Space cognition seen through linguistic expressions, with particular reference to the localization of an action

本研究旨在分析空间与事件或动作之间的各种关系，以及这些关系是如何被编码到语言表达中的。我们将这些关系分为四种类型：(1)宾语的本地化，如在桌子上有一份报纸；(2)事件的本地化，如在他的办公室里看报纸；(3)动作的本地化，如在桌子上写一封信；和(4)动作的对象，如在‘他在看哪里？’中。事件和动作的本地化的不同之处在于，对于一个事件，所有涉及的对象(如‘他’和‘报纸’)都在同一空间(‘他的办公室’)，而对于一个动作，这两个对象中只有一个在该空间(‘字母’在桌子上，但‘他’不在桌子上)。作为动作本地化的参照点的空间倾向于具有乐器的性质，这就引出了我们对方位词和工具词之间的界限的考察。作为动作对象的空间引发了有趣的跨语言问题。例如，日语单词doko(Wo)(Where)相当自由地充当许多动词的直接宾语，但对应的法语结构与ou结构却受到严格限制。为了理解这些问题，我们基于日语和法语，以及较少程度的德语和汉语，对这些术语进行了比较分析。

This research aims at analysing the various relations that space holds with an event or an action, and how these relations are encoded into linguistic expressions. We group these relations into four types : (1) Localization of an object, as in 'there is a newspaper on the table' ; (2) localization of an event, as in 'he is reading a newspaper in his office' ; (3) localization of an action, as in 'he is writing a letter on the table' ; and (4) object of an action, as in 'where is he looking? '.Localizations of an event and an action differ in that, for an event, all objects involved (such as 'he' and 'a newspaper') are in the same space ('his office'), and for an action, only one of the two objects is in the space ('the letter' is on the table, but 'he' is not on the table).The space that serves as the reference point for localization of an action has a tendency to take on the character of an instrument, which leads us to examine the boundaries between the locative and the instrument.The space that serves as the object of an action raises interesting cross-linguistic problems. For example, the Japanese word 'doko(wo)' ('where') acts quite freely as the direct object of many verbs, but the corresponding French construction, with 'ou', is severely restricted.To understand these problems, we perform a comparative analysis of these terms, based on Japanese and French, and to a lesser extent German and Chinese.