Spatial Meaning Research Articles

How does language affect spatial attention? Deconstructing the prime-target relationship.

It is still unclear how spatially associated concepts (e.g., directional expressions, object names, metaphors) shape our cognitive experience. Here, two experiments (N = 156) investigated the mechanisms by which words with either explicit or implicit spatial meaning induce spatial attention shifts. Participants performed a visual target-discrimination task according to response rules that required different degrees of prime and target processing depth. For explicit prime words, we found spatial congruency effects independent of processing depth, while implicit prime words generated congruency effects only when participants had to compute the congruency relationship. These results were robust across different prime-target intervals and imply that spatial connotations alone do not automatically activate spatial attention shifts. Instead, explicit semantic analysis is a prerequisite for conceptual cueing.

O cronotopo de Paris na poesia da primeira onda de emigrantes russos: um estudo de caso dos poemas de Irina Knorring

ABSTRACT This article proposes to use the concept of chronotope in analyzing the literary works of first-wave Russian emigrants in France. It focuses on the artistic representation of the world within the Russian émigrés community in Paris by exploring the poems of Irina Knorring, a representative of the younger generation of first-wave Russian emigrants. In these poems, the figure of the Russian emigrant assumes a central position. By examining them, this research identifies recurring motifs and images with spatial and temporal meanings and discusses the specific features of the chronotope of Paris. In her poems, Knorring not only delves into the inner world and uniqueness of individuals but also reflects upon the collective experiences and shared destiny of Russians in exile. The chronotope in the poet’s works serves as an indispensable element, establishing a cohesive spatial and temporal unity that enables readers to perceive the image of Russian emigrants in Europe (specifically Paris) through the perspective of a Russian vagabond. The chronotopic analysis presented in this article offers a comprehensive spatial and temporal representation of the life trajectory of Russian émigrés in Paris, encompassing both their individual experiences and the broader context of Russian emigration as a whole.

Interpretation of Spatial Models of Forest Landscape in Book Graphics of the Late 19th and Early 20th centuries

The article analyses the peculiarities of construction and symbolic meaning of forest scenes in book graphics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in their connection with the selected examples of the interpretation of forest motifs in the history of art of previous periods – the Late Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Romanticism. Iconographic research treats the dark space of the legendary “wild” forest in its spatial and semantic meaning as similar to a wall, a curtain, the boundary of the “other worldˮ. The paper highlights sustainable compositional techniques of forest imagery, and points out the differences in forest images of Romanticism and Symbolism emphasising the psychological dramatisation of perception of the woodland scenes in the book graphics of the turn of the 20th century. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the location of the coordinate axes of forest space, such as the horizon line and the trail, refusal to depict the sky and emphasis on the tier of tree roots.

Productivity of prefixation: A case of Lithuanian prefixes nu-, pri-, į- and iš-

The aim of this paper is to measure the productivity of four distinct morphological constructions – verbal derivatives with prefixes nu-, pri-, į- and iš-. It is measured in quantitative way, employing the calculation methods of Harald Baayen (e.g., 2009). The primary foundations of these measurements are the so-called hapax legomena or simply hapaxes. The data for the investigation was gathered from morphologically lemmatized corpus “LithuanianWaC v2”. The analysis reveals that the prefix iš- is the most productive prefix in terms of realized and expanding productivity, and nu- – in terms of potential. The analysis raises a question – what factors could possibly explain, why constructions with one prefix are more productive compared to others? This leads to a partly confirmed hypothesis that suggests a correlation between productivity and the number of meanings associated with each prefix. However, this investigation extends beyond mere quantitative measurements. Hapaxes were categorized on the basis of their meanings. This categorization aimed to identify the most productive semantic models. Meanings were identified using cognitive analysis of semantics associated with these prefixes. Categorization shows that the most productive ones are prototypical spatial meanings, as well as those meanings which are based on metaphors including CONTAINER as a source domain. Furthermore, this paper raises discussion about the nature of hapaxes – which part of them is real neologisms and which is just rarely used lexemes, and what are the tendencies and motivation of prefixal neologisms’ usage.

I prefissi verbali russi pri- e do-: semantica spaziale e possibili corrispondenze in italiano

In this paper, we analyse the spatial meaning of verbal prefixes pri- and do- and their semantic contribution to the lexicalisation of motion events. Our analysis is based primarily on the lexicographic description of these prefixes proposed in the Academic Grammar of the Russian Language (Švedova et al., 1980) and on the interpretation given to them in different works devoted to the study of the semantics of verbal prefixes in the Russian language. In different contributions, it is observed that the spatial meaning of the prefix pri- expresses the reaching of the goal of motion, including the crossing of its threshold (boundary-crossing). In contrast, the spatial semantics of the prefix do- is mostly described in relation to the progressive approaching to an endpoint along a spatial scale (boundary-reaching). In the course of the contrastive analysis, an attempt will be made to identify and describe possible Italian correspondences for Russian verbs of motion with prefixes pri- and do-. We also consider which semantic components of a motion event encoded in a Russian prefixed verb are expressed or omitted in the corresponding Italian constructions. The research has been conducted on the parallel Russian-Italian corpus, part of the National Corpus of the Russian Language (we consider just a few examples).

La rappresentazione dei significati preposizionali locativi nelle grammatiche italiane: una valutazione dalla prospettiva delle grammaticografia croata

The starting point of this study stems from the two assumptions that are commonly accepted and, to a great extent, proven within cognitive linguistics: 1. members of the category of prepositions are bearers of autonomous meanings, and 2. prepositional meanings are conditioned significantly by the concepts pertinent to the domain of space. In the light of the theoretical model of the semantic representation of prepositions previously developed by the author (2022) and his reflections on the nature of prepositional meaning in general, this article presents the results of an analysis conducted on a corpus of 13 Italian grammars published in the last 70 years. Specifically, the representations of spatial meanings of Italian prepositions as proposed by grammarians are examined. Since a clear prevalence of approaches characterised by the use of the terms of logical analysis to provide the semantic description of a preposition is identified, the author compares this trend with some models used within Croatian grammaticography. In conclusion, the author indicates some potential alternative evolutionary paths of Italian grammaticography that might lead it to a higher level of cognitive plausibility of representation of the semantic structure of a preposition.

COVID-19 상황을 경험한 미술치료사의 만다라를 통한 자기 돌봄에 관한 자전적 내러티브 탐구

The purpose of this study is to understand the experience and meaning of social and psychological changes experienced by art therapists infected with the COVID-19 virus through artistic narrative inquiry methods. The study period was total 16 months from January 2020 to April 2021, and the art therapist worked on mandara painting during the period focusing on the contents of 12 paintings related to the COVID-19 virus or including psychological confusion factors. The Mandara work, which began as part of self-care for emotional recovery and balance of work and personal life, unfolds with psychological flow and displays data collected by the time, place, and spatial meaning based on the five-step format of the narrative proposed by Connolly and Clandin. The results of this study are first, during the COVID-19 situation, the art therapist’s mandara work led to an experience of emotional circulation by expressing an internal world of freedom while minimizing negative factors of exposure to external risks through artistic activities in personal space. Second, during the COVID-19 situation, the art therapist’s self-care work had a positive effect on the control of psychological balance as he was given the opportunity to recognize and reflect on his feelings of meeting through his paintings and stories. Therefore, it can be seen that the mandara art therapy work can be a method of self-care in relieving the confusion from mental conflicts in social disaster situations, further maintaining life as an art therapist, coping with crises, and recovering.

The historical and architectural origins of palace buildings in the Kumbum Monastery from a multicultural perspective

ABSTRACT The Kumbum Monastery is a typical example of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in China. This study focuses on 12 palace buildings within the Kumbum Monastery and aims to clarify the historical origins of their architecture, the regional architectural characteristics, and the influence of multiple cultures on the monastery. The study uses typological approaches and quantitative methods to analyze the architecture’s characteristics and origins (spatial layout, architectural forms, construction technology, and decorative elements). This paper attempts to provide a typological approach for the study of the history of the architextures in the Kumbum Monastery as well as a comprehensive understanding of the architecture through a culturally pluralistic perspective. The analysis shows that 1) the palace buildings are a complex mixture of traditional Tibetan architecture, Han-style architecture from the Central Plains during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and arched buildings from Central Asia and Inner Mongolia; 2) the palace buildings localized different cultures and reshaped their spatial modeling and spatial meaning through the means of “hybridity” and “adjustment”; 3) the complex multicultural nature of the palace buildings is due to the comprehensive influence of political changes, religious dissemination, trade and transportation, and ethnic migration from the Ming Dynasty to the Republic of China.

The Influence of Social Information: A Study of Architectural Attribute from an Event Structure Analysis Perspective

Scientific and technological developments have led to gradual abstraction in architectural research and design. People no longer interpret spatial meaning simply through external forms, rather, the emphasis is put on the essence of design thinking. This change has given rise to analysis and expression methods at the level of the architectural attribute, which scientifically summarize the attributes shared by different architectural types through investigating the literature data and professional phenomena. They improve the architects’ level of awareness and provide a guiding framework for subsequent design work. However, rapid social progress and regional cultural differences make it difficult for previous methods to reflect the real-time and in-site expression of the attributes. This paper proposes a new attribute study approach based on Event Structure Analysis (ESA) in combination with social science theory. This approach provides architects with a reference for more comprehensive attribute expression by coordinating the social information at the pre-design stage. Meanwhile, with openness and operability as its technological advantages, it forms a cross-disciplinary research and exchange platform, thereby allowing public participation. The study verifies its feasibility through the structured analysis of specific social events in Beijing, discusses this interdisciplinary approach’s practical significance and positive impact at the professional and societal levels, and points out the direction for future research.

Простые глаголы в осетинском и персидском языках в сравнительно-сопоставительном аспекте

The aim of the research is to identify common and unique features of simple verbs in the modern Ossetian and Persian languages. Scientific novelty lies in taking a comprehensive approach to studying the issue: the peculiarities and common features of verb stems, infinitive forms, formation of causative forms, structural and word-formation types of simple verbs in the Ossetian and Persian languages are described. As a result, it has been proved that regular and irregular verbs in the Ossetian and Persian languages have more similarities than differences. Thus, Persian regular verbs form the past tense stem by attaching the suffix -d or -id to the present tense stem, while similar stems in the Ossetian language have the suffix -t or -d; irregular verbs are characterised by the same number of vowel or consonant alternations in the present and past tense stems. It has been found that the Ossetian simple verb does not have a structural and word-formation type equivalent to Persian similar-to-regular verbs. It has turned out that preverbs in the Ossetian language are combined not only with verbs of action and movement and possess aspectual and deictic meanings in addition to spatial meanings.

On the Road: Emergent Spatiality in #Vanlife

‘Vanlife’ is a term utilised on social media sites, including YouTube, to denote images and videos that represent a lifestyle centred around long-distance travel using converted vans. The Vanlife phenomenon demonstrates the potential for networked culture and storytelling to combine to create emergent spaces, fostered not only by individual digital media objects but also the connected digital networks they occupy. In this article I ask how digital media practices are used by Vanlife travellers in order to construct such emergent spaces, and what the characteristics of these spaces might be. This investigation has a particular focus on the capacity for the creative practices used to tell visual stories online to combine representations of ‘real world’ experiences and environments, with the individual and communal desires, rhetoric and, at times, fictions, of the burgeoning Vanlife alternative lifestyle. Taking a netnographic approach (Kozinets, 2002), and guided by Henri Lefebvre’s trialectic model of space (1974), I conduct analysis of a set of Vanlife YouTube videos and explore the construction of different layers of spatiality as well as the productive tensions that arise between these. As Vanlifers undertake and document their freewheeling travels, their production of spaces serves to establish the unending road trip as a viable alternative lifestyle. Vanlife videos also work to formulate new cultural and aesthetic dimensions for the areas their creators explore, destabilising and redefining the meanings of the spaces, experiences and communities its travellers encounter. Equally, the idealised spaces of Vanlife are themselves disrupted by jarring intrusions from the external world and its everyday problems, a tension that further illustrates the continually negotiable nature of spatial meanings and highlights the role digital media might play in accentuating and accelerating this fluidity.

Sequential Time construal is primary in temporal uses of Mandarin Chinese qian ‘front’ and hou ‘back’

This article addresses two previously unresolved puzzles regarding the relationship between temporal and spatial conceptualizations in Mandarin Chinese. First, apparently conflicting data have led to disagreement over whether temporal usages of the terms qian and hou, whose spatial meanings of ‘front’ and ‘back’ are often considered to be primary, are based on a canonical facing of Ego towards past or towards future. We argue that this issue can be resolved by positing invariant Sequential (S-)Time meanings of, respectively, earlier and later for these terms, with variable uses to refer to past and future events and perspectives in Deictic (D-)Time being secondary and contextually governed. Second, the question of which of the sagittal, vertical and lateral orientational axes are more fundamental in spatio-temporal language and cognition for Mandarin Chinese speakers has been much debated. We review these issues, propose solutions based on linguistic analysis and report five experiments to test the analysis. Our findings are consistent with our analysis of the primacy in Mandarin Chinese of the invariant S-time construal of the terms qian ‘front’ (=earlier) and hou ‘back’ (=later) over their contextually governed D-time interpretations as referring to pastness and futurity. We find also that the preferred lexicalization of temporal relations between events by Mandarin speakers involves the sagittal axis terms qian and hou, but this does not mean that this linguistic conceptualization is also imposed by speakers as a preference for the sagittal axis for non-linguistic representations of event sequences. Finally, our data indicate that the temporal meanings of qian and hou (earlier and later) are more salient for speakers than their spatial meanings (front and back) in motion event conceptualizations.

Experience-driven meaning affects lexical choices during language production.

The role of meaning facets based on sensorimotor experiences is well investigated in comprehension but has received little attention in language production research. In two experiments, we investigated whether experiential traces of space influenced lexical choices when participants completed visually presented sentence fragments (e.g., "You are at the sea and you see a . . .") with spoken nouns (e.g., "dolphin," "palm tree"). The words were presented consecutively in an ascending or descending direction, starting from the centre of the screen. These physical spatial cues did not influence lexical choices. However, the produced nouns met the spatial characteristics of the broader sentence contexts such that the typical spatial locations of the produced noun referents were predicted by the location of the situations described by the sentence fragments (i.e., upper or lower sphere). By including distributional semantic similarity measures derived from computing cosine values between sentence nouns and produced nouns using a web-based text corpus, we show that the meaning dimension of "location in space" guides lexical selection during speaking. We discuss the relation of this spatial meaning dimension to accounts of experientially grounded and usage-based theories of language processing and their combination in hybrid approaches. In doing so, we contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the many facets of meaning processing during language production and their impact on the words we select to express verbal messages.

The scientific and philosophical presentation of the concept “space” and its explication in Erzya-Mordvin and Finnish languages

Introduction. The article discusses the concept of “space” from the point of view of scientific, philosophical and linguistic concepts, describes the historical genesis of this phenomenon, starting from ancient philosophy and mythology to the present. Content characteristics of space in the works of famous philosophers and linguists are given. The purpose of the article is to identify and describe one of the main lexical means of representing the concept of “space”, in this case, verbs, on the basis of two distantly related languages Erzya and Finnish, to reveal common features in the expression of spatial relations in these languages. Materials and Methods. The material of the study was illustrative examples obtained as a result of continuous and partial sampling from texts of various genre and functional styles, including print media, publications of a scientific and educational nature, various dialect and folklore texts included in the linguistic corpus KORP. The main research methods were synchronous and comparative analysis, as well as the method of descriptive and complex analysis of linguistic material. Results and Discussion. One of the central means of conveying spatial relations in the Erzya and Finnish languages are verbs. Along with verbs that have the semantics of movement and location, spatial meanings can express verbs of various semantic groups, such as speaking, non-directional action, state, physical action. The classification of Erzya and Finnish verbs is given, built on the principle of semantic characteristics and including three groups, each of which is represented by two subgroups. Conclusion. The study made it possible to reveal the scientific, philosophical and linguistic essence of the concept of space, taking into account historical processes, as well as to identify ways of its explication on the material of verbal lexemes that have spatial semantics in the Erzya and Finnish languages.

A Study on Temporal Structure Characteristics of V in ‘v+ Dao’ Structure from the Cognitive Perspective

The ‘v+Dao’ is a structure related to the action process and the end point in the modern Chinese. This paper discussed the temporal process of verbs in ‘v+Dao’ from the cognitive perspective, especially the relationship between ‘Dao’ and the temporal end point of verbs. First of all, ‘v+Dao’ can be classified into the spatial meaning, the time meaning, the degree meaning and the result meaning. It can be discovered from the event fusion of the spatial meaning structure that there exist completely different temporal processes of verbs and events in this structure. On this basis, this paper studied the temporal characteristics of verbs in ‘v+Dao’, including the time meaning, the degree meaning and the result meaning. It is believed that the ‘end point’ indicated by ‘Dao’ in the result-meaning structure is the natural logic end point of verbs. That is, the fixed end point of the internal process. However, the external end point of verbs indicated by ‘Dao’ in other structures changed with varying events. This paper attempted to discuss the temporal process characteristics of verbs in this structure from the perspective of ‘cognitive-syntax’ interface aiming to explore the syntactic and semantic relationship between V and ‘Dao’ as well as the study on the part of speech of ‘Dao’.

Успешность усвоения китайскими студентами глаголов движения как компонента содержания обучения РКИ (на примере отсроченного тестового опроса)

The aim of the study is to analyze the success of mastering verbs of motion by Chinese students of Belgorod State National Research University in the process of teaching Russian as a Foreign Language. The difficulty of mastering of this component of the program by Chinese students at the preparatory faculty is determined by crosscultural and mental barriers while studying Russian verbs of motion arising from insufficient comparative analysis of Russian verbs of motion and their Chinese equivalents according to differentiating semantic features: direction of movement, mode of transportation and nature of orientation. The scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying difficulties in mastering verbs of motion in the Russian language by Chinese students and substantiating the causes of these difficulties. As a result, practical and methodological recommendations have been formulated for Russian as a Foreign Language teachers on training Chinese students in verbs of motion based on the comparison of Russian verbs of spatial meaning and their Chinese counterparts regarding objective and subjective reference points.

“A Place of Rest at the Foot of the Altar”: Topological Categories and Correlations in Kierkegaard’s last Discourse at the Communion on Fridays

Abstract This article describes a rhetorical characteristic of Kierkegaard’s thirteen Discourses “at the Communion” on Fridays (1848 – 1851), namely, their way of expressing religious truths, theological distinctions, and homiletic statements by a certain concept of space, place and movement, thus making them existentially accessible. It illustrates the fundamental meaning of this series of discourses and especially the last discourse for Kierkegaard’s entire work as an author. By focussing on the topological categories and correlations in the last discourse (1851), the article demonstrates the constitutive role of spatial terms and meanings and so discovers the theological topology of the series as a whole with its coincidences of soteriological, anthropological, liturgical, rhetorical, and existential movements—leading the listener/reader to the “place of rest at the foot of the altar.”

Giving voice to space: the grammar of Northern Alta spatial roots

Abstract Recent cross-linguistic studies on spatial language reveal a great diversity in the way languages encode spatial information. Yet, given that there are not many spatial studies that have systematically targeted languages with a Philippine-type voice system, it is not clear how spatial expression is structured in such languages. The aim of this study is to address this knowledge gap through an in-depth investigation of Northern Alta, a language presenting such a voice system. The study combines data from stimulus-based tasks with a modern documentation corpus of the language and elicited data to examine the linguistic strategies deployed in four different spatial subdomains: location, disposition, orientation, and routes. The results show that each subdomain favors a distinct set of derivational affixes and a particular set of lexical roots. It is argued that the morphological system of the language plays a crucial role in the structuring of spatial expression. It allows roots with spatial meanings such as ‘front’, ‘side’, ‘top’, and ‘back’ to derive a variety of spatial verbs that are key in several spatial domains. The study also shows that Philippine-type languages have important information to contribute to cross-linguistic studies of spatial language.

The Poetics of the Mundane in Frank O’Hara’s Selected Poems

The act of walking or strolling and exploring urban places of the metropolis is a dominant aspect in the poetry of Frank O’Hara (1926-1966), a prominent American poet and the leading figure of the New York School during the 1950s and 1960s. O’Hara is largely known for his poetic portrayal of the city stroller who enjoys city detouring as a pragmatic and poetic representation of the urban culture, city crowds, and everyday experiences of postmodern America. The paper’s purpose is to explore the poetic vision of O'Hara's art of strolling the metropolis not as a mere arbitrary self-isolation or escape from the anxieties of the post-industrialized world. Instead, it argues for the value of flânerie or the leisurely city sauntering as a cultural and artistic act of creating the poetics of the mundane. It is a poetics that detects the value of the quotidian and spatial meaning in the most seemingly ordinary places of the consumerist and capitalistic American culture. As the figure of the flâneur or stroller is discerned in O’Hara’s poetry, the study underlines the significance of his poetic advocacy of perceiving, exploring, and interacting with the dynamic as well as the gruesome and consumerist sides of the urban environment of the metropolis.

Blowing in the Wind: Pollen's Mobility as a Challenge to Measuring Climate by Proxy, 1916-1939.

This article examines how geologists, botanists, and ecologists used pollen as a proxy for past climates in the first half of the twentieth century. It focuses on a particular challenge of measuring climate with pollen: pollen's mobility. As scientists came to learn, pollen from some vegetation is more mobile than others. Pollen's differential mobility challenged regional climatic conclusions because of the potential mixing of pollen from various locations. To minimize the effects of this problem, pollen analysts sought to decrease the noise produced by highly local or foreign pollen. Yet, many ground-truthing and calibration methods were not available to pollen analysts because of the temporal separation between the observer and the object of interest. Instead, pollen analysts had to make spatial meaning out of fossil pollen using empirical studies of modern pollen, inferences from macrofossils and successional history, and applying statistical theories to fossil pollen data. Many of these corrections factors relied on pollen analysts' knowledge of place, including elements like the location's topography, prevailing winds, and plant cover. These elements were a natural part of vegetation-pollen-climate interactions. Scientists needed to account for them to turn pollen into a proxy for climate. Pollen's movement was equally natural, but scientists decided to eliminate some pollen to augment the regional climate signal. These selective eliminations of place suggest that not all elements of place are equally important. Scientists had to omit some elements of place to make sense of the complexities of the natural world.