Words and the Mind

How Words Capture Human Experience

Edited by Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff

The study of word meanings promises important insights into the nature of the human mind by revealing what people find to be most cognitively significant in their experience.
Researchers have found that different languages seem to be telling different stories about the mind. This book explores the differences in those stories.
Presents evidence from the leading researchers who are carrying out empirical work that integrates the theory and method necessary for real progress on topics as diverse as spatial relations, events, emotion terms, motion events, objects, body-part terms, causation, color categories, and relational categories.
Highlights some of the most exciting cross-linguistic and cross-cultural work on the language-thought interface, from a broad array of fields including linguistics, anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology.
The results presented in this book provide some answers to questions such as: What are we to make of cross-linguistic differences, such as that important distinctions made in one language are not necessarily made in others? How do they arise? Are they created by purely linguistic processes operating over the course of language evolution? Or do they reflect fundamental differences in thought? In this sea of differences, are there any semantic universals? Which categories might be given by the genes, which by culture, and which by language? And what might the cross-linguistic similarities and differences contribute to our understanding of conceptual and linguistic development?

Words and the Mind

How Words Capture Human Experience

Edited by Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff

Description

The study of word meanings promises important insights into the nature of the human mind by revealing what people find to be most cognitively significant in their experience. However, as we learn more about the semantics of various languages, we are faced with an interesting problem. Different languages seem to be telling us different stories about the mind. For example, important distinctions made in one language are not necessarily made in others. What are we to make of these cross-linguistic differences? How do they arise? Are they created by purely linguistic processes operating over the course of language evolution? Or do they reflect fundamental differences in thought? In this sea of differences, are there any semantic universals? Which categories might be given by the genes, which by culture, and which by language? And what might the cross-linguistic similarities and differences contribute to our understanding of conceptual and linguistic development? The kinds of mapping principles, structures, and processes that link language and non-linguistic knowledge must accommodate not just one language but the rich diversity that has been uncovered.

The integration of knowledge and methodologies necessary for real progress in answering these questions has happened only recently, as experimental approaches have been applied to the cross-linguistic study of word meaning. In Words and the Mind, Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff present evidence from the leading researchers who are carrying out this empirical work on topics as diverse as spatial relations, events, emotion terms, motion events, objects, body-part terms, causation, color categories, and relational categories. By bringing them together, Malt and Wolff highlight some of the most exciting cross-linguistic and cross-cultural work on the language-thought interface, from a broad array of fields including linguistics, anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology. Their results provide some answers to these questions and new perspectives on the issues surrounding them.

Words and the Mind

How Words Capture Human Experience

Edited by Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff

I. The language-thought interface: An introduction
1. Reinventing the word
2. Lexicalization patterns and the world-to-words mapping
3. Words for parts of the body
4. Universals and variation in the lexicon of mental state concepts
5. Force creation and possible causers across languages
6. The language-specificity of conceptual structure:
Path, fictive motion, and time relations
7. Categories in mind and categories in language: Do
classifier categories influence conceptual structures?
8. Language and thought: Which side are you on, anyway?
9. Relatively speaking: An account of the relationship
between language and thought in the color domain
10. Worlds without words: Commensurability and
causality in language, culture and cognition
11. A world of relations: Relational words
12. Learning a language the way it is: Conventionality and semantic domains
13. Language structure, lexical meaning, and cognition: Whorf and Vygotsky revisited
14. How words capture visual experience: The perspective from cognitive neuroscience

Words and the Mind

How Words Capture Human Experience

Edited by Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff

Author Information

Barbara Malt received her Ph.D. from Stanford University with post-doctoral training at U.C. Berkeley and UMass, and she is currently Professor of Psychology at Lehigh University. Malt is interested in how people understand the world, how they talk about the world, and what the relation is between the two. She has served as associate editor for Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition and as Chair of the Psychology Department at Lehigh.

Phil Wolff received his PhD degree from Northwestern University and is currently an assistant professor at Emory University. His research concerns the relationship between language and cognition, with particular interests in computational models of causal meaning and reasoning. Wolff is on the editorial board of the journal Cognitive Science.

Contributors:

Jürgen Bohnemeyer
Linguistics Department
University at Buffalo
609 Baldy Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260
Office: 642 Baldy Hall
Phone: (716) 645-0127
jb77@buffalo.edu

Eve V. Clark
Department of Linguistics
Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg 460
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2150
Fax: 1-650-723-5666
Email: eclark@psych.stanford.edu

Silvia Gennari
Department of Psychology
University of York
York, YO10 5DD
United Kingdom
+44 (0) 1904 432877
s.gennari at psych.york.ac.uk

Aubrey L. Gilbert, PhD
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute
3210F Tolman Hall MC 3192
Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
510-642-2593
aubrey.gilbert@ucsf.edu

Cliff Goddard
School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA
Phone: 67733309
Fax: 67733735
Email address: cgoddard@metz.une.edu.au

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
University of Delaware
School of Education
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
(302) 831-1634
roberta@udel.edu

Peter Gordon
Biobehavioral Sciences Department
Teachers College, Columbia University
525 W 120th St. Box 180
New York, NY 10027
212 678-8162
pgordon@tc.edu

Prof J R Hanley
Department of Psychology
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester
Essex
CO4 3SQ
UK
Tel: 44 (0)1206 874331
email: rhanley@essex.ac.uk

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Department of Psychology
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
(215) 204-5243
khirshpa@temple.edu

Mutsumi Imai?
Keio Univeristy at Shonan-Fujisawa
5322 Endo
Fujisawa
Kanagawa, 252-8520
Japan
E-mail: imai@sfc.keio.ac.jp

Richard B. Ivry
Department of Psychology
3210 Tolman Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
510-642-7146
ivry@berkeley.edu

Ga-hyun Jeon
Lotte A 210-303
Yongho-dong
Changwon, GN
641-041
Republic of Korea
irisha21i@yahoo.com

Paul Kay
International Computer Science Institute
1947 Center Street
Berkeley, California
94704
510-666-2885
paulkay@berkeley.edu

David Kemmerer
Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
1353 Heavilon Hall
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN 47907-1353
Phone: (765) 494-3826
Fax: (765) 494-0771
Email: kemmerer@purdue.edu

Bianca Klettke
Deakin University
School of Psychology
221 Burwood Highway
Burwood, Vic, 3125
AUSTRALIA
+61 3 924 46774
bianca.klettke@gmail.com

Yu Li
Department of REALC
Emory University
1707 N Decatur Rd, N. E.
Atlanta, GA 30322
(404) 727-1888
yli59@emory.edu

John A. Lucy
Department of Comparative Human Development
University of Chicago
5730 S. Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637 USA
Phone: 773-702-3517
Fax: 773-702-0320
jlucy@uchicago.edu

Weiyi Ma
School of Education
University of Delaware
213 Willard Hall
Newark, DE 19716
weiyima@udel.edu

Asifa Majid
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Postbus 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0)24 3521273
Fax: +31 (0)24 3521213
E-mail: Asifa.Majid@mpi.nl

Barbara Malt
Department of Psychology
17 Memorial Drive East
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA 18015
phone: (610) 758-4797
fax: (610) 758-6277
Email: barbara.malt@lehigh.edu

Julia Parish-Morris
Department of Psychology
Temple University
Weiss Hall
13th and Cecil B. Moore
Philadelphia, PA 19122
jparish@temple.edu

Shannon M. Pruden
The University of Chicago
Department of Psychology
5848 South University Avenue
Chicago, IL, 60637
spruden@uchicago.edu

Terry Regier
Department of Psychology
University of Chicago
5848 S. University Avenue
Chicago, IL, 60637
773-702-0918
regier@uchicago.edu

Henrik Saalbach
ETH Zürich
Institut f. Verhaltenswissenschaften
CAB G 85.2
Universitätsstrasse 6
8092 Zürich
Telefon: +41 44 632 54 71
E-Mail: henrik.saalbach@ifv.gess.ethz.ch

Debi Roberson
Department of Psychology
University of Essex
Colchester CO4 3SQ
U.K.
Tel: +44 (0)1206 - 873710
robedd@essex.ac.uk

Ann Senghas
Department of Psychology
Milbank 415G
Barnard College of Columbia University
3009 Broadway
New York, New York 10027-6598
Office: (212) 854-0115
Lab: (212) 854-2056
Fax: (212) 854-3601
Email: asenghas@barnard.edu

Phillip Wolff
Department of Psychology
Emory University
532 N. Kilgo Circle
Atlanta, GA 30322
E-mail: pwolff@emory.edu

Words and the Mind

How Words Capture Human Experience

Edited by Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff

Reviews and Awards

"Malt and Wolff's compilation of essays on the relations between language and thought offer the reader among the most thoughtful, far-reaching, and theoretically rich probes into this fascinating topic that are available today, produced by a star-studded cast of linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, and neuroscientists currently working in this area. In their synthesizing introductory remarks, the editors provide a necessary guide to the diverse topic areas-space, color, numeracy, to name a few-and points of view covered in the individual selections. Scholars and students interested in the interactions among culture, convention, and native conceptualization will find many treasures in this important collection."--Lila Gleitman, Professor of Psychology and Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania

"Writing on the relation of language and thought has often (or should one say usually?) generated more heat than light. The present volume adds to the illumination side of the equation, in a diverse set of essays that focus on specific and often fascinating phenomena, through disciplines and perspectives such as development, cross-cultural comparisons, theoretical linguistics, and experimental psychology. The chapters reveal the intricate and puzzling interactions of language and thought, which often do not fit either side of the traditional debate between Whorfians and anti-Whorfians. This volume is an interesting and well-written contribution to the topic that will inspire many readers to regain their interest in this classic psychological problem."--Gregory Murphy, Professor of Psychology, New York University

Words and the Mind

How Words Capture Human Experience

Edited by Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff

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