Space in languages: linguistic systems and cognitive categories

International audienceThis volume offers theoretical and empirical contributions from varied disciplines addressing central questions at the forefront of the current literature in the domain of space: the nature of space in language, the variability of spatial systems across languages and its impact on language and cognitive development. It includes contributions from five fields of study, all of which are interested in closely related questions concerning spatial language and spatial cognition:- linguistics (including linguistic theory, typology, diachrony, sign-language);- cognitive/linguistic anthropology (cultural/linguistic relativity);- psycholinguistics (including language acquisition);- neuropsycholinguistics (language pathologies);- the philosophy of language.The following summary highlights some of the main general findings reported: (1)linguistic systems vary a great deal in how they represent space, but this variation can be organized around a relatively small set of types or parameters; (2)from the point of view of linguistic theory, space is not a primitive and homogeneous category; (3)data from language pathologies support the hypothesis that spatial cognition involves two different systems, one devoted to spatial language and the other to non-linguistic representations, and that these systems only partially overlap;(4)data from developmental psycholinguistics also show that the particular properties of linguistic systems have a strong impact on first language acquisition and suggest that they may also affect cognitive development