Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Linguistic relativity'

The linguistic relativity hypothesis (LRH), otherwise known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (SWH), has been passionately debated over the last 60 years. It has undergone a renewed upsurge in scientific, anthropological and social interest. Several attempts have been made to prove or disprove the moderate version of the theory without producing conclusive results. This study analyses the history of the LRH and attempts to clarify its uses and limitations pertaining to ESL discourse in Swedish upper-secondary schools. Pedagogical implications of the study indicate that, if the LRH is correct, there could be a colossal, logistical impact on the national testing of semantic information in English studies which would have to be addressed in order to effectively and fairly assess every student based on their individual, cognitive skills and culturally influenced knowledge of language.

English and Ndonga-speaking Namibian children completed three tasks designed to investigate colour term usage. English children used separate terms for the focal examples of the eleven universal colour categories BLACK, WHITE, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, BROWN, PINK, PURPLE, ORANGE and GREY (Berlin and Kay 1969). In contrast, Namibian children used separate terms for just the first six categories, in some cases these terms were extended to examples of the remaining categories but children often responded that they did not know the names of pink and purple colours. Experiments varying in the degree to which naming strategies might be useful, were conducted to test the linguistic relativity hypothesis, that differences in naming are paralleled by differences in performance on cognitive tasks. Four- to seven-year-old children participated in colour-based recognition memory, grouping, odd-one-out and visual search tasks. There was an overall similarity in children's performance, with both groups' responses relating to the perceptual similarity between stimuli. However, significant differences were found in the types of memory confusions made, the stimuli which children grouped together and odd- one-out choices, in each case differences were consistent with the linguistic differences between the groups. The most perceptual of the tasks, visual search, also revealed a significant difference in children's response times when identifying targets in an array of distractors. The results support the linguistic relativity hypothesis and are consistent with both of the accounts of linguistic effects suggested by Davies and Corbett (1997). Children may use explicit naming strategies or effects may be due to the perceptual warping of colour space. The lack of clear age effects and the results of the visual search task support the latter interpretation but further research needs to be conducted to establish whether young children actively use naming strategies during these tasks.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a global overview on the studies that have been carried out on the relationship between language, culture and thought. Specifically, the first part will focus on the belief at the core of this subject, Linguistic Relativity, while the second part will analyse the field of second language acquisition, which appears to often intertwine with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. After a short introduction, a brief overview of previous research is provided. In particular, the claims of Aristotle, von Humboldt and Boas are illustrated more in detail. Then, the focus is shifted towards the figures and claims of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. The hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity is further explained, pointing to the two principles which stem from it (the weak and the strong version, i.e., linguistic determinism). The belief that each language deeply affects its speaker’s cognition (resulting in differences in patterns of thought and cognitive structures) is consequently illustrated. A review of some of the objections that have been moved against this hypothesis follow. After that, a general overview on subsequent studies is provided, drawing the attention towards some of the main domains around which research has revolved: colour perception and grammatical gender and number. Lastly, the field of second language acquisition is outlined. The main focus concerns the implications of Linguistic Relativity for this field and a summary of the research that has been carried out on this topic, again offering a deeper insight on some of the most well-researched areas: colour terms and perception, grammatical gender and number and the interpretation of motion events.

This work concerns the linguistic relativity hypothesis, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which, in its most general form claims that ‘lan-guage’ influences ‘thought’. Past studies into linguistic relativity have treated various aspects of both thought and language, but a growing body of literature has recently emerged, in this thesis referred to as neo-Whorfian, that empirically investigates thought and language from a cross-linguistic perspective and claims that the grammar or lexicon of a particular language influences the speakers’ non-linguistic thought.

The present thesis examines the assumptions about language that underlie this claim and criticizes the neo-Whorfian arguments from the point of view that they are based on misleading notions of language. The critique focuses on the operationalization of thought, language, and culture as separate vari-ables in the neo-Whorfian empirical investigations. The neo-Whorfian stud-ies explore language primarily as ‘particular languages’ and investigate its role as a variable standing in a causal relation to the ‘thought’ variable. Tho-ught is separately examined in non-linguistic tests and found to ‘correlate’ with language.

As a contrast to the neo-Whorfian view of language, a few examples of other approaches to language, referred to in the thesis as sociocultural appro-aches, are reviewed. This perspective on language places emphasis on prac-tice and communication rather than on particular languages, which are vie-wed as secondary representations. It is argued that from a sociocultural per-spective, language as an integrated practice cannot be separated from tho-ught and culture. The empirical findings in the neo-Whorfian studies need not be rejected, but they should be interpreted differently. The findings of linguistic and cognitive diversity reflect different communicational practices in which language cannot be separated from non-language.

This thesis looks at theories of the emergence of linguistic difference put forward by three philosophers of the (long) eighteenth century—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–1780), and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). The conventional, and in most regards accurate, assessment of these figures places them in different traditions (respectively rationalist, empiricist, romantic); however, I argue, on the matter of the growth and diversification of natural languages, they operate to a nontrivial extent on common ground, unified by a view of language as 1) creative, using metaphor, analogy, and similar figurative operations to expand its expressive base; 2) social, rooted in the desire for human communion; and 3) relativistic, meaning both that language shapes or constitutes thought and that the precise nature of this effect varies according to the individual characters of different languages. These common ideas emerge, despite the different preoccupations of their authors, as a result of their common need to grapple with the “linguistic turn” effected by the Essay Concerning Human Understanding of John Locke (1632–1704) and the emergence of proto-linguistics as a field in its own right. I then consider the implications of this creative–social–relativistic episteme for the current (twentieth- and twenty-first-century) line of research on linguistic relativity inaugurated by BL Whorf (1897–1941). I will try to illustrate that Whorf is connected to the eighteenth century, and Leibniz, Condillac, and Herder to each other, by several specific shared concepts: 1) that linguistic and cultural variation happens due to the use of words to organize the world in ways that vary across communities (what Condillac calls the “connection of ideas”); 2) that alongside or underneath its relativism, meaning is always to some degree universal and innate, a notion to which each writer considered here brings a different admixture of rationalism, empiricism, and theosophy; and 3) that Herder’s advocacy of a translinguistic, interpretive Einfühlung, or ‘empathy’, dependent on the preservation of both universal and relativistic principles, is crucial to the attainment of an intercultural harmony that respects and does not reduce the differences in linguacultural thought-worlds.

The research investigates the relation between language and cognition, focusing specifically on dynamic motion events (MEs) of path, manner and causation. This dissertation studies differences in lexicalization patterns of MEs in monolingual and bilingual adults, children, and adolescents, speakers of English and Spanish, and the possible effect of language patterns of MEs on cognition (i.e. the linguistic relativity hypothesis).The study additionally seeks to determine developmental aspects of MEs in language and cognition and to measure the impact of speaking an additional language on linguistic and cognitive processing. Participants´ linguistics patterns and cognitive performances are assessed with two experiments: i) a verbal description task of videos and ii) a similarity judgment task that measured categorization preferences. In total, participants are 124 adults and 221 children and adolescents. The research reveals that adults´ performance is different from that of children in both tasks. It also confirms that MEs are conveyed differently in monolingual and bilingual speakers of English and Spanish. Most importantly it shows that categorization of MEs is constrained by the language-specific patterns in adults in the adult population. Additionally, the knowledge of a second language in adults influences language performance: A bidirectional cross-linguistic influence from L2 to L1 and L1 to L2 is observed. The study of lexicalization patterns in children reveals developmental changes that suggest that learning motion events patterns in one’s language takes longer than previously reported. The performance of monolingual and bilingual children and adolescents does not yield effect of language on the categorization of MEs. This research is a contribution to the studies of linguistic relativity. It helps to explain the contradictory results in the area. It reveals that language seems to affect other non-linguistic cognitive processes and support the hypothesis that language may be interconnected to other cognitive functions in monolinguals´ and bilinguals´ brain. Furthermore, it contributed to the studies of language acquisition in L1 and L2 by assessing bilingual adults and children in their encoding of motion events and its relation to cognition.

This thesis is a literary linguistic study of lexical innovation in fiction. It uses corpus linguistic methods and concepts of morphological theory to develop a new word typology and to examine new words as to their role in directing a reader's imagination and with regard to their frequency and distribution in classic English literature between 1750 and 1923. A 56 million word corpus consisting of a homogenous variety of texts converted from online literature databases serves as the basis for a chronologically structured new word extraction. This is carried out aided by the concordancer programme AntConc. The following three aspects are addressed in this research. The first attempts to explain why certain new words appear newer than other equally novel forms. It demonstrates that the factors influencing a word's novelty effect are wordlike-ness, morpheme content, and formal and semantic analogy. A new word typology is derived from these. A second main section focuses on stylistic aspects. If the words we use influence the way we think, as theorised in the principle of linguistic relativity, then forming new words and reading these should influence the way we think about what they describe. The second element identifies the strategies authors may use to affect their readers' associations through word formation. A third section is a frequency and distribution analysis of the new words extracted, taking historical developments, text mode and form, genre, and new word types into account. It adds quantitative data to the qualitative investigation preceding it, showing that verse and prose, text forms, and genres as well as time periods differ in the new words they produce and providing evidence for the characteristics of each.

According the linguistic relativity hypothesis, the language one speaks affects how one thinks. Because languages differ in how they categorize color, linguistic relativity has often been tested by conducting experiments on color perception and memory. This study examines the linguistic relativity hypothesis using ecologically valid stimuli: pictures of eyes. Because Russian-speakers are more likely to describe blue/grey eyes as grey, whereas English speakers are more likely to describe them as blue, English and Russian participants were asked to match the overall color of blue eyes to a color scale. There were three conditions. In the first condition (perception), participants saw the color scale and an eye picture simultaneously and then chose the color that best matched the picture. In the second condition (memory), participants matched the color of an eye to the color scale from memory. The third condition (label) was similar to the second, except participants labeled the eye orally before matching the color from memory. A 3 (condition) x 2 (language) ANCOVA and Bayesian analysis were used to analyze the data. Overall, the ANCOVA and Bayesian analysis indicated that there was a main effect of language. Russian-speaking participants were more likely to rate the eyes as greyer than English-speaking participants. The Bayesian analysis also suggested that there may also have been an interaction, with Russian and English-speaking participants rating the eyes similarly in the perception condition, but not the memory or labeling conditions. Overall, the findings provide novel evidence for the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

The present dissertation reports the results of a multi-disciplinary experimental study, which combines psycholinguistic and cognitive methodologies in order to achieve two broad objectives. The first objective is providing a comparative psycholinguistic analysis of the expression of motion events in three languages, namely Turkish, English and French, taking Talmy&lsquo
s verb-framed language vs. satellite-framed language typology (Talmy, 1985) as the framework. The second one is investigating the relationship between linguistic representation and conceptual representation by taking motion events as the testing ground. In order to pursue these two lines of inquiry, five complementary tasks are conducted on three groups of adult subjects. The results of the first two tasks, the language production task and the language comprehension task, verify the Talmyan typology experimentally by showing sharp differences between the data obtained from native speakers of typologically different languages (English vs. Turkish and French), as well as remarkable similarities between the data obtained from native speakers of typologically similar languages (Turkish and French). On the other hand, the remaining three non-verbal tasks, the categorization task and the two eye-tracking tasks, present valuable insights into the nature of conceptual event representation by revealing a uniform pattern across languages. This latter result is inconsistent with the renowned linguistic relativity hypothesis (Whorf, 1956)
however in line with the universalist view (Jackendoff, 1990, 1996), which suggests that conceptual event representation is language-free and independent of the linguistic encoding preferences of different languages.

Many thinkers argue that major differences among languages lead to major differences in experience and thought. Each speech community possibly embodies a distinct world view. The purpose of this study was to explore, through the use of proverbs, the relationship between acculturation and world views among monolingual and bilingual Chinese, with proficiency in Chinese and/or English used a proxy for level of acculturation. Data were collected through questionnaires and qualitative interviews regarding attitudes to English and Chinese proverbs. Data were analyzed by means of SPSS and modified grounded theory methodology. The statistical and qualitative findings contradicted each other: the former found a significant effect for monolingual English speakers, while the latter indicated much more mixed responses with no clear patterns related to language. Implications of findings were discussed and a “global view” was proposed to take the place of a culturally-based world view.

Turkish speakers differentiate the blue region of color spectrum into mavi (blue) and lacivert (dark blue)
whereas non-Turkish speakers in this study had only one color term in the blue region. The present study aimed to explore the predictions of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Operationally, Categorical Perception (CP) effects were used. In Experiment 1, Turkish speakers performed a naming task to determine an average category boundary between mavi and lacivert. In Experiment 2, both Turkish and non-Turkish speakers&rsquo
color-difference detection thresholds were estimated on the average boundary as well as within the mavi and lacivert categories. The thresholds were also estimated in the green region, in which both groups had only one color term. 2-TAFC method, which eliminates the effects of memory or labeling and isolates the perceptual processes, was used to estimate the thresholds. Turkish speakers, and not non-Turkish speakers, were predicted to show CP effects only in the blue region: thresholds should be lower on the boundary than within-category. The result revealed that Turkish speakers&rsquo
color-difference detection thresholds were lower than those of non-Turkish speakers both in the blue and the green regions. The difference in the green region does not rule out the LRH. It is possible that this difference resulted from the limitations of the study. Finally, in Experiment 3, Turkish speakers&rsquo
thresholds were also estimated on their individual boundaries. The patterns of the thresholds revealed by Experiment 3 were similar to the pattern of the thresholds in Experiment 2.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005.
Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xv, 308 p.; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-308). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

The last decades have witnessed the resurgence of research on linguistic relativity, which provides empirical evidence of possible language effects on thought across various perceptual domains. This study investigated the linguistic relativity hypothesis in the abstract domain of time by looking at how L1 Chinese - L2 English bilinguals conceptualize time in two-dimensional space. English primarily relies on horizontal spatial items to talk about time (e.g., back to youth); in addition to horizontal spatial metaphors (e.g., ‘front year’), Chinese speakers also commonly use vertical metaphors to describe time (e.g., ‘up week’). If language has an effect on thought, then spatial-temporal metaphors should shape people’s temporal cognition. In this study, we examined whether spatial-temporal metaphors impact online processing of time and long-term habitual thinking about time. Experiment 1 showed that bilinguals could automatically access the timeline which corresponded to the immediate linguistic context. In Experiment 2, a majority of bilinguals demonstrated salient vertical bias for temporal reasoning, whereas a small number of participants relied on the horizontal axis to represent time. The dominant thinking patterns for time documented here (65% prefer a vertical representation of time; 35% horizontal) run counter to the fact that horizontal metaphors are twice as common in Chinese as vertical metaphors. Further, it was found that bilinguals who used English more frequently were more likely to have a less vertical bias, which suggested a role of L2 experience in conceptual representations. Taken together, the evidence in this study showed that spatial-temporal metaphors have both short-term and long-term effects on mental representations of time, but also that space-time mappings do not depend solely on linguistic factors.

This paper proposes the notion that words mirror ideas, perspectives and worldviews. Etymologies and meanings of general words for ‘islands’ in a number of languagesin North and West Europe are then discussed. Here, islands are shown to be etymologicallyconstituted by the interplay between land and water, and which of these two is emphasizedvaries. In the third section, a number of Swedish island words are surveyed, in an attemptto illuminate the principle of linguistic relativity. Finally, the implications of these findingsfor island studies are discussed.

Motion events are ubiquitous in conversation, from describing a tiresome commute to recounting a burglary. These situations, where an entity changes location, consist of four main semantic components: Motion (the movement), Figure (the entity moving), Ground (the object or objects with respect to which the Figure carries out the Motion) and Path (the route taken). Two additional semantic components can occur simultaneously: Manner (the way the Motion occurs) and Cause (the source of/reason for the Motion). Languages differ in preferences for provision and packaging of semantic components in descriptions. It has been suggested, in the thinking-for-speaking hypothesis, that these preferences influence the conceptualisation of events (such as their memorisation). This thesis addresses questions relating to the description and memory of Motion events in British Sign Language (BSL) and English. It compares early BSL (acquired before age seven) and late BSL (acquired after age 16) descriptions of Motion events and investigates whether linguistic preferences influence memory. Comparing descriptions by early signers and late signers indicates where their linguistic preferences differ, providing valuable knowledge for interpreters wishing to match early signers. Understanding how linguistic preferences might influence memory contributes to debates around the connection between language and thought. The experimental groups for this study were: deaf early BSL signers, hearing early BSL signers, deaf late BSL signers, hearing late BSL signers and hearing English monolinguals. Participants watched target Motion event video clips before completing a memory and attention task battery. Subsequently, they performed a forced-choice recognition task where they saw each target Motion event clip again alongside a distractor clip that differed in one semantic component. They selected which of the two clips they had seen in the first presentation. Finally, participants were filmed describing all of the target and distractor video clips (in English for English monolinguals and BSL for all other groups). The Motion event descriptions were coded for the inclusion and packaging of components. Linguistic descriptions were compared between languages (English and BSL) and BSL group. Statistical models were created to investigate variation on the memory and attention task battery and the recognition task. Results from linguistic analysis reveal that English and BSL are similar in the components included in descriptions. However, packaging differs between languages. English descriptions show preferences for Manner verbs and spatial particles to express Path ('run out'). BSL descriptions show preferences for serial verb constructions (using Manner and Path verbs in the same clause). The BSL groups are also similar in the components they include in descriptions. However, the packaging differs, with hearing late signers showing some English-like preferences and deaf early signers showing stronger serial verb preferences. Results from the behavioural experiments show no overall relationship between language group and memory. I suggest that the similarity of information provided in English and BSL descriptions undermines the ability of the task to reveal memory differences. However, results suggest a link between individual linguistic description and memory; marking a difference between components in linguistic description is correlated with correctly selecting that component clip in the recognition task. I argue that this indicates a relationship between linguistic encoding and memory within each individual, where their personal preference for including certain semantic components in their utterances is connected to their memory for those components. I also propose that if the languages were more distinct in their inclusion of information then there may have been differences in recognition task scores. I note that further research is needed across modalities to create a fuller picture of how information is included and packaged cross-modally and how this might affect individual Motion event memory.

Esta dissertação teve por objeto delinear alguns fatores relativos ao processo de emergência da leitura dos trabalhos do linguista e antropólogo norte-americano Edward Sapir (1884-1939) como um dos proponentes de um conjunto de afirmações acerca da natureza das línguas naturais, agrupadas sob o rótulo relativismo linguístico, cujo debate recebeu bastante atenção dos antropólogos linguistas estadunidenses, na primeira metade do século XX. Costuma-se afirmar que o relativismo linguístico seja uma hipótese, que alega que a língua pode moldar a percepção da realidade, o pensamento ou a cultura. Visto o nome de Sapir estar associado ao de Whorf, como o rótulo hipótese Sapir-Whorf indica, e que este rótulo tem sido bastante utilizado atualmente para se referir ao relativismo linguístico, efetuou-se o rastreamento de alguns conceitos fundamentais nesta discussão, dentro do quadro teórico proposto por Sapir, tal como suas concepções acerca da língua, da cultura e do pensamento, com vistas a avaliar a procedência de sua recepção como um relativista. Havido sido este trabalho conduzido sob a metodologia da Historiografia Linguística, buscamos também resgatar os fatores contextuais nos quais tais proposições teóricas emanaram. Por fim, propomos a discussão da configuração do termo relativismo no horizonte teórico do autor, visando fornecer uma perspectiva de leitura diferente da proposta, atualmente, por inúmeros manuais de História da Linguística.
This dissertation had as its objective to outline some factors related to the emergence process of reading the American anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapirs (1884- 1939) papers as one of the proponents of a set of assertions about the nature of natural languages, grouped under the label linguistic relativity, whose debate received much attention from American linguistic anthropologists, during the first half of the twentieth century. It is often said that the linguistic relativity is a hypothesis, which argues that language can shape the perception of reality, thought or culture. Since Sapirs name has been associated with Whorfs, as the label Sapir-Whorf hypothesis indicates, a term widely used today to refer to linguistic relativity, we carried out tracking of some fundamental concepts in this discussion, within the theoretical framework proposed by Sapir, as his conceptions of language, culture and thought, in order to assess the merits of its reception as a relativist. As this research was conducted under the methodology of Linguistic Historiography, we have also sought to rescue the contextual factors in which such theoretical propositions have emanated. Finally, we propose to discuss the setting of the term relativism in the author\'s theoretical horizon, aiming to provide a reading perspective fairly different from the ones proposed currently by numerous handbooks on the History of Linguistics.

La relatività linguistica è un problema sotto costante ridefinizione da un centinaio di anni. Negli ultimi trenta, si è assistito a un rinnovato interesse nel tema, soprattutto sul versante della ricerca empirica di stampo psicologico. Tuttavia, esistono ragioni per non essere soddisfatti dell'approccio del pur variegato mondo "Neo-Whorfiano". Le critiche provengono da più parti, ciononostante è possibile identificare un filo rosso di lamentele comune. In sintesi, il compromesso (che per l'era contemporanea si può far risalire a John A. Lucy) per cui gli effetti della lingua sul pensiero si possono coerentemente valutare soltanto in compiti in cui non c'è uso del linguaggio viene considerato troppo restrittivo e sminuente rispetto a quanto gli esseri umani fanno con il linguaggio. Le controproposte sono molteplici, dall'etnolinguistica e l'analisi dell'interazione, fino all'enattivismo in filosofia della mente. Paradossalmente, però, alcune di questi programmi alternativi che spesso si basano su una distinzione non così netta tra ciò che è pensiero, ciò che è linguistico e ciò che è azione, hanno l'effetto di dissolvere il problema della relatività linguistica per come lo abbiamo pensato finora. Pur abbracciando questo punto di vista, si vorrebbe tuttavia salvare l'intuizione che lingue diverse hanno effetti diversi sul nostro modo di vivere, mantenendo allo stesso tempo la trattabilità del problema. Nella tesi, sono anche approfondite diverse questioni definitorie rispetto al tema della relatività linguistica in generale, compreso - fra gli altri - il problema se la relatività linguistica sia da considerarsi un tipo di relativismo.

In this dissertation I examine the issues concerning the problematics of historical-textual relations in the wake of the linguistic turn. I begin by showing how the emphasis on the generative rather than the mimetic properties of language has led a number of critics to reject the notion of knowledge as "accurate representation" (Richard Rorty), and then go on to demonstrate how this critical position has undermined the way in which literary and intellectual historians alike have traditionally understood such concepts as causality, human agency and social determination.
I show that, in the light afforded by the linguistic turn, there can be no unproblematic distinction between literature and history, text and context, but I also contest some of the more dogmatic versions of this position which make the claim that there can be no such thing as history prior to its textualization, or no such thing as human agency because individual human persons are thoroughly constrained by discursive structures. I suggest that in giving up the notion of an uninterpreted reality, we do not have to abandon the idea of the historically real, of reality, of agency, or of truth.
In doing so I examine the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and other critics who provide us with a productive way of approaching the methodological and philosophical issues that are raised by these questions, and then I examine a variety of literary texts which I believe give the questions further historical detail and relevance. In the letters which the twelfth-century abbess Heloise wrote to Abelard, in Geoffrey Chaucer's treatment of the problem of historical-textual relations, and in Brian Friel's inquiry into the linguistic embodiment of traditions in his play Translations we have a variety of testimonies to the dynamic way in which self and world, agency and structure, are related.

Il tradizionale problema del rapporto tra lingue e cognizione nell'ultimo decennio è stato ridefinito nei suoi elementi costitutivi: in particolare per quanto riguarda l'attenzione alla azione, intesa sia come interazione sociale, sia come azione corporale legata alla cognizione. Questo lavoro si propone di capire come si possa ristrutturare questo problema in alcune sue nozioni ("pratica", "cultura", ecc.) dando conto degli sviluppi più recenti delle discipline coinvolte.

L'obiettivo del presente lavoro è quello di esaminare criticamente le prospettive teoriche più note sul problema delle relazioni tra sviluppo concettuale del bambino ed acquisizione della prima lingua. Per quanto il lavoro si concentri in particolare sullo sviluppo della componente lessicale, ovvero sul legame tra concetti e apprendimento delle parole con cui gli stessi vengono codificati, verranno necessariamente trattati anche alcuni aspetti relativi alla competenza morfologica e sintattica. Dopo aver presentato sinteticamente le principali teorie proposte nell'ambito della linguistica acquisizionale e della psicologia dello sviluppo, procederemo ad una problematizzazione e discussione dei punti critici delle stesse alla luce dei risultati ottenuti in sede sperimentale negli ultimi anni. Partendo dalla consapevolezza che nell'ambito della linguistica, forse ancor più che in altre discipline, il contrasto tra impostazioni teoriche diverse si traduce spesso in discrepanze significative nell'interpretazione degli stessi dati empirici, abbiamo cercato di dare lo stesso spazio ai vari orientamenti teorici. L'obiettivo di questa tesi, infatti, non è quello di dare giudizi di merito sulla validità di una teoria in quanto tale rispetto ad un'altra, quanto di discutere in modo trasversale i nodi più problematici delle varie teorie e le implicazioni delle stesse. Questo intento è particolarmente evidente nelle conclusioni della tesi, strutturate intorno ad una serie di domande di ricerca.
This work provides a critical overview of the major theoretical perspectives on the relationships between conceptual development and first language acquisition. While our focus is on lexical development (ie. on the relation between learning a word and acquiring the relevant concept), we will also touch on some aspects which pertains more specifically to morphological and syntactical development. After briefly introducing the major theories developed in the field of first language acquisition and developmental psychology, we will discuss them in the light of experimental data collected in recent years. As the same empirical findings tend to be interpreted in completely different ways, in our work we tried to give voice to authors supporting different views. Our goal is not to assess the merits of these theores as such, but to take this comparison as an opportunity to discuss the implications and issues thereof. This will be particularly clear in the Conclusions of our work, which are structured as a series of research questions.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1999.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [103]-105).
There are many varieties of moral relativism. Appraiser relativism, according to which the proposition expressed by a moral sentence varies from context to context, is motivated by the thought that it provides the best explanation of the intractability of fundamental moral disagreements. In response, it is standardly objected that appraiser relativism runs afoul of our linguistic intuitions about when people are contradicting one another. In Chapter One, I expand upon this objection in three ways: (i) the problematic class of intuitions is larger than has previously been noticed; (ii) three strategies that have been offered to explain away those intuitions fail; and (iii) even if we grant that appraiser relativism is true, it still would not provide us with any explanation whatsoever of the intractability of the relevant disagreements. Agent relativism, according to which there are no universal moral requirements, is motivated by the thought that there are always reasons to comply with one's moral requirements, but that the desires to which such reasons would have to correspond are too capricious for there to be any universal moral requirements. In Chapter Two, I argue that the moral universalist is free to maintain either (i) that any fully rational, fully informed agent will have a desire that would be served by complying with what the moral universalist takes to be universal moral requirements, and so desires are not too capricious, or (ii) that a naturalistically acceptable account of reasons need not suppose that reasons are grounded in desires. Either way, the moral universalist is free to reject this motivation for agent relativism. If desires do not provide the basis for reasons for action, what does? In Chapter Three, I give an analysis of reasons for action based on the ways in which an action can be good or bad. I argue that the analysis is preferable to two other analyses, and that it provides a promising explanation of why there are always reasons for agents to comply with their moral requirements. I conclude, however, that the analysis relies on distinctions which, despite being intuitively plausible, remain in need of theoretical justification.
by Robert Streiffer.
Ph.D.

This thesis is about whether language affects thinking. It deals with the linguistic relativity hypothesis, which proposes that the language we speak influences the way we think. This hypothesis is investigated in the domain of caused motion (e.g., ‘The man rolled the tyre into the garage’), by looking at Spanish and Swedish, two languages that show striking differences in how motion events are encoded. The thesis consists of four studies. The first two focus on native speakers of Spanish and Swedish. Study I compares how Spanish and Swedish speakers describe the same set of caused motion events, directing the spotlight at how variable the descriptions are in each language. The results confirm earlier findings from semantic typology regarding the dominant ways of expressing the events in each language: Spanish behaves like a verb-framed language and Swedish like a satellite-framed language (Talmy, 2000). Going beyond previous findings, the study demonstrates—using the tools of entropy and Monte Carlo simulations—that there is markedly more variability in Spanish than in Swedish descriptions. Study II tests whether differences in how Spanish and Swedish speakers describe caused motion events are reflected in how they think about such events. Using a novel similarity arrangement task, it is found that Spanish and Swedish speakers partly differ in how they represent caused motion events if they can access language during the task. However, the differences disappear when the possibility to use language is momentarily blocked by an interference task. The last two studies focus on Swedish learners of Spanish as a second language (L2). Study III explores how Swedish learners (compared to native Spanish speakers) adapt their Spanish motion descriptions to recently encountered input. Using insights from the literature on structural priming, we find that Swedish learners initially expect to encounter in their L2, Spanish, those verb types that are typical in Swedish (manner verbs like ‘roll’) but that, with increasing proficiency, their expectations become increasingly attuned to the typical Spanish pattern of using path verbs (like ‘enter’).  These expectations are reflected in the way L2 learners adapt their own production to the Spanish input. Study IV asks whether recent linguistic experience in an L2 can affect how L2 learners think about motion events. It is found that encountering motion descriptions in the L2 that emphasize different types of information (path or manner) leads L2 speakers to perceive similarity along different dimensions in a subsequent similarity arrangement task. Taken together, the thesis argues that the study of the relation between language and thought affords more valuable insights when not posed as an either-or question (i.e., does language affect thought or not?). In this spirit, the thesis contributes to the wider aim of investigating the conditions under which language does or does not affect thought and explores what the different outcomes tell us about language, thought, and the intricate mechanisms that relate them.

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.

The present doctoral thesis addresses the issue of the relation in human cognition between language and thinking, and, more specifically, it aims to investigate by scientific means the potential for a language-particular influence on cognitive activity and putative reflexes, i.e. the linguistic relativity question (cf. Whorf 1956, Lucy 1992a).To this end, the present thesis offers a detailed exploration of linguistic relativity and of its potential scope of validity - at least in theoretical terms. It further situates its study within modern cognitive science, whose epistemological approach to the study of the mind is multi- disciplinary, bringing the fields of psychology, linguistics and philosophy together for the enhanced pursuit of an understanding of human cognition. Having established a conducive framework for the study of linguistic relativity within cognitive science and linguistics, the thesis offers to focus on a specific experiential domain of human life, and on its variable encoding in different languages to seek specific language influences over the conceptualisation of that domain. The chosen domain consists of MOTION - a pervasive domain in humans' daily lives and daily needs of expression. This domain is particularly interesting to relativistic studies as its conceptual components are lexicalised via differing means across the world's languages. Existing typologies for motion encoding (e.g. Talmy 1985) have established at least two main possible patterns, also known as verb- and satellite-framing, and as exemplified by the French and English languages respectively. The essential difference between the two language types consists of their grammatical encoding of the core element of motion, namely PATH - either in a verb or in a verbal satellite ― and of their selective encoding of peripheral elements, such as MANNER of displacement - with this element being optional in French grammar, and obligatory in English. The thesis offers empirical linguistic data to confirm - and also challenge - the fixedness of the patterns identified by e.g. Talmy. A thorough discussion of the linguistic framing of motion is presented, together with experiments bearing on the cognitive reality of motion conceptualisation - independently of language. This thesis thus contributes to an understanding of motion both in language and in cognition. Finally, it offers experimental work bearing on the relativity question, i.e. exploring whether linguistic patterns for motion encoding exert a decisive influence on the non-linguistic conceptualisation of motion, resulting in the two language communities differing in their cognitive appreciation of otherwise similar motion events. The final results offer evidence in favour of differing conceptualisations, that is, in support of linguistic relativity.

“Linguistic relativity” has been studied for a long time. Many empirical studies have been conducted on cross-linguistic differences to find support for the influence of language on thought. This study proposes viewpoint (defined as the point from which the conceptualizer sees and construes the event) as a cross-linguistic difference, and explores whether the linguistic constraint and preference of subjective/objective construal can affect one’s cognitive activity as viewpoint. As Japanese is a subjectivity-prominent language whereas Swedish is not, data elicited from monolingual adolescences (aged 12-16) in Japan and Sweden were compared. A set of tasks which consisted of non-verbal tasks (scene-visualisation) and verbal tasks (narrative of comic strips) was performed in order to elicit the participants’ viewpoints. The same set of tasks was assigned to simultaneous Swedish-Japanese bilingual adolescences in Sweden. The bilinguals took the set of non-verbal and verbal tasks twice, once in Swedish and once in Japanese. The results demonstrated a clear difference between the monolingual groups both in the non-verbal and verbal tasks. The Japanese monolinguals showed a higher preference for subjective viewpoint. The bilinguals’ viewpoint preference had a tendency to fall between that of monolinguals of both languages. This finding indicates that the bilinguals’ viewpoint preference may be influenced by both languages. This study demonstrates for the first time that the speaker’s viewpoint can be affected not only in verbal tasks but also in non-verbal tasks. The findings suggest that a language may influence the speaker’s way of construing events. It is also implied that the influences from different languages in bilinguals can be bidirectional. However, the influence does not seem to be all or nothing. Regardless of the language, one’s event construal is more or less the same. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that the linguistic subjectivity in a language tends to counteract the universal construal.
Språkrelativitet (Linguistic relativity) har studerats under lång tid. Många empiriska studier har studerat om och i så fall hur språk påverkar tänkandet och eventuella skillnader mellan olika språk. Denna studie föreslår perspektivpreferens för att beskriva ur vilket perspektiv en berättare återger skeenden. Studien utforskar om ett språks lingvistiska begränsningar och preferens för subjektiva/objektiva tolkningar av skeenden påverkar personers kognitiva aktivitet som val av perspektiv. Japanska är ett tydligt subjektivt framträdande språk medan svenskan inte är det. Därför jämfördes data från enspråkiga ungdomar (12-16 år gamla) i Japan och i Sverige. För att klarlägga deltagarnas perspektivpreferens genomfördes två delstudier, dels en icke-verbal studie (en scenvisualisering) och dels en verbal studie (ett återberättande av tecknade serier). Samma delstudier genomfördes också till simultant svensk-japanska tvåspråkiga ungdomar i Sverige. De tvåspråkiga deltagarna gjorde de verbala och icke-verbala delstudierna i två omgångar, en gång på svenska och en gång på japanska. Resultatet visade en klar skillnad mellan de enspråkiga grupperna, både i den icke-verbala och verbala delstudien. De japanska enspråkiga deltagarna visade högre preferens för subjektiva tolkningar. De tvåspråkiga deltagarnas perspektivpreferens hade en tendens att komma mellan de enspråkiga deltagarnas preferenser. Detta indikerar att de tvåspråkigas val av perspektiv påverkades av deras tvåspråkighet. Studien visar för första gången att berättarens val av perspektiv kan påverkas inte bara i verbala uppgifter utan också i icke-verbala uppgifter. Resultaten från studien indikerar att ett språk kan påverka en berättares sätt att tolka händelser, och att påverkan från de olika språken hos tvåspråkiga kan vara dubbelriktad. Oberoende av språk återges skeenden på ett likartat sätt. Studien indikerar emellertid att lingvistisk subjektivitet i ett språk tenderar att motverka ett universellt återgivande av perspektiv.

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This work consists of a cognitive-functional approach of relativization strategies of Brazilian Portuguese (BP), this is, standard relatives (with preposition or without it) and non-standard relatives (copiadora and the deletion pattern), and it emphasizes the last one. We investigate the use of the relative construction strategies in spoken and written texts produced by speakers from different school levels in a specific situation: a face-to-face interviewing. Our database is the corpora Discurso & Gram?tica: a l?ngua falada e escrita na cidade do Natal e a l?ngua falada e escrita na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. We contrast the use of the standard relative to the deletion pattern in prepositional context, by considering cognitive, social and interactional motivations for the use of the deletion pattern instead of the standard one. Our research leads us to verify that the deletion pattern is fixing as the preferred relativization strategy in prepositional contexts, and, in this way, it brings out a grammaticalization process in working. For this reason, we propose to take this relative construction as a common way to structure a relative clause, in the same way we take the standard pattern. Finally, we discuss the treatment of questions related to the processes of teaching and learning of Portuguese language and some suggestions are given in terms of class activities. We expect that the development of this research may give both support for the Portuguese teachers and suggestions to improve the teaching and learning process of Portuguese language, contributing in special to the treatment of the syntax of complex clauses.
Este trabalho consiste num tratamento cognitivo-funcional das estrat?gias de relativiza??o do Portugu?s Brasileiro (PB), a saber: relativas padr?o (com e sem preposi??o) e relativas n?o-padr?o (cortadora e copiadora), com ?nfase nas cortadoras. Tomando como material de an?lise os corpora Discurso & Gram?tica: a l?ngua falada e escrita na cidade do Natal e a l?ngua falada e escrita na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, fazemos um levantamento das recorr?ncias ao uso das estrat?gias de constru??o relativa em textos orais e escritos produzidos por falantes de tr?s n?veis distintos de escolariza??o, em situa??o espec?fica de entrevista. Partindo de pressupostos te?ricos da abordagem cognitivo-funcional, comparamos o uso das relativas cortadora e padr?o em ambiente preposicionado, e utilizamo-nos de alguns princ?pios e categorias anal?ticas do funcionalismo de forma a elucidar como a recorr?ncia ? primeira estrat?gia em detrimento da segunda atende a necessidades de natureza sociointeracional e cognitiva. Al?m disso, analisamos diversos trabalhos que investigaram as estrat?gias de relativiza??o no PB tanto sincr?nica como diacronicamente, o que nos levou a constatar que a cortadora est? se fixando como a estrat?gia preferida em ambientes preposicionados, revelando, assim, um processo de gramaticaliza??o em andamento. Em virtude disso, propomos que essa estrat?gia seja considerada/tratada, no ambiente escolar, n?o como um desvio ? norma padr?o, mas como uma forma de organiza??o da ora??o relativa t?o genu?na quanto as demais, motivo pelo qual dedicamos um cap?tulo ?s poss?veis contribui??es desta pesquisa ao processo de ensino-aprendizagem da l?ngua materna e apresentamos proposta de aplica??o em sala de aula. Dessa forma, podemos acrescentar ? pesquisa em lingu?stica aplicada n?o apenas subs?dios te?ricos que fundamentar?o a forma??o e atua??o docente como tamb?m sugest?es para a melhoria de sua pr?tica pedag?gica

This work investigates a series of phenomena that shed light on the analysis of attitudes de se. We adopt Lewis’ (1979) proposal that attitudes de se involve self-ascription of a property, and investigate how this view of mental content is reflected in natural language. The implementation favored is a strong version of Lewis’ position: root and embedded clauses are uniformly treated as being of property type. Our approach elaborates Chierchia’s (1990) view that de se construals arise via binding by an abstraction operator in the clausal left periphery. Part I develops an argument that such operators occur in root as well as embedded clauses. This is contrasted with the view that the evaluation index incorporates an individual parameter, a prominent version of which treats the behavior of predicates of taste such as tasty as evidence that truth is relativized to individuals (Lasersohn, 2005; Stephenson, 2007a, 2007b). Chapter 2 argues against this view, defending a semantics for taste predicates that requires no appeal to an individual parameter. Chapter 3 employs an argument from Moore’s Paradox to motivate the proposal that root clauses bear individual abstractors in their left periphery, while Chapter 4 identifies phenomena that the system accounts for. Part II concerns two elements whose distribution is confined to embedded clauses: controlled PRO and the logophoric pronoun in the Niger-Congo language Ewe. Chapters 5 and 6 investigate the semantics of partial control, a variety of control where the controller denotes a proper subset of the understood subject. The view that control complements express properties lends itself to a principled account of which predicates license partial control. Chapter 7 presents novel data regarding the logophoric pronoun in Ewe. We show that, contrary to what had been assumed in the absence of the necessary fieldwork, Ewe logopohors are not obligatorily de se. We propose an account of this finding that is compatible with the implementation of the property view that we favor. Chapter 8 closes the dissertation by considering why it should be that certain expressions, such as PRO, are obligatorily de se while others, like the Ewe logophor, can be de re.
Linguistics

In light of recent surveys on gender equality and English proficiency in Sweden, this study examines the adjectives and adverbs which describe the women and men in two EFL-textbooks for English 6 in the upper secondary school, namely Blueprint: Version 2.0 B and WWE: World Wide English. Textbooks are often integral for language learning, and considering that students of Swedish upper secondary school are required to take English 6, the exposure of EFL-textbooks are significant. Thus, it becomes relevant to analyse how the language of EFL-textbooks depicts women and men. The actions, social roles and occupations of the female and male characters are analysed to find any discrepancies in how women and men are portrayed and whether these agree with the guidelines of the Swedish National Agency for Education. These guidelines require teaching to be carried out with consideration to fundamental democratic rights and should strive to promote equality between groups. In addition, the study builds upon previous research within the field of linguistics as well as social sciences carried out by Fairclough, Foucault, Lucy, Butler and others which concerns discourse, linguistic relativism, gender theory etc. The hypothesis of this study is that there is still a discrepancy in how women and men are depicted in EFL-textbooks. By employing a mixed method approach which includes quantitative data and statistics and qualitative discourse analysis which highlights indications of unequal description of gender, it can be concluded that women and men are described differently, and often in terms of dichotomies, with adjectives, adverbs and the social roles that they are assigned. These descriptions may consequently result in that students that use these textbooks as part of their learning process may adopt these values. Thus, some descriptions violates the goals and guidelines for gender equality, prescribed by the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket).

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Neste trabalho, focalizamos as estrat?gias de relativiza??o, em corpus diacr?nico do Portugu?s Brasileiro (PB). Em linhas gerais, objetivamos investigar o uso das relativas em perspectiva hist?rica no PB, focalizando motiva??es cognitivas e interacionais implicadas e a correla??o com as tradi??es discursivas. A perspectiva te?rica que fundamenta o nosso estudo ? a da Lingu?stica Funcional de vertente norte-americana, inspirada em Talmy Giv?n, Sandra Thompson, Paul Hopper, Joan Bybee, Elizabeth Traugott, M?rio Martelotta, Ang?lica Furtado da Cunha, entre outros, conjugada a contribui??es das Tradi??es Discursivas, com base em autores como Kabatek, Koch e Oesterreicher. Quanto ? metodologia, a nossa pesquisa ? eminentemente qualitativa, no sentido de que busca elucidar motiva??es discursivo-pragm?ticas e cognitivas relacionadas ao uso das estrat?gias de relativiza??o no PB; e tem suporte quantitativo, no que se refere ao aspecto mensur?vel dos dados e caracteriza??o do objeto de estudo e sua frequ?ncia de uso. Para esta investiga??o, utilizamo-nos dos corpora do projeto Para a Hist?ria do Portugu?s Brasileiro (PHPB), de modo mais espec?fico, das cartas particulares, oficiais, de leitor e de redator escritas entre os s?culos XVIII e XX, de quatro estados: Minas Gerais, Paran?, Pernambuco e Rio de Janeiro. Os resultados desta pesquisa revelam a varia??o no dom?nio da relativiza??o, tendo em vista o aumento do percentual de relativas cortadoras no corpus desta investiga??o, ainda que a ocorr?ncia dessa estrat?gia esteja mais restrita ?s cartas particulares. Al?m disso, verificamos fatores de natureza cognitiva como redu??o do custo cognitivo e economia relacionados ? ocorr?ncia da relativa cortadora, principalmente, nas cartas particulares; aspectos como a necessidade de expressividade e clareza relacionados ao uso, mesmo que pouco frequente, da copiadora, principalmente nas cartas oficiais; e fatores de ordem comunicativa como a esfera p?blica de circula??o de parte das cartas da amostra, como nas cartas de redator e do leitor, e o distanciamento entre os interlocutores implicados mais diretamente no uso das relativas padr?o da nossa amostra.
In this study, we focus on the relativization strategies, in diachronic corpus of Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Generally speaking, we aim to investigate the use of the relative in a historical perspective on BP, focusing on semantic-cognitive and discursive-pragmatic motivations involved and the correlation with the discursive traditions. The theoretical perspective underlying our study is the North-American Functional Linguistics, inspired by Talmy Giv?n, Sandra Thompson, Paul Hopper, Joan Bybee, Elizabeth Traugott, Mario Martelotta, Angelica Furtado da Cunha, among others, combined with contributions of Discursive Traditions, based on authors such as Kabatek, Koch and Oesterreicher. As for the methodology, our research is eminently qualitative, in the sense that it seeks to elucidate semantic-cognitive and discursive-pragmatic motivations related to the use of relativization strategies in BP; and it has quantitative support, with respect to measurable data aspect and characterization of the object of study and its frequency of use. For this investigation, we use the corpora of the project Para a Hist?ria do Portugu?s Brasileiro (PHPB), more specifically, the particular, official, reader and redactor letters written between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, from four states: Minas Gerais, Paran?, Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro. The results of this research reveal the variation in relativization strategies, in view of the increase in the relativa cortadora (prepositional chopping strategy) percentage in the corpus of this investigation, even though the occurrence of this strategy is more restricted to private letters. In addition, we found factors of cognitive nature such as reduction in cognitive cost and economy related to the occurrence of that relative strategy, principally in private letters; aspects such as the need for expressiveness and clearness related to the use, even if infrequent, of the relativa copiadora (resumptive strategy), especially in official letters; and factors of communicative order such as the public sphere of circulation of the sample letters, as in the redactor and reader letters, and the gap between the parties most directly involved in the use of the standard relative of our sample.

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FAPEMAT
A filosofia bergsoniana deriva da reflexão sobre o tempo, na qual exibe a potente e contraditória natureza do real, que é durée: continuidade e diferença articuladas num meio que é ambiente comum da consciência e da vida. O filósofo francês busca construir seu aporte teórico em uma realidade que não ignore os fatos. Compreende que esse acesso toma o caminho de uma realidade interior, constituída por nossa vida psíquica; assim, volta seu olhar a esse acesso privilegiado, procurando compreender sua natureza, antes de investigar a realidade tida como exterior. Aponta que essa vida interior é de natureza temporal: o tempo, enquanto duração, é a qualidade da vida psíquica. Todavia, não é assim que, no geral, as ciências, tanto a física quanto a jovem psicologia de seu período, a entenderam; marcadas pelo determinismo psicofísico, bem como pelas categorias de matematização, acabaram por não reconhecer a verdadeira natureza psíquica, ao confundi-la com o físico, concebendo-a como sendo de natureza espacial. Nesses fluxos de recalcitrância e rupturas epistemológicas, em 6 de abril de 1922, Henri Bergson e Albert Einstein se encontraram na sociedade francesa de Filosofia, em Paris, para discutir o significado da relatividade. Nos anos seguintes, o filósofo e o físico entregaram-se a uma disputa sobre os conceitos de tempo e espaço. Ao recriar o debate, em 2010, Bruno Latour indaga: ―Afinal – a quem pertence nosso tempo e espaço?‖ Essa controvérsia é marcada por duas áreas– a filosofia e a física – que requeriam o poder de discurso através de grandes porta-vozes. A experiência do tempo foi particularmente sensível a esse processo. De um lado, foi dividido entre um tempo quantitativamente espacializado, possibilitando sua mensuração versus um tempo qualitativo vivido, a duração. Por outro ponto, este último foi crescentemente reduzido a um tempo psicológico e, portanto, insignificante para a física, tal como ficou evidenciado na indiferença de Albert Einstein diante do esforço de Henri Bergson em expor os elementos metafísicos que envolvem a teoria da relatividade. Ao explorar a (re)encenação do debate, promovida por Bruno Latour(2010), tomo como proposta a possibilidade de uma terceira experimentação do seu original e não apenas como um mero fac-símile de 1922, possibilitando novas associações e controvérsias marcadas na temática do tempo. Ao aplicar o conceito de tempo espacial à compreensão do modo de ser do psiquismo, Bergson acusa que o tempo homogêneo é uma noção híbrida de tempo e de espaço, a qual surge porque se compreende a duração como homogênea, concepção que, no fundo, não passa de uma representação simbólica e inexata da verdadeira realidade psíquica.
La philosophie bergsonienne dérive de réflexion sur le temps, qui affiche la nature puissante et contradictoire de la réalité qui est durée: la continuité et la différence articulé dans un environnement qui est conscient de l'environnement et de la vie commune. Le philosophe français cherche à construire sa base théorique dans une réalité qui n'ignore pas les faits. Il faut comprendre que cet accès est le chemin d'une réalité intérieure, composé de notre vie psychique; donc son regard vers cet accès privilégié, en cherchant à comprendre leur nature, avant de chercher à étudier la réalité vue à l'extérieur. Souligne que cette vie intérieure est de nature temporelle: le temps, tandis que la durée est la qualité de la vie psychique. Cependant, il n'est pas si, en général, les sciences, à la fois physique et la psychologie de la jeune pour comprendre leur période; marqué par le déterminisme psychophysique ainsi que les catégories de la mathématisation, finalement pas reconnaître la vraie nature psychique de la confondre avec la physique, la compréhension qu'il est de nature spatiale. Ces flux récalcitrant et ruptures épistémologiques chez 6 Avril 1922, Henri Bergson et Albert Einstein se sont réunis dans la société française de philosophie à Paris pour discuter de la signification de la relativité. Dans les années suivantes, le philosophe et physicien livrés à un différend sur les concepts de temps et d'espace. En recréant le débat en 2010, Bruno Latour demande: «Après tout - Qui est propriétaire de notre temps et l'espace?" Cette controverse est marquée par deux domaines, à savoir: - la philosophie et exigeant physiquement le pouvoir de la parole à travers le grand l'expérience de porte-parole. temps était particulièrement sensible à ce processus. d'un côté, a été divisé entre un temps spatialisé quantitativement, ce qui permet sa mesure par rapport à un temps qualitatif vécu en longueur. sur un autre point, celui-ci a été de plus en plus réduite à une temps psychologique et donc insignifiante pour la physique, comme cela a été démontré par l'indifférence d'Albert Einstein en avant l'effort de Henri Bergson à exposer les éléments métaphysiques relevant de la théorie de la relativité. Exploration de la (re) mise en scène du débat organisé par Bruno Latour (2010), a proposé que je prends comme un tiers de leur procès en première instance et non comme une simple fac-similé de 1922, permettant à de nouvelles associations et controverses ont marqué le thème du temps. En appliquant le concept de l'espace-temps de comprendre le mode d'être de la psyché, qui accuse Bergson temps homogène est une notion hybride de temps et d'espace qui se pose parce que la durée est conçue comme conception homogène que le fond est juste une représentation inexactes et symbolique de la vraie réalité psychique.

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Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior - CAPES
This paper makes a sociolinguistic analysis of the use of strategies of Relativization in the popular and standard norms of the spoken Portuguese in Feira de Santana-BA, based on the theoretical-methodological contribution of the Variationist Sociolinguistics, based on Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (2006 [1968]). For the methodological treatment of the analysis, the relative clauses are subdivided in non-prepositional strategies ? the gap-leaving variant and the resumptive pronoun strategy? and prepositional strategies ? the pied piping variant, the PP-chopping strategy, the PP-chopping strategy with resumptive and the where and when relatives. The focus of this research is the covariation between the pied piping strategy (subscribed by the traditional grammar) and the PP-chopping strategy (considered an innovative strategy in the Brazilian Portuguese), having as corpus real speech data extracted from 24 interviews (12 of the standard norm and 12 of the popular norm) of the project The Portuguese language of the Bahia semiarid region ? Phase 3: samples of the spoken languagein Feira de Santana-Ba, headquartered in the Nucleus of Portuguese Language Studies (NELP). Starting from the theoretical assumptions of the theory of variation and linguistic change, this study brings a reflection on the Brazilian Portuguese (PB) socio-history, highlighting the linguistic contact, the late urbanization and schooling of Brazil, the irregular linguistic transmission, the hypothesis of approach between the popular and standard norms of PB and the socio-history of the urban center of Feira de Santana-BA, emphasizing its commercial characteristics, the migratory factor and its geographical position. The data were investigated based on linguistic and social variables in order to answer which linguistic and sociocultural factors act in the variable use of the PP-chopping relative and the pied piping strategy and if there is an approximation or a distancing of the standard and popular norms in regards to the use of these strategies in the Portuguese of Feira de Santana. The results confirm the syntactic change attested by Tarallo (1983), by evidencing the majority use of the PP-chopping relative by the feirense speakers in both standard and popular norms, allowing to the contestation that there is an approximation of the norms in the spoken Portuguese in of Feira de Santana, confirming what Lucchesi (2001) and Mattos and Silva (2004) ratified about the Brazilian Portuguese.
Esta disserta??o faz uma an?lise sociolingu?stica do uso das estrat?gias de relativiza??o nas normas culta e popular do portugu?s falado em Feira de Santana-BA, apoiando-se no aporte te?rico-metodol?gico da Sociolingu?stica Variacionista, com base em Weinreich, Labov e Herzog (2006 [1968]). Para o tratamento metodol?gico da an?lise, subdividem-se as ora??es relativas em estrat?gias n?o preposicionadas ? relativa com lacuna e relativa com lembrete ? e preposicionadas ? relativa pied piping, relativa cortadora, relativa cortadora com lembrete e relativas de onde e quando. O foco desta investiga??o ? a covaria??o entre a relativa pied piping (abonada pela gram?tica tradicional) e a relativa cortadora (considerada uma estrat?gia inovadora do portugu?s brasileiro), tendo como corpus dados reais de fala extra?dos de 24 entrevistas (12 da norma culta e 12 da norma popular) do projeto A l?ngua portuguesa do semi?rido baiano ? Fase 3: amostras da l?ngua falada em Feira de Santana-Ba, sediado no N?cleo de Estudos da L?ngua Portuguesa (NELP). Partindo dos pressupostos te?ricos da teoria da varia??o e da mudan?a lingu?stica, pontua-se uma reflex?o sobre a s?cio-hist?ria do portugu?s brasileiro (PB), evidenciando o contato lingu?stico, as tardias urbaniza??o e escolariza??o do Brasil, a transmiss?o lingu?stica irregular, a hip?tese de aproxima??o entre as normas culta e popular do PB e a s?cio-hist?ria do munic?pio de Feira de Santana-BA, enfatizando suas caracter?sticas comerciais, o fator migrat?rio e sua posi??o geogr?fica. Os dados foram investigados com base em vari?veis lingu?sticas e sociais buscando responder quais fatores lingu?sticos e socioculturais atuam no uso vari?vel da relativa cortadora e da pied piping e se h? uma aproxima??o ou um distanciamento das normas culta e popular no que se refere ao uso dessas estrat?gias no portugu?s feirense. Os resultados confirmam a mudan?a sint?tica atestada por Tarallo (1983) ao evidenciar uso majorit?rio da relativa cortadora pelos falantes feirenses tanto na norma culta quanto na norma popular, permitindo constatar que h? uma aproxima??o das normas no portugu?s feirense, ratificando o que dizem Lucchesi (2001) e Mattos e Silva (2004) sobre o PB.

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Esta pesquisa procura compreender como se dá a percepção do mundo sob a perspectiva contemporânea. A via de acesso a esta percepção é a poesia do mineiro de Pirapetinga, Fernando Fábio Fiorese Furtado. Pretendemos i) ampliar nossos questionamentos sobre a atuação da poesia contemporânea na elaboração identitária individual (a priori) e a coletiva (a posteriori), ii) traçar um perfil da percepção contemporânea do mundo através desta poética do enconto. Para nós a construção identitária se dá sempre em relação.
This research looks for getting a better comprehension about a contemporary perception of the world through Fernando Fiorese’s poetry. He is a contemporary Brazilian poet from Pirapetinga, Minas Gerais. We intend i) to enlarge the possibilities of questions related to contemporary poetry performance in working out both individual identity (a priori) and colletive one (a posteriori); ii) to outline a contemporary perception of the world through this meeting poetry. We believe that the identity construction happens always in relation.

本研究通过语言中的量词系统来探索语言相对论的假说。在诸如汉语普通话这样的量词语言中，名词通过名量词之间的搭配关系可以被分成不同的类。属于同一个量词类的名词所指通常在形状，有生性或者功能等方面有着共同的特征。这个研究关注的问题是，使用量词语言是否会影响一个人对于日常物体间相似度的判断。
相较于非量词语言母语者来说，量词语言母语者可能是因为两个物体属于同一个量词类而倾向于认为它们彼此更相似（量词类假说），也可能是因为两个物体在形状、有生性和大小这些特征上有共同点而认为它们彼此更相似（量词特征假说）。为了检验这两种可能性，这个研究中涉及到了两种量词语言普通话和粤语。这两种语言的量词系统在量词特征方面有很多共同点，但在量词对于名词的分类上却有不同。
前两个实验通过比较北京普通话母语者，香港粤语母语者和欧洲语言母语者来检验两个量词假说。结果发现，中国被试和欧美被试在物体相似判断任务中表现出了明显的整体差异，而中国被试内部，即普通话和粤语被试之间则没有明显差异，两者表现十分相似。中国被试的结果主要对量词特征假说提供了支持，而非量词类假说。此前研究中发现的量词效应也并不完全是由于名量词搭配这一语言关系引起的。此外，在第三个实验中，通过测试北京普通话母语者和有高级汉语水平的欧洲语言母语者，还验证了语言内部因素，即量词类之间的差异对于量词效应的产生也会有影响。
这个研究的结果表明使用和学习一种量词语言可以影响一个人对于物体间相似度的判断，这一发现为语言相对论提供了证据。
This study examines the hypothesis of linguistic relativity through classifier systems. In a classifier language like Mandarin, nouns can be categorized through the collocation relationship between nouns and classifiers into different categories. The referents of nouns in the same classifier categories usually have some features in common, such as shape, animacy or function. This study is concerned with whether speaking a classifier language can affect one's similarity judgment on everyday objects.
It is likely that classifier language speakers tend to judge two objects that belong to the same classifier category as similar (category-based classifier hypothesis). Alternatively, classifier language speakers attend to certain features (e.g. shape, animacy, and size) between objects more than do non-classifier language speakers (feature-based classifier hypothesis). In order to distinguish these two possibilities, two classifier languages were included in the investigation - Mandarin and Cantonese, which have much in common in terms of the semantic features of classifiers, but differ in the classifier categorization of nouns.
The first two experiments tested the two classifier hypotheses with Beijing Mandarin speakers, Hong Kong Cantonese speakers, and European language speakers. There was an overall difference between Chinese speakers and European language speakers, but Mandarin and Cantonese speakers behaved quite similarly in terms of similarity judgment. Lack of difference between Mandarin and Cantonese speakers gives more support to feature-based classifier hypothesis than to category-based classifier hypothesis. It suggests that the classifier effect reported in previous studies is not merely contributed by the classifier-noun collocation. Besides, some other within-language factors in terms of the differences between classifier categories can also account for the absence of classifier category effect. They were supported by the results of the third experiment, with Beijing Mandarin speakers and European language speakers who were advanced Mandarin learners as subjects.
Findings of this study offer evidence for linguistic relativity, by showing that our similarity judgment on objects can be influenced by speaking or learning a classifier language.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Wang, Ruijing.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-127).
Abstracts also in Chinese; appendix includes Chinese.
Abstract --- p.iii
Table of Contents --- p.vi
List of Tables and Figures --- p.vii
Chapter 1 --- Classifiers in Mandarin and Cantonese --- p.1
Chapter 1.1 --- Classifier languages --- p.1
Chapter 1.2 --- Syntax of classifiers in Mandarin and Cantonese --- p.1
Chapter 1.3 --- Types of classifiers in Chinese --- p.5
Chapter 1.4 --- Classifier category and overlaps between classifier categories --- p.11
Chapter 1.5 --- Classifier features --- p.16
Chapter 2 --- Empirical studies of linguistic relativity on classifier languages --- p.20
Chapter 2.1 --- Linguistic relativity --- p.20
Chapter 2.2 --- Classifier hypothesis and count-mass noun hypothesis --- p.21
Chapter 2.2 --- Empirical studies of the classifier hypothesis --- p.26
Chapter 2.3 --- Empirical studies of count-mass noun hypothesis --- p.43
Chapter 2.4 --- Summary --- p.51
Chapter 3 --- Studies --- p.52
Chapter 3.1 --- Pre-study 1: Classifier Survey --- p.52
Chapter 3.2 --- Experiment 1A: Similarity judgment task with pictorial stimuli --- p.59
Chapter 3.3 --- Experiment 1B: Similarity judgment task with word stimuli --- p.67
Chapter 3.4 --- Experiment 2: testing the gradient classifier model --- p.78
Chapter 4 --- General discussion --- p.92
Chapter 4.1 --- Classifier effect as shape effect --- p.92
Chapter 4.2 --- Classifier categories and classifier languages --- p.94
Chapter 4.3 --- Classifier effect as preferred strategy and habitual thought --- p.101
Chapter 4.4 --- The function of classifiers and the classifier effect --- p.103
Chapter 4.5 --- Bilinguals and second language leaners --- p.104
Chapter 4.6 --- Future studies --- p.105
Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.107
Appendix --- p.108
References --- p.123

碩士
國立成功大學
認知科學研究所
96
The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis states that different languages take on different lexical and grammatical forms and these can bias speakers’ attention towards different aspects of the world. Accordingly, speakers of different languages will develop somewhat different views of the world. The Hypothesis was tested in this thesis with respect to the linguistic forms of tense and gender in English and Mandarin Chinese. In terms of tense, English uses tense markers, but Chinese does not. Therefore, it was predicted that (1) English speakers would be more accurate in capturing the time of an event than Chinese speakers, and (2) English speakers tended to employ a larger time scale (more fine-grained) than Chinese speakers. In terms of gender, English marks third-person singular pronouns for biological gender, while Chinese does not. Therefore, it was predicted that the biological gender of a person would be more readily accessible for English speakers than for Chinese speakers. Experiments 1, 2 and 3 tested the tense predictions. Experiments 4 and 5 tested the gender prediction. Experiments 1 and 2 asked English and Chinese participants to verbally describe action events shown in photographs, which were taken at three different time points (future: is about to cross over a log, present: is crossing over a log, past: has crossed over a log). It was found that English participants were more accurate in capturing the times of the events, whereas Chinese participants were particularly poor in capturing the past and the future times of the events. When instructed to pay special attention to the time of an event when describing it, Chinese participants improved their descriptions of the past and the future events, but at the cost of the present events. Experiment 3a and 3b used the same photographs or their correct verbal descriptions and asked English and Chinese participants to mark on a time line to indicate when an event occurred. The midpoint on the time line was pre-designated as the present time. A time window was calculated by measuring the distance between the marked past and the marked future for an event. It was found that the English participants employed a larger time window than the Chinese speakers. Experiment 3c asked the same participants to mark on a space line to indicate the position of an object relative to a reference, as described in a sentence. The midpoint on the space line was pre-designated as the location of the reference object. The English participants also displayed a larger left-right window size than the Chinese participants. Experiment 3d asked the same participants to mark on a time to indicate the position of a target date relative to a reference date, as shown on the computer screen. The midpoint on the time line was pre-designated as the location of the reference date. The date interval between the target date and the reference date was designed as 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 5 days, and 10 days. It was found that English participants employed a larger time window for date than Chinese participants and a trend was found in accordance with each date interval. Experiment 4 played short passages to English and Chinese participants. Each passage contained a target character whose gender was made apparent by the mention of a content-related cue (e.g., having a mustache or wearing a skirt). In addition, third-person singular pronouns (he or she in the English version, and ‘ta’ in the Chinese version) appeared a number of times for referring to the character. After listening to each passage, the participants had to answer three questions, one of which addressed the gender of the target character. It was found that the participants responded to the gender questions faster than to the non-gender questions. Moreover, the English participants were much faster than the Chinese participants. They were also more accurate. Experiment 5 asked English and Chinese participants to determine which of two pictures matched the sentence previously shown. In some cases, the match was based on the gender of the person (e.g., he/she is a doctor), while in others, it was based on the profession of the person (e.g., he is a doctor/teacher) or simply on the objects (e.g., there are two oranges/apples) shown and described. It was found that the participants responded to the gender trials more slowly than to the non-gender trials; however, the English participants were less slower than the Chinese participants. The English participants also responded to the gender trials more accurately than the Chinese participants. Taken together, the results of the five experiments were consistent with the predictions of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, with respect to tense and gender.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Technology: Language Practice, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2015.
This research is designed to assess the validity of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis in relation to the linguistic and cultural notions of the Yoruba and Zulu language speakers’ via the evaluation of the culture enriched drama text The Lion and The Jewel by Wole Soyinka. The study, which uses both questionnaires and interviews to derive responses from participants, engages both the primary and secondary data throughout the chapters. The study queried both the hypothesis’ strong version, (language governs thought: linguistic classifications restrain and influence mental classifications); and its weak version, (linguistic classifications and their use influence thought as well as some other classes of non-linguistic activities) and their possible reliability. Participants’ ages were between 16 and 46 years old who all speak both English and isiZulu (isiZulu-speaking participants) and English and Yoruba (Yoruba-speaking participants). Questionnaires were used and interviews were conducted, the research questions were answered and the findings provided support for validity of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, that is, languages indeed influence thought. The findings also revealed that linguistic influence on cognition is not limited to different language speakers alone, but also same language speakers per level of exposure to other languages and concepts. Based on these findings, recommendations have been made. Among which is the soliciting more research on language and culture (acculturation and enculturation) such that societal peace, love, unity and development can be maintained and promoted in any monolingual, bilingual or multilingual society. Also, educators should be aware of the possibility of a psycholinguistic influence on thought and assimilate it into schools’ curriculum so that multiculturation is fully adopted and promoted in the schools.

Nel famoso brano More Than Words, per gli Extreme, una rock band degli anni 80 e 90, le parole I love you non sembrano essere sufficienti come dimostrazione dei sentimenti provati. Cosa vi è more than words, più delle parole, o, forse, oltre le parole? Se dal testo degli Extreme possiamo ricavare l’intuizione che siano forse i comportamenti non verbali ad essere l’oggetto di ciò che vi è oltre le parole, la nostra analisi vuole prendere una direzione diversa. Il nostro lavoro si fonda sull’ipotesi che oltre le parole vi sia, innanzitutto, la struttura, l’organizzazione sistemica, della lingua. Il fulcro, ed il punto di partenza e d’arrivo della nostra analisi, non è quindi tanto ciò che di non linguistico vi è oltre alle parole, anche se saremo costantemente obbligati a discutere ed integrare il non-linguistico nella nostra prospettiva, bensì ciò che di più propriamente linguistico vi è oltre le parole. Se la prospettiva da cui intendiamo partire è così diversa da quella degli Extreme, perché citarli nell’apertura del nostro lavoro? Perché l’idea che sta alla base di More Than Words, ovviamente non esplicita e non di interesse per gli autori del brano, ma utile come spunto di avvio e di riflessione, non è poi tanto diversa da quella che si ritrova in alcuni posizioni chiave della linguistica e della psicolinguistica del Novecento e contemporanee, e soprattutto in quelle correnti interessate alla riflessione sulla relazione tra linguaggio e pensiero. Vi è sicuramente qualcosa che va oltre le parole, qualcosa che viene inteso come più importante delle parole e che viene spesso assunto come la base stessa del loro significato: il mondo dei concetti. Gli approcci che si fondano su questa prospettiva vedono le parole come puntatori verso concetti determinati pre- o a-linguisticamente ed ignorano, più o meno volutamente, la possibilità che la lingua, e più in generale il linguaggio, abbia un ruolo nel dare forma al nostro pensiero e che, quindi, svolga una funzione cognitiva oltre a quella comunicativa generalmente accettata. All’interno del panorama degli studi cognitivi di questo e del precedente secolo, vi sono state tuttavia voci che, mantenendosi fuori dal coro generale, riportano l’attenzione sugli aspetti formativi del linguaggio sul pensiero: Boas, Sapir e Whorf sono i nomi classici della tradizione generalmente identificata come “relativismo linguistico”. Lucy e Levinson prima ed in seguito Boroditsky e Lupyan sono alcuni dei nomi che nel nostro secolo hanno puntellato e mantenuto in vita quella tradizione che, generalmente apertamente contrastata e boicottata dagli approcci universalisti e più specificatamente generativisti, vedeva il linguaggio, sulla linea della spesso non esplicitata tradizione humboldtiana, come l’organo formativo del pensiero. Abbiamo quindi delineato i due temi chiave di questo lavoro: nella nostra prospettiva, oltre le parole vi sono, da un lato, la struttura specificatamente linguistica delle lingue e, dall’altro lato, il ruolo cognitivo-formativo del linguaggio sul pensiero. Questa ricerca si innesta proprio in quella tradizione di studi, il relativismo linguistico, che ha focalizzato la sua attenzione e sforzo investigativo principalmente sul secondo dei temi che a noi interessano, e cioè il ruolo che il linguaggio può avere nel dare vita al nostro modo di pensare e di percepire il mondo. La nostra ipotesi, che sarà l’argomento centrale del presente elaborato e che verrà trattata secondo diversi punti di vista nei vari capitoli, è che focalizzare l’attenzione sulla struttura del linguaggio e su una definizione di significato linguistico e di sistema linguistico di stampo saussuriano e demauriano – temi generalmente ignorati dalla tradizione cognitivista, anche da quella più vicina alle problematiche relativiste – può aiutarci a meglio comprendere e ridisegnare, su basi teoriche più solide, la relazione tra linguaggio e pensiero. Proveremo qui a dare una prima comprensiva ed orientativa panoramica sull’ossatura della nostra proposta teorica, consapevoli che solo un’approfondita discussione degli elementi in gioco può restituire solidità all’argomento che proponiamo. La maggioranza degli approcci relativistici, e soprattutto di quelli di stampo neo-whorfiano – cioè successivi alla psicologizzazione del whorfismo operata inizialmente da Lenneberg (1953) e da Lenneberg e Brown (1954) e definitivamente sancita nell’opera chiave di Lucy, Language diversity and thought: a reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis (1992) – la definizione di lingua e soprattutto di significato linguistico, così come i metodi sperimentali nell’analisi della relazione tra linguaggio e pensiero che ne sono la derivazione, non permettono di chiarire alcuni elementi teorici fondamentali che si pongono necessariamente alla base di ogni investigazione sulla relazione tra linguaggio e pensiero. In particolar modo, rimane spesso non discusso il problema di come poter distinguere tra linguaggio e pensiero, motivo fondamentale per indagare poi la relazione tra i due e quale sia l’effettivo meccanismo d’influenza del primo sul secondo. È chiaro, infatti, come l’analisi dell’influenza del linguaggio sul pensiero sia, innanzitutto e allo stesso tempo, un’analisi della relazione che vi è tra i due elementi e come, in ultimo, questa domanda si manifesti, sia teoricamente che sperimentalmente, nella possibilità stessa di una sfera del linguistico autonoma da quella del concettuale. Inserendosi in quella tradizione (minoritaria) che all’interno delle scienze cognitive non vede il linguaggio come una serie di etichette apposte a concetti preformati, il relativismo linguistico deve risolvere la questione del rapporto tra linguaggio e pensiero garantendo al primo un margine di autonomia rispetto al secondo. A nostro avviso, gli approcci neo-whorfiani, pur riconoscendo un livello di indipendenza del linguaggio, non arrivano mai a proporre una risoluzione teorica, così come pratica, della distinzione tra linguaggio e pensiero. Questa critica al relativismo di nuova generazione non implica il suo abbandono, ma al contrario la nostra analisi si pone come scopo proprio il tentativo di fornire alla tradizione relativistica una solida base teorica che garantisca la possibilità di distinguere tra linguaggio e pensiero, fornendo quindi lo sfondo argomentativo su cui poi costruire l’indagine e la metodologia empirica. È giusto tuttavia puntualizzare che le basi che tenteremo di porre ci porteranno a ripensare non solo lo sfondo teorico ma anche il meccanismo di influenza del linguaggio sul pensiero. Se, banalizzando per motivi esplicativi, i neo-whorfiani ipotizzavano due insiemi di rappresentazioni distinte, una linguistica e una concettuale, e vedevano il ruolo cognitivo delle rappresentazioni linguistiche nella loro interferenza su processi cognitivi altrimenti non-linguistici, in direzione opposta, noi arriveremo a proporre un meccanismo diverso (in linea con recenti correnti in psicologia e psicolinguistica): l’influenza del linguaggio sul pensiero non è tanto una questione di interferenza tra diversi insiemi di rappresentazioni, quanto il fatto che il linguaggio – e più precisamente l’aspetto sistemico della lingua – si delinea come uno degli ingredienti che contribuiscono a dare forma alle nostre rappresentazioni mentali, le quali derivano da diversi tipi di esperienza (come ad esempio quella percettiva, sociale, culturale, emotiva), tra cui quella linguistica. Ripartendo dalle nozioni saussuriane di significato linguistico e di sistema, così come vengono riproposte ed analizzate nella prospettiva di Tullio De Mauro, tenteremo di delineare la possibilità che vi sia effettivamente un livello del linguistico indipendente da quello concettuale e che questo risieda nella struttura della lingua come rete di pertinenze stabilizzatesi a partire dagli usi. Come vedremo, questo ci permette di pensare il livello del linguistico non come autonomo nel senso di indipendente dal resto della nostra cognizione ed esperienza del mondo, ma nel senso di specifico, particolare, proprio del livello linguistico sia di analisi che di strutturazione della nostra esperienza. Il contributo che vogliamo apportare qui, se consideriamo la nozione stessa di sistema, non è tanto di stampo teorico quanto applicativo. Difenderemo infatti l’ipotesi che la nozione saussuriana di sistema linguistico sia in linea con gli assunti teorici della semantica distribuzionale, secondo la quale – citando uno dei fondatori - “You shall know a word from the company it keeps” (Firth, 1957), e che alcuni aspetti del sistema saussuriano possano essere operazionalizzati mediante i metodi e i modelli distribuzionali. Mostreremo come la semantica distribuzionale è di matrice saussuriana sia a livello storico che a livello teorico, presentandosi ad oggi come una dei più feconde e innovative prospettive relazionali e usage-based al significato linguistico. Proprio l’analisi delle limitazioni e dei punti di forza dell’approccio distribuzionale ci permetterà di far luce su cosa intendiamo per livello specificatamente linguistico del significato (quello che nell’elaborato chiameremo “language-specific” level of linguistic meaning) e come questo si delinea come il tipo di esperienza linguistica che diventa uno degli ingredienti formativi del pensiero. Partendo da una visione multimodale delle rappresentazioni, sia a livello di indagine cognitiva che a livello di indagine linguistica, mostreremo come l’elemento lingua-specifico sia proprio l’aspetto relazionale e come questo diventi un elemento fondamentale nella costruzione del significato. Il modo in cui noi “creiamo” significato (il modo in cui we do meaning) è sempre un dialogo dinamico all’intersezione tra gli elementi concettuali, personali, a volte idiosincratici, del nostro contenuto mentale e la stabilità fluida del sistema di relazioni intra-linguistiche mantenuto in essere e sempre modificato dagli usi che la massa parlante fa della lingua. Il contenuto, così come la struttura della nostra esperienza col mondo, è sempre il prodotto dell’interrelazione tra questa molteplicità di elementi, apportante ognuna la propria specificità. Ciò che il linguaggio sembra particolarmente adatto a fornirci, proprio a partire dalla definizione stessa di significato linguistico e di come esso si viene a formare all’interno della dimensione linguistica condivisa, è proprio il livello sistemico, il sistema di relazioni che noi riusciamo ad astrarre a partire dagli usi e che diventa parte del nostro modo di interfacciarci con la realtà sia interiore che esteriore, mantenendo sempre dinamicamente costrette le applicazioni che ne possiamo fare, così come contribuendo a dare forma ai nostri contenuti mentali. Il relativismo linguistico perde quindi quell’aura di esoterismo di cui troppo spesso e ingiustamente è stato tacciato e viene riportato e ripresentato all’interno di una prospettiva che unisce i più recenti prodotti della linguistica e delle scienze cognitive in una proposta concreta sul rapporto tra linguaggio e pensiero e sulle direzioni e meccanismi d’influenza.