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CogSci 2025

•

August 01, 2025

•

San Francisco, United States

keywords:

computer-based experiment

interactive behavior

semantics of language

concepts and categories

language comprehension

language production

psychology

linguistics

pragmatics

Grammaticalization is the process by which a lexical item (e.g., noun) acquires a more functional role (e.g., preposition) over time. Grammaticalization is considered largely unidirectional, that is, change from functional to lexical is far less common (Hopper & Traugott, 2003). What is the cause of this unidirectionality? Our experiment tests whether individuals have a preference in the direction of grammaticalization when performing semantic extension in communication. We focus on the phenomenon of using body part nouns as a source of spatial prepositions. We predicted that participants extending body parts to use as prepositions would find the task easier and more intuitive than participants extending prepositions to use as body parts. However, our results show no directional bias, indicating that the historical unidirectional tendency for body parts to be used as spatial relations does not originate in a bias that individuals have for using one to refer to the other.

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