[Lingtyp] Testing a generalization about spatial reference frames

Fri Mar 5 10:20:26 UTC 2021

Dear all,

I would like to support this point, that "left" and "right" can be 
lexicalized toponyms. There is the distinction of "Left-bank Ukraine" 
(Лівобережна Україна) and "Right-bank Ukraine" (Правобережна Україна), 
where "left" means the western bank and "right" the eastern. These terms 
have been in use since the 17th century.

Best wishes

Tilman

Am 05.03.21 um 11:05 schrieb David Gil:
>
> Dear all,
>
> Relative terms making reference to "left" or "right" may also be 
> lexicalized to form toponyms.  For example, the country name Yemen is 
> actually a lexicalization of the Arabic word for "right", drawing upon 
> an canonical orientation facing the rising sun to the east.
>
> David
>
>
> On 05/03/2021 10:36, Dmitry Nikolaev wrote:
>> Dear Juergen,
>>
>> I don't know what level of conventionalisation you are looking for, 
>> but speakers of Russian, at least those who grew up in large cities, 
>> tend in general to avoid using geocentric terms and feel 
>> uncomfortable using them, and if it is at all possible to say "The 
>> lake is to the right of the hill", I would personally do so. A quick 
>> googling showed that this phraseology is quite frequent in route 
>> descriptions, and this YouTube video literally advertises a plot of 
>> land "to the left of lake Veselovka".
>>
>> My best,
>> Dmitry
>>
>> On Fri, 5 Mar 2021 at 07:26, Bohnemeyer, Juergen <jb77 at buffalo.edu 
>> <mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>     Dear all — I’d like to solicit your help with a generalization.
>>     I’m wondering whether anybody is aware of a counterexample:
>>
>>     It is well known that there are communities whose members
>>     regularly use geocentric terms in reference to the speaker’s own
>>     body, as in
>>
>>     (1) ‘My western/downhill arm hurts’.
>>
>>     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).
>>
>>     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
>>
>>     (2) ‘The lake is to the right of the hill’
>>
>>     My generalization is that there doesn’t seem to be any community
>>     in which the type of use exemplified by (2) is conventional.
>>
>>     That is to say, of course we can easily imagine situations in
>>     which English speakers might exchange something like (2):
>>
>>     * 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.
>>
>>     * A speaker looking at representations of the hill and lake on a
>>     map might use (2) metonymically.
>>
>>     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.
>>
>>     (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.)
>>
>>     I’m curious whether people are aware of counterexamples.
>>
>>     Thanks! — Juergen
>>
>>     Haun, D. M. B. & C. J. Rapold. (2011). Variation in memory for
>>     body movements across cultures. Current Biology 19(23): R1068-1069.
>>
>>     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.
>>
>>     Levinson, S. C. (2003). Space in language and cognition.
>>     Cambridge: CUP.
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
>>     Professor, Department of Linguistics
>>     University at Buffalo
>>
>>     Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
>>     Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
>>     Phone: (716) 645 0127
>>     Fax: (716) 645 3825
>>     Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu <mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
>>     Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/
>>     <http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/>
>>
>>     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.
>>
>>     There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
>>     (Leonard Cohen)
>>
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>>
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> -- 
> David Gil
>   
> Senior Scientist (Associate)
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>   
> Email:gil at shh.mpg.de
> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
>
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-- 
Tilman Berger
Slavisches Seminar
Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstr. 50
D-72074 Tuebingen

E-Mail: tberger at uni-tuebingen.de
Homepage: https://uni-tuebingen.de/de/135724

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