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Related Experiment Videos

Is there a natural order for expressing semantic relations?

Lisa Gershkoff-Stowe1, Susan Goldin-Medow

  • 1Department Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. gershkof@indiana.edu

Cognitive Psychology
|December 14, 2002
PubMed
Summary

Human thought, not just communication, may drive word order. Studies show consistent non-English word order in both gestured communication and non-communicative scene reconstruction, suggesting cognitive origins for language structure.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistics
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Word order is crucial for conveying meaning in all languages.
  • The underlying reasons for reliance on word order, whether communicative or cognitive, remain debated.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the communicative and cognitive factors influencing word order.
  • To determine if word order reliance is exclusive to communication or reflects broader cognitive processes.

Main Methods:

  • Study 1: Adults created "home-made languages" using gestures to describe scenes under varying communicative conditions.
  • Study 2: Adults reconstructed scenes non-communicatively using transparency pictures to assess inherent ordering preferences.

Main Results:

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  • Consistent non-English word order was observed in gestured communication across all tested conditions.
  • The same consistent non-English order was replicated in a non-communicative context during scene reconstruction.

Conclusions:

  • Reliance on word order is not solely driven by communicative demands.
  • Consistent ordering patterns suggest word order may stem from fundamental properties of human cognition.