Les entit\'es spatiales dans la langue : \'etude descriptive, formelle et exp\'erimentale de la cat\'egorisation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how language categorizes spatial entities through descriptive, formal, and developmental studies, revealing cross-linguistic differences and their impact on spatial cognition from early childhood.

Contribution

It introduces a new classification of spatial entities, integrates formal modeling with cognitive and developmental insights, and highlights language-specific effects on spatial understanding.

Findings

Cross-linguistic variability in children's spatial representations

Language influences how children talk about space from an early age

Formal models account for functional dependencies among spatial entities

Abstract

While previous linguistic and psycholinguistic research on space has mainly analyzed spatial relations, the studies reported in this paper focus on how language distinguishes among spatial entities. Descriptive and experimental studies first propose a classification of entities, which accounts for both static and dynamic space, has some cross-linguistic validity, and underlies adults' cognitive processing. Formal and computational analyses then introduce theoretical elements aiming at modelling these categories, while fulfilling various properties of formal ontologies (generality, parsimony, coherence...). This formal framework accounts, in particular, for functional dependences among entities underlying some part-whole descriptions. Finally, developmental research shows that language-specific properties have a clear impact on how children talk about space. The results suggest some cross-linguistic variability in children's spatial representations from an early age onwards, bringing into question models in which general cognitive capacities are the only determinants of spatial cognition during the course of development.