Abstract
Spatial demonstratives (words like this and that) have been thought to primarily be used for carving up space into a peripersonal and extrapersonal domain. However, when given a noun out of context and asked to couple it with a demonstrative, speakers tend to choose this for words denoting manipulable objects (small, harmless, and inanimate), while non-manipulable objects (large, harmful, and animate) are more likely to be coupled with that. Here, we extend these findings using the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT) procedure and map demonstrative use along a wide spectrum of semantic features. We conducted a large-scale (N = 2197) DCT experiment eliciting demonstratives for 506 words, rated across 65 + 11 perceptually and cognitively relevant semantic dimensions. We replicated the finding that demonstrative choice is influenced by object manipulability. Demonstrative choice was furthermore found to be related to a set of additional semantic factors, including valence, arousal, loudness, motion, time and more generally, the self. Importantly, demonstrative choices were highly structured across participants, as shown by a strong correlation detected in a split-sample comparison of by-word demonstrative choices. We argue that the DCT may be used to map a generalized semantic space anchored in the self of the speaker, the self being an extension of the body beyond physical space into a multidimensional semantic space.
Highlights
Spatial demonstratives are one of the central ways in which language can be used to coordinate attention and enable social interaction
In line with this, listening to demonstratives embedded in a dialogue has been shown to yield activation in the brain’s dorsal parietal cortices, suggesting a link between demonstrative use and where/how processing pathways (Rocca et al, 2019a). These findings show that demonstratives serve a fundamental role in linking language with non-linguistic cognition in order to guide joint attention during communication (Diessel, 2006)
One of the aims of the present work was to test the replicability of results from Rocca et al (2019b), where manipulability is argued to play a role in demonstrative choice
Summary
Spatial demonstratives are one of the central ways in which language can be used to coordinate attention and enable social interaction. Demonstratives are developmental (Capirci et al, 1996) and evolutionary (Diessel, 2006, 2013; Pagel et al, 2013) cornerstones of language, and are among the most frequent words in the lexicon (Leech et al, 2014; Levinson, 2018). Demonstratives are deictic expressions (from Greek deixis, “demonstration and indication”). They can in principle be used to indicate any object, and their meaning depends on the context of utterance (Levinson, 1983; Diessel, 1999).
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