Spatial Frames of Reference and an Investigation of Their Representations in Turkish

Abstract

This study was carried out to answer what kind of representations in Turkish could be obtained on spatial frames of reference. In the experiment which was conducted to determine spatial frames of reference used in Turkish, four different production tasks consisting of two object arrangements which indicate localization were done by total 80 participants 40 of whom were female and 40 of whom were male. This study presents a discussion based on the data which were obtained from the production tasks by the participants. The first highlighted finding of this study is that intrinsic and relative frames of reference are used to convey the relation of localization between two objects in Turkish. On the other hand, the features of objects which are figure and ground affect directly the selection of spatial frames of reference in Turkish is the other finding of this study. So much so that frequency of their usage varies according to the features of objects which are figure and ground and their arrangements. It was determined that gender was not variable in the selection of spatial frames of reference within the scope of research questions of this study. Besides that, there was not a significant difference in terms of relative frame of reference usage between the participants from social science and physical science, tendency of intrinsic frame of reference usage was higher in the participants from physical science.

Keywords

• space
• spatial language
• spatial frames of reference