Beyond triadic communication

Abstract

Coordinating different viewpoints is an essential part of human interaction. Languages have evolved conventional ways of supporting this process: many linguistic items are somehow involved in viewpoint management, ranging from morphological elements and lexical units to grammatical constructions and narrative patterns. In this paper we propose a conceptual model for analysing how particular instances (or combinations) of such linguistic items can be used to coordinate the viewpoints of signallers, addressees, and third parties involved in an interaction event. In essence, our model augments Langacker’s (1987) “viewing arrangement” through the addition of a third dimension to the existing two. We discuss the details of our model using a range of examples from spoken discourse, newspaper articles, and literary fiction, and end by placing it in broader discussions on human social cognition.

A study of variation in the Siamese Fighting Fish, Betta splendens, with emphasis on color mutants and the problem of sex determination

“…Later, new variations in color and form turned up and these aspects became the objects of genetic investigations (Goodrich, 1934;Umrath, 1939;Eberhardt, 1941;Wallbrunn, 1948Wallbrunn, , 1958, embryology (Van Duijn, 1938), and sex determination (Eberhardt, 1943b;Wallbrunn, 1951).…”

Readers’ Mindreading Challenges, and how They Can Inform Cognitive Science

“…Clearly, this is not the form the actual headlines and articles take: these rather rely on formulations such as “Oscar Pistorius allegedly accidentally shot dead his girlfriend” or “He had mistaken her for a robber, the Afrikaans Daily reported.” Using these latter formulations, the full complexity is represented, but not by spelling out every single perspective in a complement clause. Instead, representation and coordination of the different perspectives relies on a combination of lexical units implying mental states (“allegedly” and “accidentally,” termed viewpoint packages in van Duijn, 2016a: 132), tense marking (“had mistaken”), and syntactic construction (“…, the Afrikaans Daily reported,” termed an inquit construction in van Duijn, 2016a: 139; see also van Duijn & Verhagen, 2017).…”