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Concerning variation in encoding spatial motion: Evidence from Finnish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2021

Emilia Tuuri Open the ORCID record for Emilia Tuuri [Opens in a new window]
Emilia Tuuri*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Kanslerinrinne 1, 33100 Tampere, Finland
*
Email: emilia.tuuri@tuni.fi
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Abstract

This article describes variation in the use of frames of reference (FoRs; object-centred, viewpoint-centred, and geocentric, as in Holistic Spatial Semantics) in Finnish descriptions of motion and connects questions of variation to a typological framework. Recent research has described the choice of FoRs as a process with multiple factors. This complexity and controlling for the main variables posited in the literature create the starting point for the current study that explores factors affecting the choice of FoRs in motion situations and within speakers of the same language. The data were elicited from 50 native speakers of Finnish by using video stimuli. The informants were (mostly) formally educated young adults living in urban surroundings. The analysis reveals considerable variation in individual coding strategies, especially in the inclusion of the speaker’s viewpoint. It also considers variation with respect to different types of trajectories and cross-linguistic differences in the resources of spatial reference.

Keywords

Finnishframes of referencelanguage-internal variationmotion situationsspatial language
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , May 2023 , pp. 83 - 104
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Nordic Association of Linguistics

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