Verb Inflection Cues Perspective-Taking in Spanish
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Authors
Cheatham, William R.
Issue Date
2010
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Traditional theories of cognition hold that meaning is based on the manipulation of abstract
symbols devoid of perceptual and motor content. Linguistic meaning on this view is to be
understood as a network of amodal (i.e., non-sensorimotor) representations. Alternatively, recent
research suggests that bodily experience grounds higher cognitive abilities, including language.
Meaning on this view derives from dynamically updating on- and offline simulations of context-specific
sensorimotor knowledge. Linguistic cues enable communicators to specify
intersubjectively meaningful simulations based on this shared bodily mechanism for
understanding. The first part of the present paper is devoted to a review of theories of embodied
cognition. In both behavioral and neuroscientific studies, comprehension of various kinds of
language elicits perceptuomotor simulation. Pronouns, for instance, cue visual simulation of the
subject-person's perspective in both English and Japanese. However, without pronouns, Japanese
speakers show no perspective effects. The second part of the paper introduces a study that sought
to determine whether .subject-person indicators other than pronouns cue perspectival simulation.
When Spanish speakers drop pronouns, they still must include verbal inflection as a subject-person
indicator. We asked native speakers of Spanish to verify that a picture matched the
content of a preceding sentence, with picture perspective (actor/observer) and subject-person
(second/third) as within-participant variables. Reaction times revealed an interaction effect of
subject-person and picture perspective, suggesting that verbal inflection cues a visual simulation
of the sentence-subject's perspective in native speakers of Spanish, even in the absence of
pronouns.
Description
vi, 55 p.
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