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Language and landscape: a cross-linguistic perspective

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Author

Summary, in English

This special issue is the outcome of collaborative work on the relationship between language and landscape, carried out in the Language and Cognition Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. The contributions explore the linguistic categories of landscape terms and place names in nine genetically, typologically and geographically diverse languages, drawing on data from first-hand fieldwork. The present introductory article lays out the reasons why the domain of landscape is of central interest to the language sciences and beyond, and it outlines some of the major patterns that emerge from the cross-linguistic comparison which the papers invite. The data point to considerable variation within and across languages in how systems of landscape terms and place names are ontologised. This has important implications for practical applications from international law to modern navigation systems.

Publishing year

2008

Language

English

Pages

135-150

Publication/Series

Language Sciences

Volume

30

Issue

2-3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • General Language Studies and Linguistics

Keywords

  • Geographical ontology
  • GIS
  • Landscape terms
  • Place names
  • Semantic domain
  • Semplates

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0388-0001