Topic — lexicon (23 entries)

This questionnaire is designed to explore how spatial relations are encoded in Australian language, but may be of interest to researchers further afield.

The precursor to the Bowped stimuli, this entry suggests various spatial configurations to explore using real objects, rather than the line drawings used in Bowped.

This entry suggests ways to elicit descriptions of caused motion involving topological relations (the domain of English put IN/ON/TOGETHER, take OUT/OFF/APART, etc.). There is a large amount of cross-linguistic variation… More →

The encoding of apparently ‘simple’ movement concepts such as ‘COME’ and ‘GO’ can differ widely across languages (e.g., in regard to specifying direction of motion relative to the speaker). This… More →

These classic tasks can be used to explore spatial reference in field settings. They provide a language-independent metric for eliciting spatial language, using a “director-matcher” paradigm. The Man and Tree… More →

It has been hypothesised that human reasoning has a non-linguistic foundation, but is nevertheless influenced by the formal means available in a language. For example, Western logic is transparently related… More →

Demonstratives are key items in understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. They are also multi-functional, with applications to non-spatial deictic fields such as time, perception, person and… More →

How do languages express ideas of movement, and how do they package features that can be part of motion, such as path and cause? This questionnaire is used to gain… More →

Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory imagery, for example English hippety-hoppety ‘in a limping and hobbling manner’ or Siwu mukumuku ‘mouth movements of a toothless person eating’. They typically… More →

How do languages express ideas of movement, and how do they package different components of this domain, such as manner and path of motion? This task uses one large set… More →