Publications

Publication details [#30725]

Grabowski, J. and P. Weiss. 1996. The prepositional inventory of languages: a factor that affects comprehension of spatial prepositions. Language Sciences 18 (1-2) : 19–35.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Elsevier
ISBN
0388-0001

Annotation

Considering the explanatory determination of people's actual use of deictic and intrinsic spatial reference far from being satisfactory, this study proposes a series of empirical investigations in Dutch, German, English, French and Italian, in order to demonstrate that four factors systematically interact in the interpretation of spatial expressions. Especially the social characteristics of the discourse situation and the spatial and temporal preposition inventory of the language at issue, allow for a more comprehensive explanation of the results.