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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Hi all<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">This a really interesting question, and I’m looking forward to seeing more replies. Nick Evans I was only reading today Myers 1986 saying the Pintupi dream in cardinal orientations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Juergen, I haven’t seen any language where relative terminology for landscape features is conventionalised. However, I do encounter this in English based on a canonical perspective (e.g. ‘it’s in
the dining hall no the righthand table’ – i.e. the one on your right as you enter the room).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">However, I have seen the occasional reference like this:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black">Beidahu [a ski resort in China] operates on two mountains and the valley in between. Although the maximum vertical is
900+m, generally only about 800m are open due to limited snow making on top. <b>
The front mountain</b> features generally intermediate terrain and is served by a multi chair lift system that gives you the choice of the lower half wide open terrain or the steeper trail terrain on top.
<b>The right hand mountain</b> features steeper terrain and is served by a single gondola that has a mid mountain station accessing the intermediate portions of the mountain.</span><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">” (emphasis added). <<a href="http://www.chinaskitours.com/beidahu.html">http://www.chinaskitours.com/beidahu.html</a>><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Presumably this invokes a canonical perspective from the resort buildings. This text is presumably translated from Mandarin, so perhaps is transference from the original. Perhaps Sinitic languages
would be a useful place to look.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Best<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Bill<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Associate Professor Bill Palmer<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">University of Newcastle<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lead Investigator, <i>OzSpace</i> project<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Landscape, language and culture in Indigenous Australia.</span></i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Vice-President, Australian Linguistics Society<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US">From:</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org>
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Felicity Meakins<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, 5 March 2021 5:39 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> nicholas.evans@anu.edu.au; Bohnemeyer, Juergen <jb77@buffalo.edu>; LINGTYP <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Testing a generalization about spatial reference frames<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">In defence of using cardinal terms for parts of the body, this is definitely the norm in Gurindji which is related to Warlpiri. The terms for ‘right hand’ and ‘left hand’ are not abstractly
projected either away from the body or beyond the hand<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of Nick Evans <<a href="mailto:nicholas.evans@anu.edu.au">nicholas.evans@anu.edu.au</a>><br>
<b>Date: </b>Friday, 5 March 2021 at 4:28 pm<br>
<b>To: </b>"Bohnemeyer, Juergen" <<a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu">jb77@buffalo.edu</a>>, LINGTYP <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lingtyp] Testing a generalization about spatial reference frames<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">I'm wondering if this is a bit of an urban myth about people saying 'my western arm hurts'. Kayardild, the absolute-reference language
I've worked with most, uses cardinals all over the place, but not when talking about one's own body. I would say that in Kayardild the egocentric system hands over to the cardinal-based one at the point of considering other objects and locations. So I wonder
if there's been a bit of a ramp-up in how these systems are talked about. (Of course others may have worked on languages which are more radically geocentric than Kayardild, but I'm concerned that there might be some ramping up of claims as the literature passes
to secondary sources)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Best Nick<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Little passage about this (from my 2010 book 'Dying Words) pasted in below<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Minion;color:black">The obsession with compass orientation continues through conversations, through little instructions to move a smoldering stick a little southward on the fire (perhaps
an inch!), and the way you call out to an approaching unidentified person in the dark:
<i>riinmali! </i>(“hey you approaching from the east!”). It frames people’s recollections, their dreams, even their visualizations of hypothetical scenarios. The late Dugal Goongarra, another of my Kayardild teachers, was once boasting to me about a spear he
had just made, which sported a fearsome row of barbs. It would penetrate a big queenfish, he said, as far as the second barb; a turtle’s fin, as far as the fourth. And speared into a dugong,
<i>burrija bathinyinda thawurri</i>, (“the western end (of the spear) would come out of its throat”). The spear was newly made and had not seen any action yet, so he must have been describing an imaginary scenario. But,
</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p style="margin-left:36.0pt"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Minion;color:black">Table 8.1
</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Minion;color:black">Some Kayardild compass-point derivatives, based on the root
<i>ri- </i>(“east”) </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Minion;color:black">in his mind, the dugong’s throat was still clearly oriented to the compass. On the basis of this and similar interactions with Kayardild people I believe they virtu-
ally never think, imagine, or even dream without orienting their mental scenes to the compass.
</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Minion;color:black">Words for “right hand” (<i>junku</i>) and “left hand” (<i>thaku</i>) do exist. They are mainly used to locate things like a pain in the left side of your body where
compass- based coding would keep shifting around. But they are never employed to locate objects or places, as we do in English with expressions like “the righthand book,” or “the path to your left.” One aspect of speaking Kayardild, then, is learning that
the landscape is more important and objective than you are. Kayardild gram- mar quite literally puts everyone in their place. Some Kayardild compass expres- sions are shown in table 8.1, which gives a set of derivatives based on
<i>ri- </i>(“east”). Equivalent sets exist for the other three compass points. </span>
<span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Nicholas (Nick) Evans</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Director, CoEDL (ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language)</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Distinguished Professor of Linguistics</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black;background:white">Coombs Building, Fellows Road</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">CHL, CAP, Australian National University</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"><a href="mailto:nicholas.evans@anu.edu.au">nicholas.evans@anu.edu.au</a></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as custodians of the land on which I work, <span style="background:white">and pay my respects to
their elders, past, present and emerging.</span> Their custodianship that has never been ceded.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><b><span style="color:black">From:</span></b><span style="color:black"> Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of Bohnemeyer,
Juergen <<a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu">jb77@buffalo.edu</a>><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, March 5, 2021 4:26 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> LINGTYP <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Lingtyp] Testing a generalization about spatial reference frames</span>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt">Dear all — I’d like to solicit your help with a generalization. I’m wondering whether anybody is aware of a counterexample:<br>
<br>
It is well known that there are communities whose members regularly use geocentric terms in reference to the speaker’s own body, as in
<br>
<br>
(1) ‘My western/downhill arm hurts’. <br>
<br>
E.g., Laughren (1978) mentions this phenomenon in reference to Warlpiri. Levinson (2003: 4) notes that the practice exists among speakers of Guugu Yimithirr (Pama-Nyungan, Queensland). Haun & Rapold (2011) present an experimental study of the practice with
speakers of ≠Akhoe Hai||om (Khoekhoe, Namibia).<br>
<br>
Now, I’m interested in what you might consider something of an inverse of this kind of use: the use of relative frames at the geographic scale, as in<br>
<br>
(2) ‘The lake is to the right of the hill’<br>
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My generalization is that there doesn’t seem to be any community in which the type of use exemplified by (2) is conventional.<br>
<br>
That is to say, of course we can easily imagine situations in which English speakers might exchange something like (2):<br>
<br>
* A speaker looking at the lake and hill might use (2) to describe what she sees to an interlocutor who doesn’t have visual access to the scene. The speaker might use relative language in this case in order to produce a vivid image of the scene as it presents
itself to her. <br>
<br>
* A speaker looking at representations of the hill and lake on a map might use (2) metonymically.
<br>
<br>
However, I’m unaware of a community in which something like (2) would be a conventional way of locating landscape entities with respect to one another in the absence of visual access to (representations of) them.
<br>
<br>
(One could argue that (2) is pragmatically semi-infelicitous in such a context since the truth of (2) depends on the location of the observer, which is usually more variable than that of the hill and lake. However, even though the truth of (1) similarly changes
with the speaker’s orientation, it is presumed to be an entrenched strategy for this context in several cultures. My interest is partly in this asymmetry.)<br>
<br>
I’m curious whether people are aware of counterexamples. <br>
<br>
Thanks! — Juergen<br>
<br>
Haun, D. M. B. & C. J. Rapold. (2011). Variation in memory for body movements across cultures. Current Biology 19(23): R1068-1069.<br>
<br>
Laughren,M. (1978). Directional terminology in Warlpiri. in Th. Le and M. McCausland (eds.), Working papers in language and linguistics, 8: 1–16. Launceston: Tasmanian College of Advanced Education.<br>
<br>
Levinson, S. C. (2003). Space in language and cognition. Cambridge: CUP.<br>
<br>
-- <br>
Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br>
Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>
University at Buffalo <br>
<br>
Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus<br>
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 <br>
Phone: (716) 645 0127 <br>
Fax: (716) 645 3825<br>
Email: <a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu">jb77@buffalo.edu</a><br>
Web: <a href="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/">
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/</a> <br>
<br>
Office hours will be held by Zoom. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu/Th 4-5pm open specifically for remote office hours.<br>
<br>
There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In <br>
(Leonard Cohen) <br>
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