Qinghong Xu, Ru Ya, Ermiao Zhang, Jie Li, Ruhan Ah, Min Li
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study investigates how integrated egocentric and environmental reference frames influence direction
determination and cardinal direction judgments in L1 speakers of Mongolian and Mandarin. The results show that in direction
determination, Mandarin participants’ integrated frame of reference is “front-north, back-south, left-west, and right-east.” By
contrast, Mongolian participants use two modes of integrated spatial representation: “front-south, back-north, left-east, and
right-west” and “front-north, back-south, left-west, and right-east”. This behavior points to influences from the participants’
dominant and non-dominant languages. Mongolian and Mandarin participants showed a north advantage in cardinal direction judgment
tasks with a “front-north” response configuration. Whereas Mandarin participants consistently showed a north advantage effect,
Mongolian participants showed a south advantage effect in the “front-south” configuration. This suggests that in addition to the
long-recognized difference in north-south/east-west axis preference, a north-south axis specification where south was the
normative direction instead of north can result from cultural and linguistic influence. The results corroborate the idea that
language affects the integration of spatial reference frames, lending support to linguistic relativism.
期刊介绍:
Functions of Language is an international journal of linguistics which explores the functionalist perspective on the organisation and use of natural language. It encourages the interplay of theory and description, and provides space for the detailed analysis, qualitative or quantitative, of linguistic data from a broad range of languages. Its scope is broad, covering such matters as prosodic phenomena in phonology, the clause in its communicative context, and regularities of pragmatics, conversation and discourse, as well as the interaction between the various levels of analysis. The overall purpose is to contribute to our understanding of how the use of languages in speech and writing has impacted, and continues to impact, upon the structure of those languages.