Discussion Questions: 8 April

1. (JF)What would be the evolutionary advantage of having built-in spatial concepts as opposed to developing them in humans?
2. (HE) This paper can be interpreted by both sides of the linguistic relativism debate as supportive of their respective views. The dividing line, if any, is very delicate and blurred. How could it be drawn and more clearly established?
3. (HE) In the same spirit, the paper touches upon one of the most outstanding issues in cogsci;i.e: Where is the level at which top-down and bottom-up pressures in perception meet? In what ways does the study of space perception could help us resolve the above issue?
4. (ECL) There is a generally accepted order in which spatial words are acquired ((in, on, under) (next to, beside, between) (in front of, behind)). Does this hold across languages? Would the order in which spatial words are acquired depend on how "naturally" pre-linguistic spatial concepts map to the particular space breakdown of the language?
5. (ECL) Would you say gum stuck under a table is ON the table (following the idea of ON=support)? How about something stuck to the ceiling?
6. (MG) Hungarian has 9 separate noun suffixes meaning `at on', `onto' `from on', `at by', `to by', `from by', `at in', `into', and `from in'. Given Bowerman's results with speakers of other languages, how might we expect Hungarian children to differ from children learning English?
7. (MG) Why is it difficult to agree on a set of primitives for spatial semantics? What are some candidates?