Running or crossing? Children's expression of voluntary motion in English, German, and French

Much research has focused on the expression of voluntary motion (Slobin, 2004; Talmy, 2000). The present study contributes to this body of research by comparing how children (three to ten years) and adults narrated short, animated cartoons in English and German (satellite-framed languages) vs. French (verb-framed). The cartoons showed agents displacing themselves in variable Manners along different Paths (Path saliency and variance were specifically manipulated in four item types). Results show an increase with age across languages in how much information participants expressed. However, at all ages, more motion information was encoded in English and German than in French. Furthermore, language-specific features impacted the content and its organization within utterances in discourse, showing more variation within and across Path types in French than in the satellite-framed languages, resulting in later achievement of adult-like descriptions in this language. The discussion highlights the joint impact of cognitive and typological features on language development.

brain

Knowledge of the brain as a body part is ancient. The term encephalos is found in Homer, but cognitive function was not ascribed to its contents. Certain of the Presocratics linked cognitive capacity to the brain. Similar views existed in the Hippocratic writings. For Plato, the brain’s cognitive role is due to its housing the rational soul. Aristotle regarded heart and brain as exerting sovereign control. In the Hellenistic period, the brain was systematically investigated, its cognitive and sensory capacities experimentally verified. Galen, building on this legacy and applying a rigorous experimental methodology, provided overwhelming proof that the brain mediated sensation and voluntary motion.

The impact of language on gesture in descriptions of voluntary motion in Czech and French adults and children

The present study compares adults, five- and ten-year-old speakers of Czech (a satellite-framed language) and French (a verb-framed language) during the task of describing short animated videos displaying various voluntary motion events. In this research domain, Czech is a hitherto unexplored language whose specifics make it interestingly different from other typologically similar languages. Our focus is on the semantic level of the multimodal expression of motion. We found that in spite of substantial differences in their typical verbal patterns due to the particularities of their respective languages, French speakers and Czech speakers tend to produce the same gestural patterns. Although this phenomenon was observed in all age groups, a cross-language positive effect of age on semantic density of speech as well as gesture was also found. These results are discussed in light of models of multimodal development in language acquisition.

Medicine and Religion in Early Dominican Demonology

The article explores the theories of Roland of Cremona op (†1259), the first Dominican master of theology in Paris and a practising physician, regarding demonic influence on body and soul. Roland uses contemporary neurological theories of voluntary motion and cognition to explain how precisely demons might move the bodily members of possessed subjects, induce seductive images and implant scientific knowledge. The complex interaction of fields of knowledge demonstrated in his unique theories sheds light on the intellectual climate of the early thirteenth century in general, and of the early Parisian Dominican school in particular.