unidirectional

4. Not based on similarity, but conceptual relations between two domains

5. Motivate metaphorical expressions that are conventional or novel

6. Produce either linguistic or behavioral expressions

1. Mentally activate conceptual metaphors when they think about abstract domains

2. They do so when they produce or process metaphorical expressions

3. They do so only when consciously analyzing expressions

What role does metaphoric thought, such as our metaphorical concepts for love, play in how people use and understand language?

H1. Metaphoric thought plays some role in the his- torical evolution of what words and expressions mean.

H2. Metaphoric thought motivates the linguistic meanings that have currency within linguistic com- munities, or is presummed to have some role in people’s understanding of language.

H3. Metaphoric thought motivates an individual speaker’s use and understanding of why various words and expressions mean what they do.

H4. Metaphoric thought functions in people’s im- mediate on-line use and understanding of linguistic meaning.

Gibbs et al.

Conceptual metaphors & metaphorical idioms

Do we access conceptual metaphors when we encounter metaphorical idioms?

TEST

Have subjects read texts that end in 3 diff ways...

1. Metaphorical idiom (blew his stack)

2. Literal paraphrase (he was angry)

3. Control sentence (he saw many dents)

MEASURE priming (RT) on source domain words (heat) than unrelated words (lead)

RESULTS

Fastest RT when target word was related to idiom

(in all other cases, unrelated was a little faster than related)

LEXICAL PRIMING

Co-occurance

Has nothing to do with the meaning of the word

Stays at the word level

THE TWO APPEAR TOGETHER A LOT

(Maybe this was the reason that the Gibbs experiment ended up the way it did)

CONCEPTUAL PRIMING

Goes through the meanings of words

Gibbs

EXPERIMENT

LEXICAL VS CONCEPTUAL PRIMING

The final sentence would use a metaphorical idiom literally

1. Blow the stack (literal use of idiom)

2. Vacuum the first (literal paraphrase)

3. Get a big truck (control phrase)

If priming due to lexical connection, literal uses should act the same as the metaphorical idiom uses

RESULTS

CM's can under some circumstances be accessed during immediate idiom comprehension

We know this because reading a metaphorical idiom leads language users to activate relevant source domains

HOWEVER....

Doesn't imply CMs are automatically accessed each time an idiom is processed

Doesn't imply that idiom comprehension DEPENDS on activating CMs

Boroditsky

TARGET AND SOURCE DOMAIN REASONING

Do you use source domain resources to reason about a target domain?

If a target domain task is ambiguous, then you might be primed to perform it in one way or the others by first performing a biasing source domain task

A PAIR OF PURPORTED CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS both map motion through space onto time but differently....

1.Ego-Moving

An observer moves through or past time

We're coming up on a break

We're closing in on the fall semester

2. Time-Moving

Time or events move past the observer

The break is coming up on us

The fall semester is closing in on us

Temporal Abiguity

EXPERIMENT 1

Shown an ego moving and object-moving schemas

1.Ego (The dark can is in front of me)

2. Object (The light widget is in front of the dark widget)

THEN

ask to interpret "Next Wednesday's meeting has been moved forward two days"

1. Ego = FRIDAY (73%)

2. Object = MONDAY (69)

Spatial primes affect the way participants think about time

CONCLUSION

we use spatial reasoning for time

Test for unidirectionality!

Spatial Prime --> Spatial Reasoning

Temporal Prime --> Temporal Reasoning

Spatial Primes --> Time Reasoning

Time Reasoning -NO- Spatial Reasoning

SPATIAL PRIMES (T/F)

[with pictures]

Ego- The flower is in front of me

Object- The hat-box is in front of the Kleenex

TEMPORAL PRIMES(T/F)

Ego- On Thursday, Saturday is before us

Time- Thursday comes before Saturday

AMBIGUOUS

Wednesday's meeting was moved ahead 2 days

Then, pick a widget for which one is ahead

RESULTS

For temporal questions, the responses were biased towards the predicted direction in terms of space and time primes

For spatial questions, they were only biased by spatial primes

LINKS BETWEEN TARGET AND SOURCE DOMAIN ARE NOT BIDIRECTIONAL

Online sentence processing study

Read 64 sentences

Target sentence no longer ambiguous, but consistent or inconsistent with prime question

Dependent measure was reading time for the target sentence

a) M is in front of me

b) X is in front of M

RESULTS

Thinking about space effects thinking about time, but not reverse

But you can think about time without activation knowledge of space

Boroditsky & Ramscar

SPATIAL STATE & TEMPORAL INTERPRETATION

EXPERIMENT 1

Does your current, embodied spatial state affect your interpretation of temporal language?

See image of an office chair

Imagine either yourself moving in the chair or the chair moving towards you

THEN

answer the Wednesday question

RESULTS

EGO-YOU MOVING IN CHAIR-FRIDAY (57%)

OBJECT-CHAIR MOVING TOWARDS YOU- MONDAY (67%)

Does actually experiencing motion make you show the same effect as the first experiment?

Went to a lunch line and asked people the Wednesday question

RESULTS

EGO MOVING-CLOSEST TO FOOD-FRIDAY

OBJECT-END OF LINE-MONDAY

Why the front of the line? They have experienced more motion

Is thinking about space sufficient to affect your interpretation of time language?

SFO ask asked the ambiguous question

Then asked people if they had just flown in, were waiting to fly, or were picking someone up

RESULTS

Ego- Just flew in (76%), About to depart (62%)

Pick up was about 50/50

Just thinking about spatial motion is sufficient to affect people's thinking about time

People on a tain

Ask ambiguous question to seated passengers, then asked how long people had been on train, and how much farther they had to go

RESULTS

Ego-Just got on & Just getting off-FRIDAY

Time- 50/50

Just thinking about motion produces more moving-ego interpretations, regardless of one's current physical state

While thinking about space seems to affect thinking about time, experiencing particular spatial configurations is neither necessary nor sufficient for thinking about time

METAPHORIC THOUGHT IN THE ABSENCE OF LANGUAGE

TIME AS SPACE

Casasanto & Boroditsky

See a line grow from L to R for some random amount of time and distance

Estimate either the time or distance that the line was on the screen

DEPENDENT MEASURE- the duration of their time estimates and the length distance of their space estimates

RESULTS

Time judgement affected by spatial perception because shorter the line was, the less time they thought it was is the screen (all on screen for 3000 ms)

Spatial judgments are not affected by times on screen because people basically always guessed the same line size no matter the time

WOW! AND IN A NON-LINGUISTIC TASK!

Are people's similarity judgments affected by physical proximity?

EXPERIMENT

Display pairs of word or images at varying distances on a computer screen

Have subjects rate the similarity of those pairs

RESULTS

Abstract Nouns- The closer words were seen as being more similar (probably because there were no perceptual characteristics to physically compare, so subjects relied on distance)

Unfamiliar Faces- The closers faces were, the less similar they were rated.

Why? Experiment!

Showed Concrete Images

Split images in 2 groups

APPEARANCE & MEANING

Due to the types of judgments (perceptual vs conceptual) because we saw the same thing as in the first two experiments....

WHYYYY!!!

1.Physical closeness encourages construing as members of the same category

2. Physical closeness encourages noticing perceptible difference between stimuli

We always talk about emotional accessibility in terms of warmth

Do we also think of it this way, even when there is no language involved?

EXPERIMENT

Confederate hands over cup of hot or iced coffee to a person in an elevator

Then the subject is asked to fill out a personality questionnaire about a person described as being intelligent, skillful, industrious...

They mark other traits with 1-10 as they think they relate to the fake person

PERSON HOLDING HOT COFFEE RANKED WARMTH RELATED TRAITS HIGHER

Next experiment had no experimenter

Held a hot or cold icy hot pad

Then offered gifts (take one for yourself, or one for a friend)

RESULTS

People picked a gift for themselves when they they held the cold pad, but picked up the gift for a friend when they held the warm pad

LONELY FEEL COLD?

Explain a time when u were included or excluded... then asked temp

excluded guessed colder

included guessed warmer

BALL TOO EXPERIMENT

1. You get ball twice then never for 30 turns

2. You get ball randomly

What food do u want?

Picked warmer food (soup + coffee) after exclusion

EXPERIMENT

Hand-copy a story written in first person

1. Ethical, selfless deed (help)

2. Unethical deed (sabotage)

Then rate desirability of products

Cleaning products vs others

RESULTS

50/50 for ethical story

Unethical wanted cleaning products a lot more

EXPERIMENT

Recall any deed you did in your past and the emotions

Then choose a gift- pencil and antiseptic wipe

RESULTS

Recall unethical more likely to pick the wipes

EXPERIMENT

Recall UNETHICAL from past

Then washed hands

Then asked if they'd volunteer without pay for another experiment

RESULT

Clean hands = no help

Not clean hands = helped

producer for product

part for whole

controller for controlled

object used for use

place for people

place for event

Something we think of as being associated with that word because it's CONVENTIONALIZED

Vietnam (war)

ass (person)

hand (deck hand)

handle (bottle of vodka)

Toyota

Wolfgang Puck

2001 (room)

Usually only animate entities can be the subject of like, but...

Washington likes the new election policy

Usually the verb agrees with the subject, but...

The mashed potatoes wants his check

1. Conventional

(foot of my bed)

2. Vague

(The Wall Street Journal)

3. More salient/accessible/important/concise

Motion Language

The ball rolled up to the house

VS

FICTIVE MOTION LANGUAGE

The fence runs up the house

The fence runs from the house to the lake

Describes static objects using language for directed motion

Way to describe static scenes

Mental simulation of an entity moving along the path

Mental simulation of a path growing

Scanning the imagine in the mind's eye

Time to process a fictive motion path should be affected by how long it would take to move along the path

EXPERIMENT

Read a narrative one sentence at a time that describes a short or long route

THEN

Read a sentence and decide if it relates to the narrative

(Road 49 crosses the desert)

RESULTS

500ms longer for a person to know the sentence related to the story with more distance

We create the motion leading to thoughts of motion + space!

TESTED AGAIN

Removed fictive motion sentence (Road 49 is in the desert)

and the effect went away!

That means that processing speed is related to fictive motion and mental recreating

CONCLUSION

Time to process FM sentence is based on

Length

Rate of Motion

Terrain

Matlock et al.

FICTIVE MOTION

Read a sentence

FM or Control

(Bike path)

Draw a picture of it's meaning

Answer the ambiguous question

FICTION MOTION = EGO = FRIDAY

People mentally simulate themselves going through space

Direction of Fictive Motion

EXPER

Ego = The road goes all the way to NY

Object = The road comes all the way from NY

RESULTS

Away = Ego = Friday

Toward = Object = Monday

Fictive motion about difficult terrains should produce more fixation to the path and more scans along it (but not for literal controls)

Prime Sentence

Easy Terrain

Hard Terrain

Target Sentence

VErtical

Fictive (road in vall)

Non-fictive (road runs through vall)

HOrizontal

Fictive (palm in vall)

Non-fictive (palm run along vall)

RESULTS

Hard Terrain = Look longer for fictive

Fictive motion engages dynamic spatial experiences

These are longer when the terrain is longer, or more difficult, or in slower motion

People tend to adopt an ego-moving perspective

DEGREES OF LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM

&Examples

LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM- Your language defines the ways you can possibly think (language determines thought)

LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM- Your language affects habitual patterns of thought (but does not limit them)

THINKING-FOR-SPEAKING- Your language leads you to think in particular ways for the purpose of using language, but not other times

EXAMPLES

LD- You can only perceive differences between colors that your language categorizes differently

LR- You attend most naturally to color differences that are encoded in your language, but can distinguish among colors in the same category if need be

TFS- For the purpose of using your language, you attend to specific color distinctions, but otherwise have the same color perception as anyone else

Russian VS English

NONE

(colors)

English we have say RT for within and cross category

Russian was slower within category category

SPATIAL

(memorize grid--recall)

Same results

VERBAL

(say words so you can't use language to think)

English SAME

Russian EFFECT GOES AWAY!

It is harder to distinguish if something is in the right visual field because it goes to the left side of the brain where language is

When one slightly different color is presented within the same category but shown to the right visual field, the reaction time is slower because language interferes with it.

WHEN THERE IS VERBAL INTERFERENCE

The effect reverses and it is harder for the RVF to distinguish within categories

Things in the LVF become harder within category

Relativism

Space

ABSOLUTE FRAME OF REF- N,S,E,W, UPHILL, DOWNHILL

INTRINSIC FRAME OF REF- Based on one of the subjects orientation to another (He is to her left)

RELATIVE FRAME OF REF- Based on the orientation I see (He is on her right)

SPACE

and other cultures

Tzeltal Mayan- Prefers absolute frames of reference

uphill, downhill, lateral

Dutch- Mostly uses relative

Uses absolute only for large distances

DOT PAPER TASK

Dutch people use relative position (black dot in front of white dot)

Mayan use absolute (White dot west, black dot east)

PATH OF MOTION TASK

Dutch use relative position (right, down, right)

Mayan use absolute (north, east, north)

THE LANGUAGE YOU SPEAK APPEARS TO AFFECT THE WAY YOU RECALL SPATIAL RELATIONS AND PATHS OF MOTION

English

the man

the woman

the key

they bridge

German

(m)

(f)

(m)

(f)

Spanish

(m)

(f)

(f)

(m)

THE KEY DESCRIPTION

Spanish rate keys as being related to words like elegant, shiny, and tiny

Germans rate keys as being strong, hard, and jagged

If you teach people a grammatical distinction that has similar effects (gender to words), then language could plausibly be responsible for the way people look at words (i.e. keys beings masc or fem)

EXPERIMENT

Given two groups called Oosative and Soupative

Each have items in them (one has 2 men, the other 2 females)

RESULTS

People rated objects as similar if they were in the same category

EXPERIMENT TWO

Make each of the groups contain one male and one female

RESULTS

People didn't rate objects as more similar in the same category

SO it's something about being a part of a meaningful category (centered, for example, around biological sex) that makes objects seem more similar

RELATIVISM WRONG

CULTURAL, NOT LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM

Maybe people think differently as a result of where they live, and as a result, they talk differently

If this is true, then physical environment could affect spatial reasoning

ANIMALS IN A ROW TASK

fish, crab, ladybug-- top to bottom

fish, crab, ladybug-- absolute

ladybug, crab, fish-- relative

RESULTS

88% of Dutch had 0/5 trials where they used absolute

60% of Tenejapans used absolute 5/5 trials

However they were tested in different place

(inside lab vs outside village)

REPLICATED WITH ENGLISH SPEAKERS

3 conditions:

Inside, blinds closed

Inside, blinds open

Outside

RESULTS

With blinds close, English speakers acted more like the Dutch (relative), with blinds up and outdoors they acted more like Tenejapans but not exactly

ANIMALS IN A ROW 2

Landmarks matter!

Instead of putting them in different locations, they manipulated the world around them.

Replicated indoors with blinds up and kissing styrofoam ducks.

Put the ducks on the edge of a table and had a second set on another table.

Ducks always on south side of table you first looked at, then either on south (absolute) or north (relative) of second table

If you use the ducks to orient yourself, you should think in whatever way the ducks are set up

RESULTS

WHEN THE DUCKS WERE RELATIVE, THEY PEOPLE THOUGHT RELATIVE

WHEN THE DUCKS WERE ABSOLUTE, PEOPLE THOUGHT ABSOLUTE

physical environment and not just language effect spatial reasoning

Levinson et al.'s Response

to the Animal Row tasks

to the Maze Task

to the Kissing Ducks

Not all absolute language speakers were tested outdoors

Li and Gleitman made the animal tasks too easy because there was no memory component and it only used 3 (instead of 4 objects)

Task was too easy to people were confused and trying to figure out what the experimenters wanted to see because it was so simple

There is no difference between Absolute and Intrinsic frames of reference in English

NEW EXPERIMENT ANIMAL ROW

Walk 60ft between tables and you're given 4 animals at the new table so you must remember the 3 actual animals and what order they were in.

Done with the Dutch outdoors

RESULTS

Indoors and Outdoors, all but one in each condition produced relative responses

NEW MAZE TASK

Indoors and Outdoors

RESULTS

Dutch Indoors and Outdoors almost always act relatively

KISSING DUCKS

1. They're a landmark, not an absolute direction

2. They're not a single landmark because there are two

They probably appear to people like part of a scene they're supposed to replicate

TURNS IT INTO INTRINSIC REASONING

(must create the same spatial arrangement after being turned/rotated through space)

Did Li and Gleitman just prove that people can use either relative or intrinsic frames of reference

Levinson et al.'s KISSING DUCK TASK

(LANDMARK)

NEW DESIGN

Rotate only 90 degrees and use square tables

On Stimulus Table the pond is on the south end with a row of animals projecting to the north

RESULT

pond on east side of table

INTRINSIC RESPONSE- Animals project west

ABSOLUTE REPONSE- Animals project north

MORE RESPONSES INTRINSIC

WHAT THIS SHOWS....

We think of ducks as landmark on a table and when we see the ducks on another table we try to match that

People produce more variable responses when a task is too easy

When a task is hard people will behave in line with their native language

Dutch + English speakers can adopt relative or intrinsic reasoning, but no evidence of absolute anymore :(

RELATIVISM WRONG

Different Interpretations of the Task/Instructions

Maybe purported evidence for relativism is actually the result of different interpretations of the task/instructions

Making instructions unambiguous should take away effect

Linguistic relativism experiments with Tsetal speakers, but made unabmbiguous

Absolute = Geocentric

Relative = Egocentric

EXPERIMENT

1. Training

Move cards from one table to another

Put card in box then put lid on box

EGO- Rotate 180 with box and then they pick the card that matches how the card is positioned.

GEO-Rotate 180 then pick up box so the dots don't rotate and they are in the same orientation. Dots will have rotated 180 degrees.

2. Do the same thing

...but don't take off the lid in the end

Told to pick the card that is the same as the one inside the box

RESULTS

Ego vs Geo

Participants no better in either condition during the leave card condition

A little better at Ego during test, but not much

3 trajectories

1 leg

2 leg

3 leg

It's harder to remember the 3 leg than others

Geocentric bias should show up most in 3 leg task

RESULTS

Ego was easier in all 3 conditions than Geo

Geo gets harder the harder the task gets

You would think the harder it is, the more you rely on your language

Dead Reckoning

EXPERIMENT

In swivel chair with two containers on the side either on the ground or just attached to the chair

1 container has a coin in it

Rotated 360 + (90,180,270,360) degrees

RESULTS

Ego = containers attached

Geo = containers not attached

Ego = Almost perfect no matter what orientation

Geo = Degree of rotation correlates with difficulty

90, 270 = 81%

180 = 60%

360 = 90%

Not like migratory birds, Not primarily encoding Geocentrically

3 Cups.

One has a coin in it.

Then rotated to another table with 3 cups of the same colors BUT the orientation is different

Either...

Ego= Red cup right in front of you still

Geo= Red cup on east side

Asks what cup you think the coin is in...

RESULTS

The cup is always in the position relative to that viewpoint

77% correct for ego

60% correct for geo

When task is clear, speakers of a language that prefer Absolute (Geo) terms are better at Relative reasoning than Absolute.

Even more pronounced as a task becomes harder.

Do not show outstanding dead reckoning skills

Language appears to affect spatial reasoning in ambiguous tasks because of the ambiguity, not because of cognitive abilities

RELATIVISM AND METAPHOR

The Axis of Time

Do languages have different conceptual metaphors for the same target domain?

Does this effect differences in the way people who speak those languages think about those target domains?

THE AXIS OF TIME

Some conceptual metaphors differ across languages and cultures

English: The future is ahead and the past in behind

Mandarin: The future is down and the past is up

EXPERIMENT 1

 Participants answered two spatial prime questions

Horizontal (The black worm is ahead of the white worm)

Vertical (The black ball is above the white ball)

THEN the target question about time:

before/after statements (March comes before April)

earlier/later statements (March comes earlier than April)

RESULTS

English speakers respond faster to horizontal prime, Mandarin speakers respond faster to vertical prime.

Use of metaphor can influence speakers' representations of abstract concepts like time

EXPERIMENT 2

Does age of first exposure to English affect the size of the effect(Mandarin Bias)?

Same method

RESULTS

The younger a subject started to learn English, the less Mandarin bias they showed

EXPERIMENT 3

What about the fact that there are lots of difference between people who speak English and Mandarin?

Replicated experiment with native English speakers, but trained them in a new way to talk about time (an English version of Mandarin)

RESULT

The trained English speakers became a little more like the Mandarin speakers, but still responded faster to horizontal primes

Language that describes time influences how you think about it

The earlier you learn a second language, the less conceptual structure you bring to it from your first language

Even native speakers of a language can temporarily think differently, if given the same linguistic expressions of the relevant metaphor

Chinese Speakers really do use the horizontal spatial metaphors more often than vertical

Unable to replicate his experiments in 4 different attempts

1. File drawer problem (didn't use good info)

2. Exact details matter (words used, stimuli, etc.)

3. Fraudulent info

Boroditsky, Fuhrman, McCormick

EXPERIMENT

Answer if the second picture is earlier or later than the first by pressing a button

RESULT

We respond faster to horizontal that are compatible than vertical

Mandarin respond about equally the compatible vertical and horizontal

English: Past behind, future front

Aymara: Past front, future behind

LOCATING THE FUTURE

Do we just have simple metaphors that are mirror image of each other?

How can we tell if metaphorical differences correlate to conceptual differences?

HAND GESTURES

1. Naturally occurring in real language use

2. Often accompany language

3. Most unconscious, so they reveal uncontrolled aspects of cognitive processing

RESULTS

Spanish speakers use mostly past behind, future front

Aymara speakers used ONLY past front, future behind

For Aymara:

The present is the region directly in front of ego

The past is laid farther away

The future (or anything unknown) is behind the ego, out of view

Not just a mirror image, but a totally different CM where knowing is seeing

Casasanto & Boroditsky

Time estimates correlated strongly with distance

Distance Estimates did not correlate to time

BUT languages describe time not only one-dimensionally

English + Indonesian = Time as distance

Greek + Spanish = Time as quantity

EXPERIMENT

line growing or container filling

RESULTS

English + Indonesian = Time estimates correlated with distance of line growing, not quantity filling container

Greek + Spanish = Time estimates correlated with high much a container was filling with, not the distance at which the line grew

THE RELATIVE FREQUENCY FOR SPATIAL LANGUAGE FOR TIME USING A PARTICULAR DIMENSIONALITY PREDICTS THE EXTENT TO WHICH SPEAKERS OF A LANGUAGE WILL THINK ABOUT TIME IN TERMS OF DIMENSIONALITY

Do languages that use absolute frame of reference also have absolute representation of time?

Pompuraaw use absolute frame of reference

Hello = Where are you going?

Answer = A long way to the south-southwest

DEAD RECKONING

Could identify cardinal directions within 10 degrees

EXPERIMENTS

Card-Arrangment (arrange youngest to oldest)

Dot Task (Point to X now -- Now show me where Y is)

RESULTS

Americas always went to the right for future

Porm had a pretty varied result

BUT....

Americans varied in terms of absolute direction

Pom always went westward for future

CONCLUSION

Pom show time as E to W, but English go L to R

This goes with how we use Relative and Pom use Absolute spatial language

What's weird is that these patterns don't go with our metaphors of time (we don't go L to R in time and they don't go E to W in time)

This probz comes from the Sun

Pom gesture to places in sky to indicate time

CM difference that could be distantly related to linguistic difference

Writing is a recent innovation, and secondary to spoken language

But can it still affect other aspects of cognition?

Attention? Memory? Representation of Space

English and Chinese read left to right

Taiwanese read up down, from right to left

RECALLING GRID OF OBJECT

You memorize by the way you read.

English and Chinese readers memorize most objects in the upper left corner

Taiwanese readers memorize most things in the top right corner

TIME AS SPACE

Egg, Chick, Chicken

Order them!

English + Chinese almost always L to R

Taiwanese had large percent go Top to Bottom

Writing direction seems to affect spatial attention/memory (but this could be just a practice effort)

It also affect representation of time (but this is a pretty abstract concept)

Italian read LR, Arabic read RL

EXPERIMENT

Presented sentences to native speakers of Italian and Arabic

Ask to draw image of meaning

If they think of actions going in same direction as writing, Arabics will put the subject on the L and Italians will put it on the R

RESULTS

Italians almost always put subject on L

Arabics almost always put subject on R

TWO TYPES OF SENTENCES

Away from Subject (push)

Toward Subject (pull)

RESULTS

Same.

ONLINE TASK

Listen to sentences and judge if a picture matched them

Sentences had motion towards and away subj

Pictures put subj on L or R

Participants I-I-I or A-I-I

RESULTS

Faster RT when subject is on left for Italian

Faster RT when subject is on right to Arabic (but still very slow)

WRITING DIRECTION AFFECTS

1. Where people attend/remember things

2. The direction they represent motion in

3. The direction they represent time passing in

"It's not true that X, but if it were then Y"

Imagining an alternative to reality

English: If you already KNEW the date, you WOULDN'T have to ask

Chinese: If you already KNOW the date, you DON'T have to ask

Doesn't exist in Chinese.

So Chinese can't think counterfactually?

Bloom

Gave counterfactual stories to English and Chinese to discover that Chinese gave a less counterfactual interpretation

BUT WE KNOW THEY CAN!

You just have to ask questions the right way....

Just because they don't speak in counterfactuals doesn't mean they can not think in them

Whorf

Hopi language

No words, grammatical form, construction, or expressions for TIME

From this he reasoned that the Hopi concept of time was fundamentally different for the one that American English speakers us

BUT IT TURNS OUT that he only had a partial understanding of their language and more recent studies show that Hopis actually have time language a lot like ours!

TO DATE, THERE'S NO REAL EVIDENCE THAT THERE ARE THINGS YOU CAN THINK IF YOU SPEAK ONE LANGUAGE BUT NOT ANOTHER

BYE BYE LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM

Thinking-For-Speaking

Slobin

Thinking in a specific way to speak effectively

HOWEVER, this doesn't apply to non-linguistic tasks because they use language

i.e.

color discrim

object rating similarity

temporal ordering

spatial recall

Lots of properties of language appear to make a difference for non-linguistic condition

Spatial frame of reference

Color Categories

Time Metaphor

Grammatical Gender

Writing Directions

So what mechanisms does relativism work through?

1. Using langage for non-linguistic tasks (Speaking for Thinking)

-build categories with language

-use language while performing other tasks

-use land while performing non-linguistic tasks

-some tasks only show relativism when language i not interfered with-

-others only show relativism effects when they're ambiguous-

2. Non-language systems having altered functioning depending on the native language

-some evidence is compatible with language altering functioning of other cognitive systems,  but not conclusively

e.g. time judgments up-down or left right

to be conclusive, knocking out language would have to not affect these results