Route Description Elicitation

Wilkins, D. (1993). Route Description Elicitation. In S. C. Levinson (Ed.), Cognition and space kit 1.0 (pp. 15-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3513141.
When we want to describe a path through space, but do not share a common perceptual field with a conversation partner, language has to work doubly hard. This task investigates how people communicate the navigation of space in the absence of shared visual cues, as well as collecting data on motion verbs and the roles of symmetry and landmarks in route description. Two speakers (separated by a curtain or other barrier) are each given a model of a landscape, and one participant describes standard routes through this landscape for the other to match.
Publication type
Book chapter
Publication date
1993

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