This thesis investigates the correlation between the grammatical gender of generic nouns denoting animals and the perceived biological sex of their referents. Based upon an approach by Imai et al. (2014), a reaction task experiment was conducted in which participants had to make inferences about the biological sex of specific animals. Four languages with differing grammatical gender systems were tested: Spanish, French, German and English. The experiment was conducted with native speakers in their respective languages. The results showed that Spanish, French and German speakers were influenced by grammatical gender when completing the task, while results in the English test group remained unaffected by this factor. In the Spanish and French sample there were several test conditions where gender effects were significant, whereas for the German sample significant effects could only be found in one test condition. Furthermore, in the French and German test groups, significant gender effects were found only when the target words were accompanied by gender-marked definite articles. For Spanish, effects were significant even when the stimuli were presented in the plural form without articles. These results imply that structural features, such as gender marking articles and the transparency of the Spanish gender system, seem to facilitate the projection of sex-specific properties onto grammatical gender. This study can be taken as weak support for linguistic relativity.

If most scholars tend to agree that the native language of a speaker does influence the way they will understand the reality around them, the question becomes ambiguous when it comes to bilingual speakers’ cognition. How is their reality affected by the combination of their languages? This study aimed at exploring this question under the angle of grammatical gender. Adult simultaneous early bilingualsin French and Swedish were asked, in an innovative experiment, to match a culturally neutral item to a voice. In a second experiment, the same participants were asked to match a culturally loaded item to a voice. In both experiments, items were carefully chosen according to their grammatical gender. Results indicate that grammatical gender was not a predictor of voice assignment. However, the perceived cultural stereotypes of the items used in the second experiment appeared to be a robust predictor of voice assignment. Findings suggest thus that grammatical gender does not affect how simultaneous early bilingualism French and Swedish would conceptualise artifacts, but cultural gender would.

Un débat perdure toujours entre les partisans du relativisme linguistique et ceux qui penchent plutôt pour l’universalisme. Depuis Whorf, plusieurs expériences ont été menées pour déterminer si la langue avait une influence sur l’esprit d’un individu, mais très peu ont porté sur la pragmatique. Je propose d’explorer le relativisme linguistique selon la perspective de la pragmatique du langage. Deux approches théoriques en pragmatique s’opposent sur la question du relativisme : l’ethnopragmatique et la théorie de la pertinence. En utilisant des modèles de l’interaction culturelle en anthropologie, en particulier les idées de Bourdieu et le concept d’assemblage, je démontre que la flexibilité de la théorie de la pertinence permettrait d’y intégrer une composante relativiste, et ce, sans avoir à la dénaturer. Pour illustrer cette possibilité, j’introduis l’Identité Cognitive qui agit comme composante relativiste tout en permettant une interaction avec la pertinence universaliste du modèle. / There is a strong division between those who believe in linguistic relativity and those who tend more towards universalism. Since Whorf, many experiments were conducted to determine how and if language could influence thoughts, but not often they were focussed on pragmatics. I revisit the debate on linguistic relativism by considering pragmatics only. There are two different theoretical models in pragmatics at the time, and they support opposing views on relativism: ethnopragmatics and relevance theory. Using models of cultural interaction from anthropology, in particular the ideas of Bourdieu and the concept of assemblage, I show that relevance theory is flexible enough to be able to incorporate a relativistic component, without having to modify its core principles. To illustrate this necessary transformation, I introduce the Cognitive Identity that could interact with the universalistic relevance of the model and still be relativistic itself.

Un débat perdure toujours entre les partisans du relativisme linguistique et ceux qui penchent plutôt pour l’universalisme. Depuis Whorf, plusieurs expériences ont été menées pour déterminer si la langue avait une influence sur l’esprit d’un individu, mais très peu ont porté sur la pragmatique. Je propose d’explorer le relativisme linguistique selon la perspective de la pragmatique du langage. Deux approches théoriques en pragmatique s’opposent sur la question du relativisme : l’ethnopragmatique et la théorie de la pertinence. En utilisant des modèles de l’interaction culturelle en anthropologie, en particulier les idées de Bourdieu et le concept d’assemblage, je démontre que la flexibilité de la théorie de la pertinence permettrait d’y intégrer une composante relativiste, et ce, sans avoir à la dénaturer. Pour illustrer cette possibilité, j’introduis l’Identité Cognitive qui agit comme composante relativiste tout en permettant une interaction avec la pertinence universaliste du modèle. / There is a strong division between those who believe in linguistic relativity and those who tend more towards universalism. Since Whorf, many experiments were conducted to determine how and if language could influence thoughts, but not often they were focussed on pragmatics. I revisit the debate on linguistic relativism by considering pragmatics only. There are two different theoretical models in pragmatics at the time, and they support opposing views on relativism: ethnopragmatics and relevance theory. Using models of cultural interaction from anthropology, in particular the ideas of Bourdieu and the concept of assemblage, I show that relevance theory is flexible enough to be able to incorporate a relativistic component, without having to modify its core principles. To illustrate this necessary transformation, I introduce the Cognitive Identity that could interact with the universalistic relevance of the model and still be relativistic itself.

No description available.

This thesis is about whether language affects thinking. It deals with the linguistic relativity hypothesis, which proposes that the language we speak influences the way we think. This hypothesis is investigated in the domain of caused motion (e.g., ‘The man rolled the tyre into the garage’), by looking at Spanish and Swedish, two languages that show striking differences in how motion events are encoded. The thesis consists of four studies. The first two focus on native speakers of Spanish and Swedish. Study I compares how Spanish and Swedish speakers describe the same set of caused motion events, directing the spotlight at how variable the descriptions are in each language. The results confirm earlier findings from semantic typology regarding the dominant ways of expressing the events in each language: Spanish behaves like a verb-framed language and Swedish like a satellite-framed language (Talmy, 2000). Going beyond previous findings, the study demonstrates—using the tools of entropy and Monte Carlo simulations—that there is markedly more variability in Spanish than in Swedish descriptions. Study II tests whether differences in how Spanish and Swedish speakers describe caused motion events are reflected in how they think about such events. Using a novel similarity arrangement task, it is found that Spanish and Swedish speakers partly differ in how they represent caused motion events if they can access language during the task. However, the differences disappear when the possibility to use language is momentarily blocked by an interference task. The last two studies focus on Swedish learners of Spanish as a second language (L2). Study III explores how Swedish learners (compared to native Spanish speakers) adapt their Spanish motion descriptions to recently encountered input. Using insights from the literature on structural priming, we find that Swedish learners initially expect to encounter in their L2, Spanish, those verb types that are typical in Swedish (manner verbs like ‘roll’) but that, with increasing proficiency, their expectations become increasingly attuned to the typical Spanish pattern of using path verbs (like ‘enter’).  These expectations are reflected in the way L2 learners adapt their own production to the Spanish input. Study IV asks whether recent linguistic experience in an L2 can affect how L2 learners think about motion events. It is found that encountering motion descriptions in the L2 that emphasize different types of information (path or manner) leads L2 speakers to perceive similarity along different dimensions in a subsequent similarity arrangement task. Taken together, the thesis argues that the study of the relation between language and thought affords more valuable insights when not posed as an either-or question (i.e., does language affect thought or not?). In this spirit, the thesis contributes to the wider aim of investigating the conditions under which language does or does not affect thought and explores what the different outcomes tell us about language, thought, and the intricate mechanisms that relate them. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>

“Linguistic relativity” has been studied for a long time. Many empirical studies have been conducted on cross-linguistic differences to find support for the influence of language on thought. This study proposes viewpoint (defined as the point from which the conceptualizer sees and construes the event) as a cross-linguistic difference, and explores whether the linguistic constraint and preference of subjective/objective construal can affect one’s cognitive activity as viewpoint. As Japanese is a subjectivity-prominent language whereas Swedish is not, data elicited from monolingual adolescences (aged 12-16) in Japan and Sweden were compared. A set of tasks which consisted of non-verbal tasks (scene-visualisation) and verbal tasks (narrative of comic strips) was performed in order to elicit the participants’ viewpoints. The same set of tasks was assigned to simultaneous Swedish-Japanese bilingual adolescences in Sweden. The bilinguals took the set of non-verbal and verbal tasks twice, once in Swedish and once in Japanese. The results demonstrated a clear difference between the monolingual groups both in the non-verbal and verbal tasks. The Japanese monolinguals showed a higher preference for subjective viewpoint. The bilinguals’ viewpoint preference had a tendency to fall between that of monolinguals of both languages. This finding indicates that the bilinguals’ viewpoint preference may be influenced by both languages. This study demonstrates for the first time that the speaker’s viewpoint can be affected not only in verbal tasks but also in non-verbal tasks. The findings suggest that a language may influence the speaker’s way of construing events. It is also implied that the influences from different languages in bilinguals can be bidirectional. However, the influence does not seem to be all or nothing. Regardless of the language, one’s event construal is more or less the same. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that the linguistic subjectivity in a language tends to counteract the universal construal. / Språkrelativitet (Linguistic relativity) har studerats under lång tid. Många empiriska studier har studerat om och i så fall hur språk påverkar tänkandet och eventuella skillnader mellan olika språk. Denna studie föreslår perspektivpreferens för att beskriva ur vilket perspektiv en berättare återger skeenden. Studien utforskar om ett språks lingvistiska begränsningar och preferens för subjektiva/objektiva tolkningar av skeenden påverkar personers kognitiva aktivitet som val av perspektiv. Japanska är ett tydligt subjektivt framträdande språk medan svenskan inte är det. Därför jämfördes data från enspråkiga ungdomar (12-16 år gamla) i Japan och i Sverige. För att klarlägga deltagarnas perspektivpreferens genomfördes två delstudier, dels en icke-verbal studie (en scenvisualisering) och dels en verbal studie (ett återberättande av tecknade serier). Samma delstudier genomfördes också till simultant svensk-japanska tvåspråkiga ungdomar i Sverige. De tvåspråkiga deltagarna gjorde de verbala och icke-verbala delstudierna i två omgångar, en gång på svenska och en gång på japanska. Resultatet visade en klar skillnad mellan de enspråkiga grupperna, både i den icke-verbala och verbala delstudien. De japanska enspråkiga deltagarna visade högre preferens för subjektiva tolkningar. De tvåspråkiga deltagarnas perspektivpreferens hade en tendens att komma mellan de enspråkiga deltagarnas preferenser. Detta indikerar att de tvåspråkigas val av perspektiv påverkades av deras tvåspråkighet. Studien visar för första gången att berättarens val av perspektiv kan påverkas inte bara i verbala uppgifter utan också i icke-verbala uppgifter. Resultaten från studien indikerar att ett språk kan påverka en berättares sätt att tolka händelser, och att påverkan från de olika språken hos tvåspråkiga kan vara dubbelriktad. Oberoende av språk återges skeenden på ett likartat sätt. Studien indikerar emellertid att lingvistisk subjektivitet i ett språk tenderar att motverka ett universellt återgivande av perspektiv.

L'obiettivo del presente lavoro è quello di esaminare criticamente le prospettive teoriche più note sul problema delle relazioni tra sviluppo concettuale del bambino ed acquisizione della prima lingua. Per quanto il lavoro si concentri in particolare sullo sviluppo della componente lessicale, ovvero sul legame tra concetti e apprendimento delle parole con cui gli stessi vengono codificati, verranno necessariamente trattati anche alcuni aspetti relativi alla competenza morfologica e sintattica. Dopo aver presentato sinteticamente le principali teorie proposte nell'ambito della linguistica acquisizionale e della psicologia dello sviluppo, procederemo ad una problematizzazione e discussione dei punti critici delle stesse alla luce dei risultati ottenuti in sede sperimentale negli ultimi anni. Partendo dalla consapevolezza che nell'ambito della linguistica, forse ancor più che in altre discipline, il contrasto tra impostazioni teoriche diverse si traduce spesso in discrepanze significative nell'interpretazione degli stessi dati empirici, abbiamo cercato di dare lo stesso spazio ai vari orientamenti teorici. L'obiettivo di questa tesi, infatti, non è quello di dare giudizi di merito sulla validità di una teoria in quanto tale rispetto ad un'altra, quanto di discutere in modo trasversale i nodi più problematici delle varie teorie e le implicazioni delle stesse. Questo intento è particolarmente evidente nelle conclusioni della tesi, strutturate intorno ad una serie di domande di ricerca. / This work provides a critical overview of the major theoretical perspectives on the relationships between conceptual development and first language acquisition. While our focus is on lexical development (ie. on the relation between learning a word and acquiring the relevant concept), we will also touch on some aspects which pertains more specifically to morphological and syntactical development. After briefly introducing the major theories developed in the field of first language acquisition and developmental psychology, we will discuss them in the light of experimental data collected in recent years. As the same empirical findings tend to be interpreted in completely different ways, in our work we tried to give voice to authors supporting different views. Our goal is not to assess the merits of these theores as such, but to take this comparison as an opportunity to discuss the implications and issues thereof. This will be particularly clear in the Conclusions of our work, which are structured as a series of research questions.