The Role of Space and Body in Referent Distinction Strategies: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

The emergence of linguistic structure is shaped by interaction and cultural transmission as well as cognitive biases and social conventions. An important aspect of linguistic structure is reference distinction or "who did what to whom." This paper explores how cross-cultural differences in the conceptualization of space may influence the development of strategies for referent distinction in this domain. We conducted a silent gesture experiment employing dyadic interaction and iterated learning with participants from two cultural groups that differ in their predominant conceptualization of space: Balinese and Dutch. Focusing on silent gestures produced by hearing participants naïve to sign languages, we examined the effect of culturally embedded biases on the use of space and body, the resources of manual communication. Our findings reveal the emergence of various strategies that are equally successful but differ in their use of space and body. While the Dutch participants developed multiple different strategy types, the Balinese largely followed one strategy type. Crucially, they did not employ an abstract or grammaticalized conception of space. We argue that, rather than reflecting a developmental shift, this pattern stems from the geocentric conceptualization predominant in Balinese culture that inhibits grammatical use of space and favors alternative strategies, such as capitalizing on the iconic affordances of the body to represent grammatical relationships. Our findings thus provide evidence for how cultural conventions such as the conceptualization of space can influence the evolution of linguistic structure.