The language-cognition interface: evidence from the domain of evidentiality
Date
2016
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Languages vary in the way they encode different aspects of the world. Could such cross-linguistic differences affect how the world is represented in the minds of the speakers of different languages? And how do linguistic and conceptual representations make contact during language acquisition? This dissertation investigates the language-cognition interface cross-linguistically and developmentally with the goal of understanding which aspects of cognition are shared across speakers of different languages, and which aspects may be susceptible to linguistic influences.
The empirical focus of this dissertation is the relationship between evidentiality (the linguistic encoding of information source) and non-linguistic representations of sources of information. Languages like English offer speakers the option to differentiate the information gained through different sources, although encoding evidential distinctions is not obligatory. By contrast some languages such as Turkish mark evidential distinctions in their grammatical systems. From a cross-linguistic perspective, this dissertation asks whether differences in the way languages encode information sources affects source monitoring mechanisms in mature cognizers (Chapter 2). From a developmental perspective, this dissertation examines how linguistic evidentiality is acquired by learners of Turkish (Chapter 3), and how its acquisition is related to the development of non-linguistic representations of information sources (Chapters 3 and 4).
The results of the present investigation inform our understanding of the language-cognition interface in two ways. First, they suggest that linguistic evidentiality does not shape non-linguistic source concepts by showing that speakers of English and Turkish converge in their source monitoring abilities. Second, they confirm the tight relation between linguistic and conceptual representations of information sources by showing that the acquisition of linguistic evidentiality is constrained by the development of non-linguistic source concepts. Together, the present findings support a universalist view of the language-cognition interface according to which linguistic categories of evidentiality build on and reflect source concepts that are shared by speakers of different languages.