Spatial Demonstratives and Perspective Taking in English and Japanese

There is much debate regarding the extent to which languages express the same spatial parameters or whether spatial communication is essentially diverse. In this paper, we explore “perspective taking” in spatial demonstrative systems as a means of exploring between and within language variation. We test the effects of egocentric distance and addressee position on demonstrative production in speakers of two languages with two purportedly different demonstrative systems: English and Japanese. We find that speakers of both languages show perspective taking in their demonstrative use, with an overall increase in perspective taking in both languages when there was greater interaction between participants during the experimental task. We propose a framework unifying different theoretical accounts of demonstrative systems in which speakers of both languages choose a spatial reference frame prior to selecting from the available demonstrative terms in their language. Such an approach accounts for diversity while maintaining the same underlying processes between languages.