Book review

Grammars of Space

Levinson, Stephen C. & David P. Wilkins (eds.) 2006. Grammars of Space. Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reviewed by Wolfgang Schulze, Institute for General Linguistics and Language Typology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany.

Grammars of Space (GoS) is a carefully edited collection of articles that serves as a companion volume to Space in language and cognition (Levinson 2003), which is authored by one of the editors. Its major aim is to exemplify a novel approach to semantics and cognition called 'semantic typology'. Accordingly, the semantic fields of 'space and time' are analyzed here with regard to those parameters and semantic features that control the organization and processing of spatio-temporal language. The consideration of 'space' and 'time') in (cognitive) semantics is not a novel approach in itself (see e.g. Pütz & Dirven 1996, Bloom et al. 1999; also cf. Hickmann & Robert 2006), as even researchers in disciplines other than psychology and linguistics have addressed these issues: The question of how 'words' (meant as 'concepts') are organized and presentable in accordance with spatial templates has a long-standing tradition even in literature and arts, cf. for instance the Movimento spatiale founded by Lucio Fontana in 1946, the work of Pierre Garnier (e.g. Garnier 2000, Gappmayr 2004), or the philosophical work by Max Bense (Bense 1934), to give but a few examples. What is new in GoS is the fact that 'spatial approaches to language' are given a methodological guide that largely abstains from an intermediary (descriptive or analytic) metalanguage. Moreover, the volume aims at a common terminology that makes analyses based on individual languages comparable to each other.

The volume comprises fourteen chapters, twelve of them addressing issues of GoS in particular languages. The authors of the individual chapters are: David P. Wilkins ("Towards an Arrernte grammar of space", pp. 24-62) , Eva Schultze-Berndt ("Sketch of a Jaminjung grammar of space", pp.63-114), William B. McGregor ("Prolegomenon to a Warrwa grammar of space", pp. 115-156), Stephen C. Levinson ("The language of space in Yéli Dnye", pp. 157-205), Gunter Senft ("Prolegomena to a Kilivila grammar of space", pp. 206-229), Penelope Brown ("A sketch of the grammar of space in Tzeltal", pp. 230-272), Jürgen Bohnemeyer and Christel Stolz ("Spatial reference in Yukatec Maya: a survey", pp. 273-310) , Sérgio Meira ("Approaching space in Tiriyó grammar", pp. 311-158), Felix K. Ameka and James Essegbey ("Elements of the grammar of space in Ewe", pp.359-399), Eric Pedersen ("Spatial language in Tamil", pp. 400-436), Sotaro Kita ("A grammar of space in Japanese", pp. 437-476), and Miriam van Staden, Melissa Bowerman and Mariet Verhelst ("Some properties of spatial description in Dutch", pp. 475-512). These articles are bracketed by an introductory section (pp.1-23) and a summary that tries to unveil common patterns of GoS in the individual articles (pp. 512-552), both authored by the editors.

Naturally, the selection of languages mainly reflects the degree to which researchers have dealt with them in terms of GoS. While we cannot expect a fully balanced sample of languages, the volume covers a broad array of cross-linguistic variety. Fortunately, the inclusion of Dutch and Japanese guarantees that the naive reader will not falsely accommodate the contents of the book to certain folk linguistic beliefs (according to which GoS features are typical for 'primitive' languages).

The volume includes four appendices that reproduce topological maps of six illustrative trajector-landmark relations (such as 'cup on table', 'apple on skewer' etc.), motion types (based on the analysis of four pictures taken from the so-called Frog Story (Mayer 1969), a sample of frames of reference, and the extremely welcomed reproduction of the 'Topological Relations Picture Series'. A bibliography with roughly four hundred references concludes the volume.

In this brief review, I cannot report on all the findings and hypotheses put forward throughout this opulent volume. I will confine myself to a brief summary of the individual chapters and leave it to the reader to enjoy the texts in full detail. The introductory section elaborates both the goals of the analysis and the methods applied. It addresses the question of universality in spatial conceptualization and patterns of variation, concentrating on 'topology', 'motion', and 'frames of reference'. This section will help readers to organize their own studies in a methodologically sound and theoretically well-grounded way.

The chapters on individual languages are designed in rather the same way: They start with a brief presentation of the language before turning to GoS features as such. The three basic parameters 'topological relations', 'motion', and 'frames of reference' are usually given individual subsections. Occasionally, this pattern is modified to suit the peculiarities of the grammar at hand: For instance, the Yéli Dnye and Tamil systems of deixis are treated separately, whereas the aspect of 'static location' is considered more closely in Tzeltal. Each chapter ends with a useful enumeration of conclusions.

It is understood that all authors are experts not only of 'their' language, but also in both typology and cognitive linguistics. Their refreshingly unbiased way of approaching the cognitive layer of 'space' is accompanied by a very thorough presentation of data in a convincing typological format and easy-to-read analyses. All texts nicely implement the parameters and diagnostic features set up by the editors, ensuring strong cohesion between the articles. Naturally, not all readers will agree with all hypotheses put forward throughout the volume, especially as they relate to particular frameworks within Cognitive Linguistics. Nevertheless, in my opinion this is a strength of the present volume: It explicitly starts from language data and not from a deductively established cognitive scenario. In this sense, it highlights that Cognitive Linguistics can be a science of 'language grounded in cognition', not only a science of 'cognition embodied in language'.

The volume is a first important step towards more comprehensive empirical and theoretical work within GoS. Without the foundational work of this book and its companion volume (Levinson 2003), many further studies would remain fragmentary. Hopefully, researchers will be motivated to use the parameters elaborated here to look for corresponding mechanisms in their 'own' languages, so that the catalog of attested GoS features in the languages of the world will grow progressively larger. Ultimately, it would be highly desirable if at least some GoS parameters became standard topics in the writing of reference grammars.

References

Bense, M. 1934. Raum und Ich. Eine Philosophie über den Raum. Berlin: Luken & Luken.

Bloom, P., Peterson, M. A., Nadel, L. and Garrett, M. F. (eds.) (1999). Language and Space. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Gappmayr, G. 2004. Sprache und Raum. Die Poésie Spatiale von Pierre und Ilse Garnier. Bielefeld: Aisthesis.

Garnier, P. 2000. Carnet de poésie. Dugort, Ireland: Redfoxpress.

Hickmann, M. & St. Robert. 2006. Space in Languages: Linguistic Systems and Cognitive Categories. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Levinson, C.S. 2003. Space in Language and Cognition. Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Language Culture and Cognition 5).

Mayer, M. 1969. Frog, where are you? New York: Dial Books.

Pütz, M. & R. Dirven (eds.) 1996. The construal of space in language and thought. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996. (Cognitive Linguistics Research 8).

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