Displaying 1 - 6 of 6
-
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1993). 'Uphill' and 'downhill' in Tzeltal. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 3(1), 46-74. doi:10.1525/jlin.1993.3.1.46.
Abstract
In the face of the prevailing assumption among cognitive scientists that human spatial cognition is essentially egocentric, with objects located in reference to the orientation of ego's own body (hence left/right, up/down, and front/back oppositions), the Mayan language Tzeltal provides a telling counterexample. This article examines a set of conceptual oppositions in Tzeltal, uphill/downhill/across, that provides an absolute system of coordinates with respect to which the location of objects and their trajectories on both micro and macro scales are routinely described. -
Brown, P. (1993). Gender, politeness and confrontation in Tenejapa [reprint]. In D. Tannen (
Ed. ), Gender and conversational interaction (pp. 144-164). New York: Oxford University Press.Abstract
This is a reprint of Brown 1990. -
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1993). Linguistic and nonlinguistic coding of spatial arrays: Explorations in Mayan cognition. Working Paper 24. Nijmegen, Netherlands: Cognitive Anthropology Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
-
Brown, P. (1993). The role of shape in the acquisition of Tzeltal (Mayan) locatives. In E. V. Clark (
Ed. ), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Child Language Research Forum (pp. 211-220). Stanford, CA: CSLI/University of Chicago Press.Abstract
In a critique of the current state of theories of language acquisition, Bowerman (1985) has argued forcibly for the need to take crosslinguistic variation in semantic structure seriously, in order to understand children's acquisition of semantic categories in the process of learning their language. The semantics of locative expressions in the Mayan language Tzeltal exemplifies this point, for no existing theory of spatial expressions provides an adequate basis for capturing the semantic structure of spatial description in this Mayan language. In this paper I describe some of the characteristics of Tzeltal locative descriptions, as a contribution to the growing body of data on crosslinguistic variation in this domain and as a prod to ideas about acquisition processes, confining myself to the topological notions of 'on' and 'in', and asking whether, and how, these notions are involved in the semantic distinctions underlying Tzeltal locatives. -
Levinson, S. C., & Brown, P. (1993). Background to "Immanuel Kant among the Tenejapans". Anthropology Newsletter, 34(3), 22-23. doi:10.1111/an.1993.34.3.22.
-
Brown, P. (1990). Gender, politeness and confrontation in Tenejapa. Discourse Processes, 13, 123-141.
Abstract
This paper compares some features of the interactional details of a Tenejapan (Mexico) court case with the features of social interaction characteristic of ordinary, casual encounters in this society. It is suggested that courtroom behaviour in Tenejapa is a very special form of interaction, in a context that uniquely allows for direct face-to-face confrontation in a society where a premium is placed on interactional restraint. Courtroom speech in Tenejapa directly contraverts norms and conventions that operate in other contexts, and women’s conventionalized polite ‘ways of putting things’ are here used sarcastically to be impolite. Thus, in this society, gender operates across contexts as a ‘master status’, but with gender meanings transformed in the different contexts: forms associated with superficial cooperation and agreement being used to emphasize lack of cooperation, disagreement, and hostility. The implications of this Tenejapan phenomenon for our understanding of the nature of relations between language and gender are explored.
Share this page