Publications

Publication details [#45434]

Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins

Annotation

This paper explores the vocabulary of mental states, knowing, thinking and remembering in Dalabon, an Australian Aboriginal language. Though Dalabon has a rich vocabulary for the overall semantic domain of attention, thought, memory and forgetting, there are no expressions specifically dedicated to remembering. Rather, the ontology of cognitive states and processes is categorized into shortterm vs long-term mental states and events. Aspectual choices are used to express transitions into mental states and events (‘remembering’ is ‘coming to have in mind’, and ‘forgetting’ is ‘coming to not have in mind’), without the entailments found in English, which distinguishes previously experienced mental states (‘remember’, ‘remind’) or mental states experienced for the first time (‘get the idea that’, ‘realize’).