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| Research article summary (published 30 May 2002): |
Shake, rattle, 'n' roll: the representation of motion in language and cognition.
Full Abstract
Languages vary strikingly in how they encode motion events. In some languages (e.g. English), manner of motion is typically encoded within the verb, while direction of motion information appears in modifiers. In other languages (e.g. Greek), the verb usually encodes the direction of motion, while the manner information is often omitted, or encoded in modifiers. We designed two studies to investigate whether these language-specific patterns affect speakers' reasoning about motion. We compared the performance of English and Greek children and adults (a) in nonlinguistic (memory and categorization) tasks involving motion events, and (b) in their linguistic descriptions of these same motion events. Even though the two linguistic groups differed significantly in terms of their linguistic preferences, their performance in the nonlinguistic tasks was identical. More surprisingly, the linguistic descriptions given by subjects within language also failed to correlate consistently with their memory and categorization performance in the relevant regards. For the domain studied, these results are consistent with the view that conceptual development and organization are largely independent of language-specific labeling practices. The discussion emphasizes that the necessarily sketchy nature of language use assures that it will be at best a crude index of thought.
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Author information
Author/s: Papafragou, Anna (A); Massey, Christine (C); Gleitman, Lila (L);
Affiliation: Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania, 3401 Walnut Street, Suite 400A, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. anna4(-atsign-)linc.cis.upenn.edu
Grants: 1R01-HD-37507-01 (Agency:United States NICHD)
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
Journal: Cognition (Cognition), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2002-Jun; vol 84 (issue 2) : pp 189-219
Dates: Created 2002/08/14; Completed 2002/09/06; Revised 2007/11/14;
PMID: 12175572, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
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