Frames of reference and topological descriptions in Ayutla Mixe

Effects of animacy and linguistic construction on the interpretation of spatial descriptions in English and Spanish

“…Recently, Meakins, Jones, and Algy (2016) found an increase in relative frame choices in speakers of Gurindji who attended tertiary-level education in English. Earlier contributions suggested bilingualism as a possible factor affecting perspective switches in speakers of various languages (e.g., Eggleston, Benedicto, & Balna, 2011, Hernández-Green, Palancar, & Hernández, 2011; Levinson, 2003; Polian & Bohnemeyer, 2011; Romero Méndez, 2011), but did not address this issue directly. However, various authors (e.g., Kleiner, 2004; O’Meara, 2011; Pérez-Báez, 2011) explicitly point to the need for assessing the role of bilingualism in reference frame selection.…”

Spatial frames of reference in Mesoamerican languages

“…However, an increase in the use of the relative FoR is apparent as compared to the rates of its use in previous studies, pointing to the possibility that this increase might be the result of contact with Spanish. Further potential evidence of contact with Spanish can be seen in the data from Ayutla Mixe (Romero Méndez, 2011), where some of the speakers solving the B&C task tried to use utterances involving relative FoRs even though there was significant confusion as to the denotation of the terms akä'äny 'left hand' and anä'äjny 'right hand'.…”

'Uno que otro': A distributive indefinite in Mexican Spanish

“…In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of this expression as a distributive indefinite, that is, an indefinite whose reference covaries as a function of a distributive operator, in the way that adnominal distributive numerals do in other languages (Gil, 1983;Cable, 2014). Distributive numerals are supposed not to exist in Spanish; however, we claim that "uno que otro" is a distributed share marker (Choe, 1987; Bosnić et al 2020) related to a set of events (Balusu, 2006;Cable, 2014;Romero, 2006). This set is necessarily plural, although of low cardinality, and involves the precondition that its elements (atomic events) occur in non-contiguous time or space intervals.…”

“…En este trabajo proponemos un análisis semántico de esta expresión como un indefinido distributivo, es decir, una expresión indefinida cuya referencia covaría en función de un operador distributivo, a la manera como lo hacen los numerales distributivos adnominales de otras lenguas (Gil, 1983;Cable, 2014). Se supondría que en español no existen como tales los numerales distributivos, sin embargo, nuestra propuesta es que "uno que otro" es un marcador de cuota distribuida (Choe, 1987, Bosnić et al 2020, relacionada con un conjunto de eventos (Balusu, 2006;Cable, 2014;Romero, 2006). Este conjunto es necesariamente plural, aunque de baja cardinalidad, e introduce la precondición de que sus elementos (eventos atómicos) ocurran en intervalos temporales o espaciales no contiguos.…”