How humans communicate by spatial language

Extract

[...] The second is the Design of Spatial Representation Hypothesis, which states that a deeper constraint on how spatial cognition encodes the relations among objects is suggested by the limitation in language. Thus, the disparity observed in language is a consequence of the disparity in the spatial representations that the language encodes. This is the theory advocated by the authors. The primary question that remains unanswered is how and to what extent do the what and the where systems interact? Tests on monkeys showed that they were located independently in the cortex and could be independently inhibited, but in order function efficiently, the what requires where information (such as the spatial relationships between various parts of an object) and where requires what (knowing that there is an object at a given point is not particularly useful if you have no idea what it is). [...]

[...] How humans communicate by spatial language In “'What' and ‘Where' in Spatial Language and Spatial Cognition,” Landau and Jackendoff discuss the human ability to express spatial experiences through language (i.e. what things are and where they are). They posit that the organization of spatial language can be used to better understand special cognition. The authors claim to “show that linguistic evidence both converges with and enriches findings from non-linguistic studies of spatial cognition.” They state that the cognitive representation of space is not exclusively visual, haptic or aural because spatial information can be derived from all three faculties. [...]