Language and Thought in the Motion Domain: Methodological Considerations and New Empirical Evidence

This study investigates whether there is a relation between how motion is linguistically expressed and how it is conceptualised. To do this, native speakers of two languages that differ typologically in how they encode telic motion (English and Spanish) are compared in both a verbal and a non-verbal experiment. The preferred non-verbal methods to test the linguistic relativity hypothesis in this domain have so far been recognition memory and binary judgments. This study questions the experimental validity of these approaches and implements an alternative method which combines similarity ratings with a verbal interference manipulation. The results reported here constitute evidence against linguistic relativity and in support of cognitive universalism.