Diversity in spatial language within communities: the interplay of culture, language and landscape in representations of space

Abstract

Significant diversity exists in the way languages structure spatial reference, and this has been shown to correlate with diversity in non-linguistic spatial behaviour. However, most research in spatial language has focused on diversity between languages: on which spatial referential strategies are represented in the grammar, and to a lesser extent which of these strategies are preferred overall in a given language. However, comparing languages as a whole and treating each language as a single data point provides a very partial picture of linguistic spatial behaviour, failing to recognise the very significant diversity that exists within languages, a largely under-investigated but now emergin..