Humans demonstrate a remarkable ability to take other people’s perspectives.  When we watch movies, we find ourselves identifying with the actors, sensing their joys, hopes, fears, and sorrows.  This system of perspective taking relies on neural processes that support body image matching, localization, empathy, and perspective tracking.  These cognitive processes build upon more fundamental processes for the coordination of mind and body. Together, these mechanisms allow us to use language to update our shared mental models of the world.  To do this effectively, language provides a series of cues to facilitate the construction and shifting of perspectives.  These cues include a wide variety of constructions from reflexive pronouns and discourse adverbs to relative clause structures.  Many of the traditional results of psycholinguistic research, such as the processing of competitive attachments and sentential ambiguities, as well as dimensions of typological analysis can be interpreted within the theory of perspective shifting.  In this regard, we can see grammar as arising diachronically from repeated operation of the function of tracking perspectives during conversational interactions.

References on Perspective-taking:

MacWhinney, B. (2008). How mental models encode embodied linguistic perspectives. In R. Klatzky, B. MacWhinney, & M. Behrmann (Eds.), Embodiment, Ego-Space, and Action (pp. 369-410). Lawrence Erlbaum. https://psyling.talkbank.org/years/2008/perspect-symp.pdf

MacWhinney, B. (2013). Using perspective to construct mental models. IEEE AMD Newsletter, 10(2), 4-6. https://psyling.talkbank.org/years/2013/dominey.pdf

McDonald, J., & MacWhinney, B. (1995). The time course of anaphor resolution: Effects of implicit verb causality and gender. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 543-566. https://psyling.talkbank.org/years/1995/time.pdf

MacWhinney, B., & Pléh, C. (1988). The processing of restrictive relative clauses in Hungarian. Cognition, 29(2), 95-141. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(88)90034-0

MacWhinney, B. (1977). Starting points. Language, 53, 152-168. https://psyling.talkbank.org/years/1977/starting.pdf

References on Emergentism more generally:

MacWhinney, B., & O'Grady, W. (Eds.). (2015). The Handbook of Language Emergence. Wiley. https://www.amazon.com.

MacWhinney, B. (2015). Emergentism. In E. Dabrowsksa & D. Divjak (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 689-706). Mouton-DeGruyter. https://psyling.talkbank.org/years/2015/dabrowska.pdf

MacWhinney, B. (2014). Conclusions: Competition across time. In B. MacWhinney, A. Malchukov, & E. Moravcsik (Eds.), Competing motivations in grammar and usage (pp. 364-386). Oxford University Press. https://psyling.talkbank.org/years/2014/competing-conclusion.pdf

Bio

Brian MacWhinney is Teresa Heinz Professor of Psychology, Computational Linguistics, and Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University.  He received his Ph.D. in psycholinguistics in 1974 from the University of California at Berkeley.  With Elizabeth Bates, he developed a model of first and second language processing and acquisition based on competition between item-based patterns. In 1984, he and Catherine Snow co-founded the CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System) Project for the computational study of child language transcript data.  This system has extended to 13 additional research areas such as aphasiology, second language learning, TBI, Conversation Analysis, developmental disfluency and others in the shape of the TalkBank Project. MacWhinney’s recent work includes studies of online learning of second language vocabulary and grammar, situationally embedded second language learning, neural network modeling of lexical development, fMRI studies of children with focal brain lesions, and ERP studies of between-language competition. He also explores the role of grammatical constructions in the marking of perspective shifting, the determination of linguistic forms across contrasting time frames, and the construction of mental models in scientific reasoning.  Recent edited books include The Handbook of Language Emergence (Wiley) and Competing Motivations in Grammar and Usage (Oxford).