Department of Communication and Cognition, TiCC, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, NL-5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2021 Apr;28(2):409-433. doi: 10.3758/s13423-020-01822-8. Epub 2020 Oct 9.
Language allows us to efficiently communicate about the things in the world around us. Seemingly simple words like this and that are a cornerstone of our capability to refer, as they contribute to guiding the attention of our addressee to the specific entity we are talking about. Such demonstratives are acquired early in life, ubiquitous in everyday talk, often closely tied to our gestural communicative abilities, and present in all spoken languages of the world. Based on a review of recent experimental work, here we introduce a new conceptual framework of demonstrative reference. In the context of this framework, we argue that several physical, psychological, and referent-intrinsic factors dynamically interact to influence whether a speaker will use one demonstrative form (e.g., this) or another (e.g., that) in a given setting. However, the relative influence of these factors themselves is argued to be a function of the cultural language setting at hand, the theory-of-mind capacities of the speaker, and the affordances of the specific context in which the speech event takes place. It is demonstrated that the framework has the potential to reconcile findings in the literature that previously seemed irreconcilable. We show that the framework may to a large extent generalize to instances of endophoric reference (e.g., anaphora) and speculate that it may also describe the specific form and kinematics a speaker's pointing gesture takes. Testable predictions and novel research questions derived from the framework are presented and discussed.
语言使我们能够高效地交流周围世界的事物。像“这”和“那”这样看似简单的词是我们指称能力的基石，因为它们有助于引导我们的听众注意我们正在谈论的特定实体。这些指示词是在生命早期获得的，在日常谈话中无处不在，通常与我们的手势交际能力密切相关，并且存在于世界上所有口语语言中。基于对最近实验工作的回顾，我们在这里引入了一个新的指示词参照的概念框架。在这个框架的背景下，我们认为几个物理、心理和指称内在的因素会动态地相互作用，影响说话者在给定的情境中使用一种指示词形式（例如，这个）还是另一种形式（例如，那个）。然而，这些因素本身的相对影响被认为是手头的文化语言环境、说话者的心理理论能力以及言语事件发生的具体情境的可能性的函数。研究表明，该框架有可能调和以前似乎无法调和的文献发现。我们表明，该框架在很大程度上可以推广到内指参照（例如，回指）的情况，并推测它也可以描述说话者的指点手势的特定形式和运动学。该框架衍生出了可测试的预测和新的研究问题，并进行了讨论。
