Basic Expressions of Location: Second questionnaire, Wordy version
by Peter Svenonius, CASTL, University of Tromsø
This is a part of a cross-linguistic survey of expressions of spatial relations. Your
collaboration is greatly appreciated!
Below you will find several sentences and some questions about them. The most
useful responses will include translations of some of the numbered sentence into your
native language, together with a word-by-word gloss under the translation (or better
yet, a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss if you can). Any comments you might have
about nuances of meaning that distinguish the English original from your translation,
or alternative ways of expressing the same thing in your language, would be
interesting. For your convenience, there is a separate version of this questionnaire
without instructions, and more space to write answers.
I. BASIC LOCATIVE RELATIONS.
Imagine a house, with some open space around it and a bicycle in the open space. If
somebody who cannot see the bicycle asks you where it is, then you might respond
with one of the following sentences in English, depending on where the bicycle
actually is:
1. The bicycle is in front of the house.
2. The bicycle is behind the house.
3. The bicycle is beside the house.
Q2.1: Please translate the sentences into your own language, and gloss them. For
comparison, please also give an existential variant, like There is a bicycle in front of
the house.
Here are some additional basic relations.
4. The vase is on the table.
5. The woman’s purse is on top of the car.
6. The monkey is above the house.
7. The dog is under the table.
8. The gum is on the bottom of the table.
9. The water pipes are below the street.
Q2.2. Please translate and gloss (4-9).
In many languages, sentences like (1-9) include a nominal element. In English, this
seems to be more or less true of at least (1) (front) and (5) (top) and (8) (bottom), and
might also be true of (3) (-side). For example, you can say
10. The front of the house is painted white.
11. The top of the table is sticky.
However, it is harder to be sure that the noun-words in (1), (5), and (8) are being used
as nouns in those examples. For example, if you say (12), where there is a determiner
the in front of the word front, then the meaning changes.
12. The bicycle is in the front of the house
In (12), the bicycle would be inside the house, whereas in (1) it would be outside the
house. When there is a determiner, the noun can be plural, whereas when there is no
determiner, the noun cannot be plural:
13. The bicycles are in the fronts of the houses.
14. *The bicycles are in fronts of the houses.
(* indicates unacceptable or ungrammatical English). Furthermore, without the
determiner, adjectives cannot be used to modify the word front.
15. The bicycle is in the dark front of the house.
16. *The bicycle is in dark front of the house.
Q2.3: In your translations of (1-9), are there nouns like ‘front,’ ‘top,’ ‘back,’ ‘side,’
and so on? Can you apply tests like the ones in (13-16) to see whether they are being
used as nouns in (1-9)? Please give examples. If they are not nouns, do they have
other uses?
II. PART-WHOLE AND POSSESSOR MARKING
In many languages, expressions like (1-9) are constructed somewhat like possessive
constructions. For example, (1) might come out something like (17) or even (18),
though this is not entirely natural in English (hence the ?).
17. The bicycle is at the front of the house.
18. ?The bicycle is at the house’s front.
Compare the part-whole and possessive constructions:
19. the door of the house
20. the house’s door
21. ?the car of the man
22. the man’s car
Q2.4: In your language, does the relationship of the locative word to the location (e.g.
the relationship of the locative word ‘front’ to the location ‘house’) look like a partwhole relation (the door of the house) or like a possessive relation (the man’s car)?
Please illustrate.
III. FRAME OF REFERENCE
In English, there is an important ambiguity in (1-3). The expression ‘in front of the
house’ can either mean, “at or near the end of the house which is the house’s front”
(e.g. where the front door is), or else, roughly, “between the house and the point of
view adopted for this description,” e.g. the speaker’s point of view. In other words,
looking at a house, I can choose to ignore its “real” front and say of something on
“my” side of the house, that it’s ‘in front of the house.’ Similarly, ‘behind the house’
can mean “at the house’s back” or else “on the other side of the house from me.”
Q2.5: Is your language similar to English, in these respects? In particular, are
sentences like (1-3) ambiguous in a way that (4-9) are not? Please illustrate.
IV. LEFT-RIGHT, EAST-WEST
If you think about it, (23-24) are also ambiguous in this way, but (25-26) are not.
There is only one east, one west, one north, and one south, and there is only one
‘windward’ side (the side that the wind is blowing on).
23. The bicycle is to the left of the house.
24. The bicycle is to the right of the house.
25. The bicycle is to the east of the house.
26. The bicycle is to the windward side of the house.
In English, there are versions of (23-24) which are not ambiguous, for example (27).
27. The bicycle is to the house’s left.
(27) can only refer to a left determined on the basis of the house’s properties; it
cannot mean, “in the left field of the house, from my perspective,” the way (23) can.
Q2.6: If your translations of (23-24) are ambiguous, is there any way to disambiguate
them, the way (27) is unambiguous? Or, if your translations of (23-24) are
unambiguous, are there ways to express the other sense?
V. BASIC LOCATIVE RELATIONS, GROUND WITHOUT INTRINSIC FRONT AND BACK
Now, suppose that instead of a house, the bicycle is near a tree. English uses the same
words to express locations near a tree, as in the following examples.
28. The bicycle is in front of the tree.
29. The bicycle is behind the tree.
30. The bicycle is beside the tree.
31. The bicycle is (to the) left of the tree.
32. The bicyle is (to the) right of the tree.
33. The bicycle is (to the) {north/south/east/west} of the tree.
In English, these are all unambiguous. Since trees don’t normally have fronts or backs
or lefts or rights for speakers of English, these sentences all refer to areas as seen from
a particular perspective. However, in some languages, trees are assumed to have
fronts, for example the side that the tree leans toward, or the side with the thickest
branch.
Q2.7: Is your language like English in this respect, or different? Please give some
examples.
VI. ADDITIONAL RELATIONS
Here are some additional relations which are expressed in a similar fashion in
English.
34. The bicycle is inside the house.
35. The bicycle is outside of the house.
36. The bicycle is between the trees.
37. The bicycle is among the trees.
38. The monkey is near the mango.
39. The monkey is between the mangoes.
40. The monkey is among the mangoes.
41. There is a fence around the house. (meaning, ‘encircling’)
42. There are cows around town. (meaning, ‘here and there’)
43. There is a fence across the meadow. (meaning, ‘dividing’)
44. There is a bridge across the river. (meaning, ‘spanning’)
45. There is a curtain over the opening. (meaning, ‘covering’)
46. There is a path along the river.
47. There is a path past the temple.
Q2.8: Please provide additional examples of spatial relations in your language, for
example by translating (34-47), or by making up your own illustrative examples.