LexPex · The Lexicalisation of Perceptual Experience
„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“
- Период
- 2019-10-28 → 2025-10-27
- Финансиране от ЕС
- 337 401 €
- Участници
- 2
- Схема
- MSCA-IF
Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.
Накратко на български
Глагорите за възприятие (като „виждам“, „чувам“ или „мириша“) се анализират, за да се установи дали съществува обща за всички езици йерархия на сетивата. Това помага да се разбере дали езикът ни зависи от обща биология или от културни различия.
Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.
Резултати накратко
The Lexicalisation of Perceptual Experience
Western thought has long held that the perceptual senses fall along a hierarchy of relative primacy, with vision at the top, followed by audition, touch, taste and smell. Intriguingly, the hierarchy has been proposed to also impose itself on language. In a seminal study, the linguist Åke Viberg compared basic perception verbs (e.g. ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘smell’) across a sample of the world’s languages and found that their semantic and structural properties reflected the sense hierarchy in various ways. This work led to the idea that the hierarchy is universal to human languages, grounded in our shared biology. From a different disciplinary perspective, anthropologists of the senses have questioned the possibility of universals, arguing that the relative dominance of the senses is cross-culturally variable. Against this backdrop, LexPex had three main objectives. The first (“Typology”) was to quantitatively test whether perception verb lexicons pattern hierarchically and to assess the extent of cross-linguistic regularity in this lexical domain. The second objective (“Phylogeny”) was to extend the search for regularities across time, by examining whether perception verbs are replaced at different rates in accordance with the sensory hierarchy. The third objective (“Cognition”) was to probe the potential link between recurrent typological patterns in perception verb lexicons and cognitive biases of language learners. The results of the project support the conclusion that while vision stands apart from the other senses with respect to the typological patterning and acquisition of perception verbs, the notion of a biologically-grounded fixed hierarchy of senses is not well-founded.
Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз
Цел на проекта
Previous research suggests there may be underlying regularities in how languages encode perceptual experiences and in how perceptual language evolves over time. This points to the possibility that our cognitive architecture plays a role in constraining the variability in this domain of language. Substantiating this is highly relevant for the cognitive sciences, in light of recent proposals that many aspects of cognition may be more culture-specific than previously thought and that there are few, if any, universals of language. The present project takes up this goal by investigating how basic perceptual experiences (e.g. seeing, hearing, smelling) are encoded by verbs across languages and examining whether cognitive biases shape aspects of this lexical field. First, I will undertake a large-scale typological survey of perception verb lexicons to assess the extent to which they exhibit systematic patterns. Second, I will extend the search for regularities to the phylogenetic dimension, by examining whether perception verb vocabulary evolves along the same constrained pathways across three language families. Third, I will provide the first behavioural evidence to bear on the question of whether recurrent typological patterns in perception verb lexicons have their origins in cognitive biases, by conducting a novel artificial language learning experiment. This interdisciplinary project represents an ideal synergy between my research profile (linguistic typology, language change, psycholinguistics), the supervisor’s (Prof. Asifa Majid, cross-cultural psychology, word meaning) and that of the partner institution supervisor (Prof. Fiona Jordan, evolutionary and linguistic anthropology). Through its novel contribution to lexical typology, cognitive psychology, and language evolution, and by its advanced training in state-of-the-art technical skills, the project offers the ideal opportunity to relaunch my scientific career following a three-year hiatus raising two children.
Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).
Участници
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordКоординаторОбединеното кралство
- UNIVERSITY OF YORK · YORK NORTH YORKSHIREОбединеното кралство
Връзки
Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз