How languages describe space: typological and experimental approaches
Course author
Researcher, CNRS
Course annotation
Over the past few decades, cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variation in the encoding of spatial notions has been the subject of intense debate, bringing together researchers working in lexical typology, psycholinguistics, and anthropological linguistics. This course will survey several aspects of cross-linguistic diversity, such as differences in morphosyntactic and lexical means specialized for the encoding of spatial relations; the choice of a reference point; differences in the use of frames of spatial reference. Special attention will be paid to the different kinds of methods used to explore the linguistic encoding of spatial relations and their underlying representation, ranging from typological questionnaires to experimental techniques.