Order in Thought and Language

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26580069
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: Koizumi Masatoshi 東北大学, 文学研究科, 教授 (10275597)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): GYOBA JIRO 東北大学, 大学院文学研究科, 教授 (50142899)
• Research Collaborator: Tang Ai-yu 国立東華大学, 民族語言與傳播學系, 専任助理教授 ; TAKESHIMA YASUHIRO 同志社大学, 心理学部, 助教 (50755387) ; TACHIBANA RYO 東北大学, 大学院文学研究科, 大学院生 ; SAITO GODAI 東北大学, 大学院文学研究科, 大学院生 ; ASAOKA RIKU 東北大学, 大学院文学研究科, 大学院生 ; SAKAI HIROMU 早稲田大学, 理工学術院, 教授 (50274030)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 心理言語学

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Goldin-Meadow et al. (2008) examined whether word orders of speakers’ own languages influence their non-verbal behaviors by asking speakers of four languages to describe events non-verbally using gestures. They found that speakers of all four languages preferred to perform gestures in Actor-Patient-Action order. Although they argued that this reflects a natural order of event description for humans, their research is limited in languages with Subject-Object word order. In order to verify their claim, we examined Kaqchikel, employing Object-Subject (VOS) word order. In our non-verbal event description experiment, Kaqchikel native speakers described pictures of transitive events using gestures. We found predominant Actor-Patient order (86.2%) as well as Patient-Actor order (13.8%). These results revealed that event descriptions are not only governed by universal conceptual preference to Actor-Patient order but also influenced by word orders of speakers’ own languages.

Free Research Field

言語学