Resumen de Is perception of placement universal? A mixed methods perspective on linguistic relativity
Dietha Koster, Teresa Cadierno López
This paper aims to advance theory on how speakers of different languages perceive the act of placement. German and Spanish verbs for example, differ in the specification of object position (e.g., He stands/lays-puts the binoculars on the shelf). Do speakers of these languages perceive placement events differently? This question relates to the notion of linguistic relativity. We report empirical data obtained with methods not yet applied to placement. These methods stem from three popular theoretical paradigms on language and thought. We examine whether placement verbs affect how speakers categorize (Experiment 1); memorize (Experiment 2) and mentally simulate (Experiment 3) object orientation. For three behavioral tasks, we compare accuracy and reaction time data of native speakers of German (N = 80) and Spanish (N = 50). Results suggest that German speakers do not categorize object position differently or make mental simulations of object orientation. They do show that German speakers have better recognition memory for object position than Spanish speakers. These findings suggest that language-specific effects may occur for some but not all mental processes. Future work should fine-tune reported methods to advance theory on perception of placement and should strive to combine methods to gain a multifaceted perspective on linguistic relativity
