Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06510.
Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Aug 6;121(32):e2402068121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2402068121. Epub 2024 Aug 1.
Linguistic communication is an intrinsically social activity that enables us to share thoughts across minds. Many complex social uses of language can be captured by domain-general representations of other minds (i.e., mentalistic representations) that externally modulate linguistic meaning through Gricean reasoning. However, here we show that representations of others' attention are embedded within language itself. Across ten languages, we show that demonstratives-basic grammatical words (e.g., "this"/"that") which are evolutionarily ancient, learned early in life, and documented in all known languages-are intrinsic attention tools. Beyond their spatial meanings, demonstratives encode both joint attention and the direction in which the listener must turn to establish it. Crucially, the frequency of the spatial and attentional uses of demonstratives varies across languages, suggesting that both spatial and mentalistic representations are part of their conventional meaning. Using computational modeling, we show that mentalistic representations of others' attention are internally encoded in demonstratives, with their effect further boosted by Gricean reasoning. Yet, speakers are largely unaware of this, incorrectly reporting that they primarily capture spatial representations. Our findings show that representations of other people's cognitive states (namely, their attention) are embedded in language and suggest that the most basic building blocks of the linguistic system crucially rely on social cognition.
语言交际是一种内在的社会活动，使我们能够在思想之间进行交流。许多复杂的语言社会用途可以通过对他人心灵的一般性领域表示（即心理表示）来捕捉，这些表示通过格莱斯推理对外调节语言意义。然而，在这里我们表明，他人注意力的表示嵌入在语言本身之中。在十种语言中，我们表明，指示词——基本的语法词（例如，“这个”/“那个”）——是古老的、在生命早期学习的，并且在所有已知的语言中都有记载——是内在的注意力工具。除了它们的空间意义之外，指示词还编码了共同注意力以及听众必须转向的方向以建立共同注意力。至关重要的是，指示词的空间和注意力使用频率在语言之间有所不同，这表明空间和心理表示都是其常规意义的一部分。使用计算模型，我们表明，指示词内部编码了他人注意力的心理表示，并且格莱斯推理进一步增强了其效果。然而，说话者对此知之甚少，错误地报告说他们主要捕捉空间表示。我们的研究结果表明，他人认知状态（即注意力）的表示嵌入在语言中，并表明语言系统的最基本构建块严重依赖于社会认知。
