Room descriptions∗

The research reported here was supported in part by grants from the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Human Development Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It could not have been carried out without the aid of several student assistants. Tali Arbel collected the data and helped in the initial states of the analysis; Joseph Glickson and Ilan Yaniv helped in the later stages of the analysis; Helen Baron and Ruthy Fortes went over the final draft. I thank them for all their comments and criticism.

Abstract

Verbal descriptions of rooms were collected and analyzed. The analyses are based on the initial selection of an optimal factorization of rooms and are further conducted on the level of single description units, sequencing of such units, and the global structure of the description. On all levels of analysis, correspondences are noted between the underlying cognitive structures and the particular linguistic forms in which they are expressed. It is noted that linguistic constructions may serve as markers for peculiar patterns in the structure of the description. Together, the different analyses indicate that the act of describing is not based on a naive‐realistic mapping of things and words. Rather, descriptions presuppose a cognitive structuring of the world which may not be expressed by simple recursive algorithms.

Notes

The research reported here was supported in part by grants from the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Human Development Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It could not have been carried out without the aid of several student assistants. Tali Arbel collected the data and helped in the initial states of the analysis; Joseph Glickson and Ilan Yaniv helped in the later stages of the analysis; Helen Baron and Ruthy Fortes went over the final draft. I thank them for all their comments and criticism.