Summary: A study finds that demonstratives like “this” and “that” indicate not only distance but also direct attention, linking language to social cognition. The researchers found that the meaning of demonstratives varies across languages and is influenced by the listener’s focus.
This study involved speakers of ten languages and used computational modeling to understand these dynamics. The results suggest that attention manipulation is an inherent part of language, embedded in demonstrations.
Highlights:
Demonstratives direct the listener’s attention and vary between languages.
The study used ten languages to explore how demonstratives link language to social cognition.
The results suggest that attention manipulation is a universal component of language.
Source: Max Planck Institute
All languages use words like “this” and “that” to distinguish “near” and “distant” referents. Languages like English or Hebrew have two of these “demonstratives.” Languages like Spanish or Japanese use a three-word system.
For example, in Spanish, “este” signals something close to the speaker, “ese” signals something far from the speaker but close to the listener, and “aquel” signals something far from both.
“The reason we were interested in demonstratives is their connection to social cognition: demonstratives are used to direct the listener’s attention to a referent and establish joint attention,” says Paula Rubio-Fernández of MPI, principal investigator and co-author of the study.
“Joint attention is a uniquely human capacity that links language to social cognition in communication. Because demonstratives are universal, emerge early in language development, and are acquired early in child development, they provide an ideal case for testing the interdependence between these two fundamentally human capacities.”
There is some debate as to whether directing the listener’s attention – the “mentalistic” representation – is part of the (semantic) meaning of demonstratives, or whether it arises from general principles of social (pragmatic) cognition.
The researchers used computer modeling and experiments with speakers of ten different languages from eight different language groups to study this question.
In an online task, participants were shown images of a “speaker” requesting an object from a “listener” standing across a long table. Participants were asked to play the role of the speaker and select a demonstrative in their native language to request the object (“Now I need…”).
In the images, the listener was either already looking at the target object or was looking at one of the four other objects (closer or further away from the target). If directing attention is part of the meaning When it comes to demonstratives, all speakers should be attentive to the listener’s initial attention when choosing a demonstrative. However, there should also be variation across languages.
The results showed that participants were not only sensitive to the location of the target, but also to the listener’s attention. As expected, the meaning of demonstratives varied within and across languages. For example, the demonstrative “proxim” (as in English “this one”) sometimes had a spatial meaning (“the one who is close to me”).
But it also had a sense of joint attention (“the one we’re both looking at”) or a “mentalistic” sense (“the one over here”), directing the listener’s attention to the speaker. Interestingly, speakers of languages with a three-word system used the middle word (such as the Spanish “ese”) to indicate joint attention.
“Our work sheds light on the interface between social cognition and language. We show that representations of the interlocutor’s attention are embedded in one of the most basic word classes that appear in all languages: demonstratives,” Rubio-Fernández concludes.
“Our work also shows, using Bayesian computational modeling, that this form of attention manipulation cannot be explained by pragmatic reasoning external to the linguistic system, suggesting that mentalistic representations are integrated into a universal component of language.”
About this news on social and linguistic neuroscience research
Author: Julia von der Fuhr
Source: Max Planck Institute
Contact: Julia von der Fuhr – Max Planck Institute
Picture: Image credited to Neuroscience News
Original research: The results will be presented in PNAS
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