1887
Volume 5, Issue 2
  • ISSN 2214-3157
  • E-ISSN: 2214-3165
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

In the children’s film , toys spring to life when their human owners are away, creating an alternative world of transferred animacy relations signalled by visual and linguistic cues. The storylines and characters explore the nature of animacy and relationships between conspecifics and ‘others’. Our analysis focuses on the use of referring expressions over the course of the narrative, as they reflect the animacy of their referents. We relate these findings to well-established scales of animacy which link our perception of the world to the categories imposed by language. We find that, as predicted by models of animacy proposed by Dahl (2008) and Yamamoto (1999) , among others, shifts in reference – specifically from common noun to proper noun to pronoun, and from collective to individuated referents – reflect characters’ shifting conceptualisation of, and empathy with, each other. We argue that referring expressions are used at key points in the film script to subtly mediate accessible cues to animacy like eyes, speech and motion, and to guide viewers’ empathies and allegiances, extending our understanding of animacy beyond ordinary anthropocentrism.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/ijolc.00007.nel
2018-06-28
2023-10-03
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Ariel, M.
    (1990) Accessing NP antecedents. London: Routledge, Croom Helm.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. (1991) The function of accessibility in a theory of grammar. Journal of Pragmatics, 16(5), 443-463.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Atran, S. , Medin, D. , Lynch, E. , Vapnarsky, V. , Ek’ Ucan, E. & Sousa, P.
    (2001) Folkbiology doesn’t come from folkpsychology: Evidence from Yukatek Maya in cross-cultural perspective. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 1(1), 3–42.10.1163/156853701300063561
    https://doi.org/10.1163/156853701300063561 [Google Scholar]
  4. Biro, S. , Csibra, G. , & Gergely, G.
    (2007) The role of behavioral cues in understanding goal-directed actions in infancy. Progress in brain research, 164, 303–322.10.1016/S0079‑6123(07)64017‑5
    https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6123(07)64017-5 [Google Scholar]
  5. Carey, S.
    (1985) Conceptual change in childhood. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Chen, M.
    (2012) Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.10.1215/9780822395447
    https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822395447 [Google Scholar]
  7. Cherry, J.
    (1992) Animism in Thought and Language. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of California at Berkeley.
  8. Comrie, B.
    (1989) Language Universals and Linguistic Typology (2nd ed). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Dahl, Ö.
    (2008) Animacy and egophoricity: Grammar, ontology and phylogeny. Lingua, 118, 141–150.10.1016/j.lingua.2007.02.008
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2007.02.008 [Google Scholar]
  10. Dahl, Ö. & Fraurud, K.
    (1996) Animacy in grammar and discourse. In T. Fretheim & J. K. Gundel (Eds.), Reference and referent accessibility (pp.47–64). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.38.04dah
    https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.38.04dah [Google Scholar]
  11. DeLancey, S.
    (1981) An interpretation of split ergativity and related patterns. Language, 57, 626–657.10.2307/414343
    https://doi.org/10.2307/414343 [Google Scholar]
  12. Foley, W. A. & Van Valin, R. D., Jr.
    (1984) Functional syntax and universal grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Gelman, S. A. & Opfer, J. E.
    (2002) Development of the animate-inanimate distinction. In U. Goswami (Ed.), Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development (pp.151–166). Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470996652.ch7
    https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470996652.ch7 [Google Scholar]
  14. Gundel, J. K. , Hedberg, N. & Zacharski, R.
    (1993) Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language, 69(2), 274–307.10.2307/416535
    https://doi.org/10.2307/416535 [Google Scholar]
  15. Hurford, J. R.
    (2007) The Origins of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Johnson, M. H. & Morton, J.
    (1991) Biology and Cognitive Development: The Case of Face Recognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Klaiman, M. H.
    (1991) Grammatical Voice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M.
    (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Leopold, D. & Rhodes, G.
    (2010) A Comparative View of Face Perception. Journal of Comparative Psycholology, 124(3), 233–251.10.1037/a0019460
    https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019460 [Google Scholar]
  20. Lockwood, H. T. & McCaulay, M.
    (2012) Prominence hierarchies. Language and Linguistics Compass, 6/7, 431–446.10.1002/lnc3.345
    https://doi.org/10.1002/lnc3.345 [Google Scholar]
  21. Lyons, J.
    (1977) Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Matthews, D.
    (Ed.) (2014) Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition (Trends in Language Acquisition Research, vol. 10). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Milne, C.
    (1974/2016) The Enchanted Places: A Childhood Memoir. London: Pan Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Piper, W.
    (1930) The Little Engine that Could. New York: Platt & Munk.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Rakison, D. H. & Poulin-Dubois, D.
    (2001) Developmental origin of the animate-inanimate distinction. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 209–228.10.1037/0033‑2909.127.2.209
    https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.127.2.209 [Google Scholar]
  26. Searle, J. R.
    (1969) Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139173438
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173438 [Google Scholar]
  27. Siewierska, A.
    (1991) Functional Grammar. London and New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. (1993) Subject and object order in written Polish: Some statistical data. Folia Linguistica, 27(1/2), 147–169.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Trompenaars, T. , Hogeweg, L. , Stoop, W. & de Hoop, H.
    (in review). The language of an inanimate narrator. (submitted to Open Linguistics, special issue, ‘Effects of animacy in grammar and cognition’, D. Nelson & V. -A. Vihman (Eds.) to appear 2018).
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Tsutsumi, S. , Ushitani, T. , Tomonaga, M. & Fujita, K.
    (2012) Infant monkeys’ concept of animacy: the role of eyes and fluffiness. Primates, 53, 113–119.10.1007/s10329‑011‑0289‑8
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-011-0289-8 [Google Scholar]
  31. Whedon, J. , Stanton, A. , Cohen, J. and Sokolow, A.
    (1995) Toy Story. Original screenplay (unpublished).
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Williams, M.
    (1922) The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real)New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Yamamoto, M.
    (1999) Animacy and Reference: A cognitive approach to corpus linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.46
    https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.46 [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1075/ijolc.00007.nel
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/ijolc.00007.nel
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error