Deixis – a fundamental part of communication – involves combinations of speech, gesture and eye-gaze, yet little is known about the temporal dynamics of this coordination. The authors analysed eye-gaze, pointing gestures and verbal productions in 514 deictic episodes during triadic, semi-naturalistic, book-reading sessions performed by Italian children (1;08–2;07) and their caregivers. Results show three new findings. First, deictic communication is overwhelmingly preceded and accompanied by shared attention (of consistent duration) on an object, and only sometimes by disjoint attention. Second, children are synchronously multimodal (conveying information via speech, pointing gesture and eye-gaze) in their deictic communications. Third, the form of deictic communication used is not related to the complexity of the linguistic structures of the sample. Deictic communication is remarkably consistent in children ranging from approximately 1;08 to 2;07 years of age.
Demonstratives are cross-linguistically widespread expressions. The use of demonstratives is flexible due to their semantic elasticity, which allows them to describe more or less extensive regions or referents in a communicative scenario. The constant remapping between demonstratives and referents might lead to a restructuring of the deictic system itself in accordance with the parameters affecting its use. To that end, we analyzed the structural changes affecting demonstratives in Majorcan Catalan by analysing whether speakers use three or two terms (aquest/aqueix/aquell vs. aquest/aquell) to convey spatial information. We also assessed whether any change in the adnominal/pronominal forms mirrored locative adverbs reduction. We elicited the production of demonstratives in 36 simultaneous Majorcan/Spanish bilinguals via a psycholinguistic experiment and we found two main results. First, simultaneous bilingual speakers do not extensively use the term aqueix to convey information related to physical distance. Second, the pronominal/adnominal reduction from three- to two-terms differs from the adverbial reduction. In the first case, aqueix is dropping out of the system, while locative adverbs present a shift with substitution of açí for aquí. Overall, our results shed new light on how the Majorcan Catalan demonstrative system is structured and explain structural changes in terms of ‘analogical levelling’ in paradigmatic relations.
Demonstratives (this/that in English) are pivotal in communication. In this study, we show that semantic features of referents systematically influence speakers’ choices of demonstrative forms for Spanish nouns in the absence of a guiding context. We used the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT), previously applied to two-term demonstrative languages (Danish, English, and Italian), and applied it to Spanish, a three-term demonstrative system (este/ese/aquel), to test if the semantic dimensions driving demonstrative choice overlap with those found for English. 1,639 native Spanish speakers were presented with 480 nouns rated along 76 semantic features and were asked to match each noun with a demonstrative. We found that demonstratives are influenced by the same semantic factors as two-term languages, such as manipulability, valence, and the self. In Spanish, these semantic factors predict the demonstrative choice between the proximal este/a and a combination of medial and distal forms ese/a and aquel/la. Additional semantic factors affect speakers’ preferences for ese/a versus aquel/a (e.g., visuality and time). We conclude that many of the semantic attractors influencing the choice of demonstratives are constant across languages, independent of the number of terms characterizing the demonstrative system, and provide a window into the landscape of meaning subserving linguistic reference.
Recent studies using the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT), where participants pair words with a demonstrative with no additional context, have shown that this choice is influenced by word semantics. Here, we applied the DCT to Catalan. We aimed at replicating previous findings and assessing how semantic factors play out in Catalan. We focused specifically on the second term aqueix (that), currently falling out of use. We hypothesized that its residual use would be influenced by the semantic factor valence, due to a hypothesized derogatory meaning. We also explored whether its use differed across varieties (Central Catalan versus Balearic Catalan). Our results replicate previous findings from English and Spanish on the role of manipulability, valence and psychological proximity to the self in preferences for proximal versus distal forms, reinforcing the hypotheses that these factors underlie demonstrative choices in the DCT, cross-linguistically. The use of aqueix was overall infrequent, highlighting the ongoing reduction of Catalan demonstratives from a three- to a two-term system. No significant association between valence and aqueix was found, but a small unpredicted effect for taste/smel l indicated an increased use of aqueix. Frequency in the use of aqueix, but not semantic factors driving its use, differed across peninsular and insular speakers.
Demonstratives are cross-linguistically widespread expressions. The use of demonstratives is flexible due to their semantic elasticity, which allows them to describe more or less extensive regions or referents in a communicative scenario. The constant remapping between demonstratives and referents might lead to a restructuring of the deictic system itself in accordance with the parameters affecting its use. To that end, we analyzed the structural changes affecting demonstratives in Majorcan Catalan by analysing whether speakers use three or two terms (aquest/aqueix/aquell vs. aquest/aquell) to convey spatial information. We also assessed whether any change in the adnominal/pronominal forms mirrored locative adverbs reduction. We elicited the production of demonstratives in 36 simultaneous Majorcan/Spanish bilinguals via a psycholinguistic experiment and we found two main results. First, simultaneous bilingual speakers do not extensively use the term aqueix to convey information related to physical distance. Second, the pronominal/adnominal reduction from three- to two-terms differs from the adverbial reduction. In the first case, aqueix is dropping out of the system, while locative adverbs present a shift with substitution of açí for aquí. Overall, our results shed new light on how the Majorcan Catalan demonstrative system is structured and explain structural changes in terms of ‘analogical levelling’ in paradigmatic relations.
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