Full Description
This book considers how language users express and understand literal and metaphorical spatial meaning not only in language but also through gesture and pointing. Researchers explore the ways in which theoretical developments in language and cognition, new empirical techniques, and new computational facilities have led to a greater understanding of the relationship between physical space and mental space as expressed in human communication.
Contents
1. Introduction - Windows In: Empirical Evidence of Construals of Spatial Meaning ; 2. Using Eye Movements and Spoken Discourse as Windows to Inner Space ; 3. The Development of Semantic Space for Pointing and Verbal Communication ; 4. Drawing Motion That Isn't There: Psycholinguistic Evidence on the Spatial Basis of Metaphorical Motion Verbs ; 5. Differential use of Dominant and Non-Dominant hands: A Window on Referential and Non-Referential Functions ; 6. Embodied Interaction and Semiotic Categorization: Communicative Gestures of a Girl with Patau Syndrome ; 7. Describing Adjacency Along the lateral Axis: The Complementary Roles of Speech and Gesture ; 8. Towards a Cognitive-Semiotic Typology of Motion Verbs ; 9. A Basic Level for the Encoding of Biological Motion ; 10. Danish Directional Adverbs: Ways of Profiling a Motion Event ; 11. How German and French Children Express Voluntary Motion ; 12. Narrow paths, Difficult Roads, and Long Ways: Travel Through Space and Metaphorical Meaning ; 13. The way-Construction and Cross-linguistic Variation in Syntax. Implications for Typological Theory ; 14. Spatial Adjectives in Dutch Child Language: Towards a usage-based Model of Adjective Acquisition ; 15. Negation and Approximation of Antonymic Meanings as Configuration Construals in Space ; References ; Index
