Dataset Information

Elevation as a Grammatical and Semantic Category of Demonstratives.

ABSTRACT: In this paper I study semantic and pragmatic properties of elevational demonstratives by means of a typological investigation of 50 languages with elevational demonstratives from all across the globe. The four basic verticality values expressed by elevational demonstratives are UP, DOWN, LEVEL, and ACROSS. They can be ordered along the elevational hierarchy (UP/DOWN > LEVEL/ACROSS), which reflects cross-linguistic tendencies in the expression of these values by demonstratives. Elevational values are frequently co-expressed with distance-based meanings of demonstratives, and it is almost always distal demonstratives that express elevation, whereas medial or proximal demonstratives can lack elevational distinctions. This means that elevational demonstratives largely refer to areas outside the peripersonal sphere in a similar way as simple distal demonstratives. In the proximal domain, fine grained semantic distinctions such as those encoded by elevational demonstratives are superfluous since this domain is accessible to the interlocutors who in the default case of a normal conversation are located in close proximity to each other. I then discuss metaphorical extensions of elevational demonstratives to non-spatial uses such as temporal and social deixis. There are a few languages in which elevational demonstratives with the meaning UP express the temporal meaning future, whereas the DOWN demonstratives encode past. This finding is particularly interesting in view of the widely-debated use of Mandarin Chinese spatial terms 'up' for past events and 'down' for future events, which show the opposite metaphorical extension. I finally examine areal tendencies and potential correlations between elevational demonstratives and the geographical location of speech communities in mountainous areas such as the Himalayas, the Papuan Highlands and the Caucasus. I tentatively conclude that languages spoken in similar topographic environments do not tend to have similar systems of elevational demonstratives if they belong to different language families.

SUBMITTER: Forker D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7406794 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Elevation as a Grammatical and Semantic Category of Demonstratives.

Forker Diana D

Frontiers in psychology 20200730

In this paper I study semantic and pragmatic properties of elevational demonstratives by means of a typological investigation of 50 languages with elevational demonstratives from all across the globe. The four basic verticality values expressed by elevational demonstratives are UP, DOWN, LEVEL, and ACROSS. They can be ordered along the elevational hierarchy (UP/DOWN > LEVEL/ACROSS), which reflects cross-linguistic tendencies in the expression of these values by demonstratives. Elevational values ...[more]

PMID: 32849028

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Project description:Data are mixed on whether patients with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia exhibit a category-selective semantic deficit for animate objects. Moreover, there is little consensus regarding the neural substrates of this category-selective semantic deficit, though prior literature has suggested that the perirhinal cortex and the lateral posterior fusiform gyrus may support semantic memory functions important for processing animate objects. In this study, we investigated whether patients with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia exhibited a category-selective semantic deficit for animate objects in a word-picture matching task, controlling for psycholinguistic features of the stimuli, including frequency, familiarity, typicality and age of acquisition. We investigated the neural bases of this category selectivity by examining its relationship with cortical atrophy in two primary regions of interest: bilateral perirhinal cortex and lateral posterior fusiform gyri. We analysed data from 20 patients with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (mean age = 64 years, S.D. = 6.94). For each participant, we calculated an animacy index score to denote the magnitude of the category-selective semantic deficit for animate objects. Multivariate regression analysis revealed a main effect of animacy (β = 0.52, t = 4.03, P < 0.001) even after including all psycholinguistic variables in the model, such that animate objects were less likely to be identified correctly relative to inanimate objects. Inspection of each individual patient's data indicated the presence of a disproportionate impairment in animate objects in most patients. A linear regression analysis revealed a relationship between the right perirhinal cortex thickness and animacy index scores (β = -0.57, t = -2.74, P = 0.015) such that patients who were more disproportionally impaired for animate relative to inanimate objects exhibited thinner right perirhinal cortex. A vertex-wise general linear model analysis restricted to the temporal lobes revealed additional associations between positive animacy index scores (i.e. a disproportionately poorer performance on animate objects) and cortical atrophy in the right perirhinal and entorhinal cortex, superior, middle, and inferior temporal gyri, and the anterior fusiform gyrus, as well as the left anterior fusiform gyrus. Taken together, our results indicate that a category-selective semantic deficit for animate objects is a characteristic feature of semantic variant primary progressive aphasia that is detectable in most individuals. Our imaging findings provide further support for the role of the right perirhinal cortex and other temporal lobe regions in the semantic processing of animate objects.

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Dataset Information

Elevation as a Grammatical and Semantic Category of Demonstratives.

Publications

Elevation as a Grammatical and Semantic Category of Demonstratives.

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