Indigenous Psycholinguistics - Tracking Reference Across Cognition

ongoing

This proposal addresses fundamental open questions about how language processing uses basic cognitive resources like memory and planning/attentional space. It does so by drawing two languages which are almost completely new to psycholinguistics, Shipibo and Cuzco Quechua, and through them, a new construction, switch-reference, which is also largely unexplored. Although switch-reference is under-explored, it is of interest because current models of linguistic memory and sentence planning suggest that it should be incredibly difficult, and yet it is used productively by speakers of languages throughout the Americas and Oceania. This research therefore moves the needle forward on fundamental questions that address cognitive abilities beyond just language processing, while simultaneously broadening the sample on which psycholinguistic theories are based. While all languages have essentially the same cognitive resources, the different grammatical forms from language to language imply different strategies to use those resources efficiently. If one of the goals of psycholinguistics is to understand the cognitive resources that are available, and how they can be deployed, this degree of systematic flexibility between the world’s languages is a tremendous scientific resource. Yet the vast majority of psycholinguistics typically only studies a handful of the largest East Asian languages and a few closely-related European ones, i.e., those that are already in close proximity to scientific laboratories. This problem is a subset of the one at work throughout psychology: an over-reliance on WEIRD societies (Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic; Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). This creates a heavily skewed sample, both in terms of linguistic variety and populations. Therefore, psycholinguistic studies of switch-reference in Shipibo have value beyond the specific language. The project will provide unique new data to address current theoretical issues.