[Lingtyp] Words for 'left' and 'right' in Australian languages

Sat Oct 12 23:01:44 UTC 2024

                                                    2024/10/13

Professor Alex François

Dear Professor François,

Thank you so much for all this invaluable information. I am really grateful.

    I will forward your information to the psychologist friend of mine.

As a gesture of my appreciation of your kind help, I am attaching a PDF of a recent paper of mine.

Tsunoda, Tasaku. 2023. Grammar (morphosyntax) and discourse. Studies in Language Vol. 47, No. 4: 830–869.

Again, thank you for your help. I am really grateful

Best wishes,

Tasaku Tsunoda

送信元: Alex Francois <alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com>
日付: 2024年10月12日 土曜日 19:15
宛先: TasakuTsunoda <tasakutsunoda at nifty.com>
Cc: LINGTYP LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
件名: Re: [Lingtyp] Words for 'left' and 'right' in Australian languages

Dear Prof. Tsunoda,

Thanks for your query. Here are a few references I would recommend for Australian languages.

Relevant work by Stephen Levinson:

Levinson, Stephen. 1992. Language and cognition: the cognitive consequences of spatial description in Guugu Yimithirr. In Working paper no. 13. Cognitive Anthropology Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
——— 1996. Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslinguistic evidence. In Paul Bloom, Mary Peterson, Lynn Nadel & Merrill Garrett (eds.), Language and space, 109–170. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
——— 2003. Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity (Language, Culture and Cognition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511613609.
Levinson, Stephen C. & David Wilkins. 2006. The background to the study of the language of space. In Stephen C. Levinson & David P. Wilkins (eds.), Grammars of Space, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486753.002.
see also (on another language family):

Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson. 1992. ‘Left’ and ‘right’ in Tenejapa: investigating a linguistic and conceptual gap. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 45. 590–611.

Other publications on Australian languages:

Haviland, John B. 1993. Anchoring, iconicity and orientation in Guugu Yimithirr pointing gestures. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 3(1). 3–45. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.1993.3.1.3.
Hoffmann, Dorothea. 2011. Descriptions of Motion and Travel in Jaminjung and Kriol. [Doctoral Thesis, The University of
Manchester]. University of Manchester. 332pp. [link]
——— 2018. Talking about motion in Aboriginal Australia: How linguistic structure and culture influence motion event encoding. Hunter Gatherer Research 4(3). 369–390. https://doi.org/10.3828/hgr.2018.23.
——— 2019. Restrictions on the Usage of Spatial Frames of Reference in Location and Orientation Descriptions: Evidence from Three Australian Languages. Australian Journal of Linguistics 39(1). 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2019.1542927.
——— 2023. Direction and location. In Claire Bowern (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages, 513–519. 1st edn. Oxford University PressOxford. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198824978.003.0042.
Palmer, Bill, Dorothea Hoffmann, Joe Blythe, Alice Gaby, Bill Pascoe & Maïa Ponsonnet. 2022. Frames of spatial reference in five Australian languages. Spatial Cognition & Computation 22(3–4). 225–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/13875868.2021.1929239.

> I would also appreciate information on other languages as well.

You may also be interested in Austronesian (notably Oceanic) languages, as they too use an absolute frame of reference for encoding spatial directions:

Cablitz, Gabriele H. 2006. Marquesan: A grammar of space. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
François, Alexandre. 2003. Of men, hills and winds: Space directionals in Mwotlap. Oceanic Linguistics 42(2). 407–437. [link]
——— 2004. Reconstructing the geocentric system of Proto Oceanic. Oceanic Linguistics 43(1). 1–31. [link]
——— 2015. The ins and outs of up and down: Disentangling the nine geocentric space systems of Torres and Banks languages. In The Languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity, ed. by A. François, S. Lacrampe, M. Franjieh & S. Schnell. Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, 5. Canberra: Asia Pacific Linguistics Open Access. 137-195. [link]

Hyslop, Catriona. 2002. Hiding behind trees on Ambae: Spatial reference in an Oceanic language of Vanuatu. In Giovanni Bennardo (ed.), Representing space in Oceania: Culture in language in mind (Pacific Linguistics), vol. 523, 47–76. Canberra: Australian National University.
Ozanne-Rivierre, Françoise. 1997. Spatial references in New Caledonian languages. In Gunter Senft (ed.), Referring to space. Studies in Austronesian and Papuan languages, 84–100. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——— 1999. Spatial Orientation in some Austronesian Languages. In Catherine Fuchs & Stéphane Robert (eds.), Language Diversity and Cognitive Representations, 73–84. Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins.
Palmer, Bill. 2002. Absolute spatial reference and the grammaticalisation of perceptually salient phenomena. In Giovanni Bennardo (ed.), Representing space in Oceania: Culture in language in mind (Pacific Linguistics), vol. 523, 107–157. Canberra: Australian National University.
——— 2007. Pointing at the lagoon: Directional terms in Oceanic atoll-based languages. In John Lynch, Jeff Siegel & Diana Eades (eds.), Language Description, History and Development: Linguistic Indulgence in Memory of Terry Crowley (Creole Language Library), 101–118. New York: John Benjamins.
Palmer, Bill, Jonathon Lum, Jonathan Schlossberg & Alice Gaby. 2017. How does the environment shape spatial language? Evidence for sociotopography. Linguistic Typology 21(3). https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2017-0011.
Senft, Gunter (ed.). 1997. Referring to space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan languages (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Austronesian languages have words for 'left' and 'right' in their lexicons, but these words are normally used only as body part terms: they are never used as a strategy to encode spatial directions. What I wrote below (François 2015:139) about North Vanuatu languages could mostly be said of Oceanic languages more generally:

The Oceanic system of directionals (cf. François 2004) is not based on the path of the sun, but on the topography (inland vs. seawards) combined with the direction of prevailing winds (upwind vs. downwind).

best,

Alex

Alex François

LaTTiCe — CNRS–ENS–PSL–Sorbonne nouvelle
Australian National University

Personal homepage

_________________________________________

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: TasakuTsunoda via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2024 at 06:20
Subject: [Lingtyp] Words for 'left' and 'right' in Australian languages
To: LINGTYP LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>, TasakuTsunoda <tasakutsunoda at nifty.com>

                                                    2024/10/12

Dear Colleagues,

    Re: Words for ‘left’ and ‘right’ in Australian languages

1. Would you please help me? I wish to seek information on Australian languages. I would also appreciate information on other languages as well.

    I am making this request on behalf of a friend of mine who is a psychologist (not a linguist).

2. In the Australian languages I worked on, e.g. Djaru (or Jaru) of northwest Australia (Tsunoda 1981) and Warrongo of northeast Australia (Tsunoda 2011), I have not found any word for ‘left’ or any word for ‘right’.

    In these languages, expressions that will correspond to the English sentences below will be possible.

(1) Person A sat in front of Person B.

(2) Person A sat behind Person B.

(3) Person A sat north of Person B.

(4) Person A sat east of Person B.

(5) Person A sat south of Person B.

(6) Person A sat west of Person B. 

3. Are there any published works that point out the absence of the words for ‘left’ and ‘right’ in Australian languages?

    If you have PDFs of such works, would you be able to send them to me?

4. I suppose some of the list members will be likely to recommend works by Stephen Levinson. I would like to know which works by him are the most directly relevant to my request.

5. Again, I wish to seek information on Australian languages. I would also appreciate information on other languages as well.

Best wishes and thanking you in advance,

Tasaku Tsunoda

Tsunoda, Tasaku. 1981. The Djaru language of Kimberley, Western Australia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Australian National University.

Tsunoda, Tasaku. 2011. A grammar of Warrongo. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.

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