Paper short abstract:

Cognitive semantics approach is utilized to formulate a typology of spatial description strategies based on the results of a spontaneous speech experiment involving 51 Japanese native speaking residents of the Kanto area.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to describe and analyze semantic features of spatial description based on the results of a spontaneous speech experiment involving Japanese native speaking residents of the Kanto area. The main objective of this study is to formulate an experimental material based typology of spatial description strategies utilized by Japanese native speakers.

Four major strategies for spatial description were described by Kobozeva, I.M.(2000, Grammar of Spatial Description) based on the survey conducted with Russian native speakers: Frame Strategy (FS), Strategy of Outstanding Objects (SOO), Path Strategy (PS), and Scanning Strategy (SS).

The experimental material for this study is based on a spontaneous speech experiment on spatial description strategies with 51 Japanese native speaking participants conducted in Tokyo in 2016. The survey consisted of 6 visual stimuli: 2 landscape pictures, 2 interior pictures, and 2 still life pictures. Participants were asked to describe the stimuli in a manner so that a person who has not seen the pictures may understand the location of the objects in the pictures.

A corpus of 300 texts was created based on the recordings of the descriptions taken during the survey, and analyzed with cognitive semantics approach to spatial description (Talmy, L., 2003, Toward a Cognitive Semantics).

The preliminary findings suggest that the typology of strategies proposed by Kobozeva could be applied to the analysis of spatial descriptions produced by native Japanese speaking participants. Three of the strategies: FS, SS, and SOO were used by the participants, with FS and SS prevailing. However, PS, which is defined as a strategy determined by the trajectory of an imaginary movement of a narrator through the picture, is not present in the data. Moreover, strong opposition of temae (front)/oku (back) found in the data suggests a presence of Perspective Strategy among spatial description strategies.

The results of the experiment support the findings of the previous studies (e.g., Kobozeva, 2000) that the same participant tends to utilize the same description strategy during all the trials, and that the strategy of verbalization of visual information might be considered one of the features of individual's cognitive makeup.