The influence of language, culture, and environment on the use of spatial referencing in a multilingual context: Taiwan as a test case

Abstract

This study examines the Sociotopographic Model (Palmer, Bill, Jonathon Lum, Jonathan Schlossberg & Alice Gaby. 2017. How does the environment shape spatial language? Evidence for sociotopography. Linguistic Typology 21(3). 457–491. DOI:10.1515/lingty-2017-0011) by exploring the use of spatial frames of reference in two genealogically related languages with rather distinct spatial features in a multilingual context. Taiwanese Min Nan (TMN) and Taiwanese Mandarin Chinese (MC), exhibit distinct features in spatial reference in small-scale space, including a geocentric preference among TMN speakers for using cardinal directions or external landmarks and a relative preference among MC speakers for projecting the viewer’s perspective onto the object. The study extended the research design of Bohnemeyer and his colleagues (Bohnemeyer, Jürgen, Katharine T. Donelson, Randi Tucker, Elena Benedicto, Alejandra Capistrán Garza, Alyson Eggleston, Néstor Hernández Green, María Hernández Gómez, Samuel Herrera Castro, Carolyn K. O’Meara, Enrique Palancar, Gabriela Pérez Báez, Gilles Polian & Rodrigo Romero Méndez. 2014. The cultural transmission of spatial cognition: Evidence from a large-scale study. In Paul Bello, Marcello Guarini, Marjorie McShane & Brian Scassellati (eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 212–217. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society) to the scope of bilingualism in order to explore how language, culture, and environment affect the use of spatial reference in bilinguals as compared to monolinguals. The research method comprised a discourse and a recall memory study. Contrary to the alignment between discourse and recall memory found in monolinguals, bilinguals displayed mixed patterns. Regression analyses indicated that, in addition to language, effects of environment emerged: topography was positively correlated with geocentric use, supporting the Topographic Correspondence Hypothesis (Palmer, Bill, Alice Gaby, Jonathon Lum & Jonathan Schlossberg. 2016. Topography and frame of reference in the threatened ecological niche of the atoll. Paper presented at “Geographic grounding: Place, direction and landscape in the grammars of the world”, University of Copenhagen, May 2016). A strong education effect had an impact on geocentric use in both studies, suggesting the possibility of the cultural mediation between language and environment.