Testing Linguistic Relativity

These last few years have witnessed a renewedinterest in the theory of linguistic relativity.This book reports the findings of a linguisticrelativity study carried out on English and Italianspeakers with respect to the semantics of manner ofmotion. The two linguistic groups were found todiffer significantly in variety and frequency of useof manner of motion verbs but not with respect tothe degree of visual attention paid to manners ofmotion. The study therefore provides evidence againstlinguistic relativity. Along with a considerableamount of empirical data the book also contains sometheoretical discussions on various issues relevant tothe language-and-thought debate (e.g. the possibleexistence of conceptual primitives Slobin's conceptof thinking for speaking). Special attention isgiven to a set of criteria proposed by the author forestablishing what distinctive semantic features averb should have in order to justify classificationas a manner of motion verb. Students andresearchers who are interested in topics such as therelationships between language and cognition motionconceptualisation and semantics in general will findthis work useful.