In search of a deeper understanding of perspective-taking, the paper aims at isolating the basic components of complex perspectivization tasks. Based on the assumption that perspective is a relational concept constituted by the dynamic relation between a conceptualizer’s point of view and a conceptualized object and, as such, a concept which is shared by both language and cognition, the paper draws a comparison between the developmental stages of cognitive perspectival capabilities, grammatical perspectivization, and viewpoint comprehension in narrative discourse. This comparison leads to a multi-stage model of degrees of perspectival complexity, whereby the most complex tasks in both language and cognition are characterized by a three-point constellation that integrates contrasting internal vs. external perspectives under a superordinated monitoring viewpoint. As a result, the paper argues that a concept of perspective ‘taking’ is not sufficient to capture the specific aspects of L(anguage)-perspectivization, but has to be complemented by a concept of ‘confronting’ perspectives.
The basic meaning of ‘perspective’ refers to the insight that in visual
perception an object is visible only in certain aspects and cannot be viewed in its
entirety without changing the observer’s point of view. In the real world, we
can see either the inside or outside of a house, so the observer has to move his
position if he wants to take another perspective. In an abstract sense,
‘perspective’ can thus be seen as a two-point-relation between an
observer’s origo and (the aspects of) an object in focus, whereas the process
of perspectivization refers to the selection of viewpoint that effects a restriction
of the aspects seen (cf. e.g.
In this very general sense, the concept of perspective has been metaphorically
transferred to the domain of language: language is perspectival in that various
options on the lexical, grammatical, contextual, and conversational level allow for
conceptualizing the same extra-linguistic situation in different manners so that
every utterance is based on a set of choices by the speaker. As a result, the
concept of ‘perspective’ has been applied to various linguistic
phenomena in their different aspects (see for an overview e.g.
The chapter is based on these studies by taking for granted the ubiquity of
viewpoints and the necessity for investigations of multiple viewpoints and their
constellations (
In order to pursue this line of argumentation, the chapter is organized as follows.
Based on the assumption that perspectivization in its abstract sense is a
fundamental concept which is shared by both language and cognition, Section 2 argues
that its basic mechanisms can be isolated by a comparison of cognitive and
linguistic perspectival tasks of different complexity. With respect to
C(ognition)-perspectivization, Section 3 shows that the intricacy of Theory of Mind
(ToM) tasks does not primarily lie within the capability of switching from one
perspective to another, but to evaluate confronting perspectives from an additional,
external viewpoint. This leads to a differentiation between the concept of
perspective-
It is well known that in the perceptual domain, children only gradually come to
understand that an object can be perceived in a different way from a different point
of view, and it is even later that they can judge
Although the concepts of ToM and ‘intersubjectivity’ differ in several
respects (see
In order to address the question of what triggers the increase of perspectival
complexity, it seems thus promising to look at the common features between complex
linguistic and cognitive perspectivization tasks. The basic idea in the following is
thus that if we “break down both language and theory of mind into more basic
components” (
In order to determine the basic components of C-perspectivization a view on
developmental studies seems instructive where the gradual unfolding of perspectival
abilities is described in multiple stages. According to these models, a
child’s viewpoint is at the primary level linked to the
While children at this age are thus capable of taking perspectives, they yet
experience difficulties in more complex perspectival tasks such as the verbal false
belief test.
According to Moll & Meltzoff (
With respect to the concept of perspectivization, this has important implications.
First, a model of perspective as a two-point-relation becomes insufficient since it
has to be complemented by a third reference point from which the contrasting
viewpoints are evaluated, cf. Figure
Concept of perspective as two-point vs. three-point relation.
Second, the three viewpoints are not equivalent but display a hierarchical
difference, since the third reference point is superordinated to the other alternate
ones. The hierarchy of the viewpoints requires the simultaneous activation of both
levels of the viewpoint constellation and their relationship to each other.
According to Perner (
[…] a child capable of mental metarepresentation who, for instance,
represents that a picture is a representation needs to construct a mental model
containing two substructures and their relationship. One structure has to
represent the picture (as a physical entity) and the other what the picture
depicts (its interpretation), and, very importantly, the model has to include
links between these two structures representing how the picture relates to the
depicted. (
For complex perspectivization tasks it is thus not sufficient to select one out of
different equivalent viewpoints but to hold the whole viewpoint constellation in
mind by evaluating contrasting alternatives from an external reference point with
respect to their relationship to each other. As a result, the relationship between
the different viewpoints itself becomes the object of the perspectivization process.
The observations on the development of cognitive perspectivization tasks thus show
that what such tasks require is “not perspective
The ‘full’ concept of perspective thus comprises different degrees of
perspectival complexity (cf. Table
In sum, several degrees of complexities can thus be distinguished, cf. Figure
Degrees of perspectival complexity.
These different degrees of perspectival complexity can also be observed in the
emergence of pictorial perspectivization tasks. As
It thus becomes clear that also with respect to pictorial representations
perspectivization is more than perspective-taking in the sense of a selection of a
certain viewpoint that restricts the aspects of the object in focus. My claim in the
following will be that for L(anguage) perspectivization, the same mechanisms of
viewpoint embedding and viewpoint integration as outlined in Figure
Against the background of the previous section, it will be shown that complex
perspectival phenomena of L-perspectivization such as propositional attitude
ascriptions, grammatical means of epistemicity and evidentiality, and narrative
comprehension share similar viewpoint constellations and are based on the mechanism
of
It is a commonplace that language as “an elaborated metarepresentational
device” (
Theory of mind is the ability to mind read or imagine how another individual sees the world. It is encapsulated in the statement: “I believe that you think the world is flat.”
The analogy seems quite obvious since complement clauses like the one in (1)
(1)
I believe that you think the world is flat.
seem to reflect ToM as the ability to imagine another individual’s mental
state insofar as the embedding structure of two mental state predicates puts two
different subjects of consciousness on stage (i.e.
(2)
He believes
that
p [the world is flat]
a.
“Yes, he does.” (referring to the character’s intensional state)
b.
“No, it is not.” (referring to the truth value of the embedded proposition)
This complement structure is yet not a given. When children start producing
sentences like
Note that the observations so far hold for first order sentences like in (2)
which refer to one subject of consciousness only. In (1), the structure is even
more complex since it involves the embedding of another person’s mental
state and thus multiplies the relations between the different viewpoints. There
is (i) a potential contrast between the two speaker beliefs (
(3)
a.
The world is flat and the world is not flat. → contradicting
b.
I believe that the world is flat, and you believe that it is not. → contrasting
The concept of perspective-
(4)
Little Red Riding Hood
a.
believes
that
b.
believes:
*
→
internal perspective (PoV = Little Red Riding Hood)
→
In (4), Little Red Riding Hood believes that the one lying in the bed is her grandmother, whereas the reader knows that this is not in line with the reality of the story world. The denotation of the one lying in the bed as “the wolf” thus cannot reflect the perspective of Little Red Riding Hood, but an external viewpoint which has to be reconstructed from the communicative context. This is seen in the fact that the denotation as “the wolf” is not possible in the direct speech construction in (4b) that reflects Little Red Riding Hood’s perspective. (4a) thus integrates two different perspectives: the viewpoint of Little Red Riding Hood whose belief system does not contain the fact that the one lying in her grandmother’s bed is the wolf, and an external point of view which contains the knowledge about the fact that the one lying in bed is actually the wolf. The latter is not explicitly marked in the linguistic structure but can be reconstructed from ‘outside’.
At this point, it is important to be precise about the notion of
In sum, it is thus trivially true that (1) is perspective-
In a wide sense of the term, grammar is genuinely perspectival in that every
grammatical paradigm offers a choice of alternatives. In a more narrow sense,
grammar is linked to perspectivization insofar as it locates the speaker’s
deictic origo that determines the ‘view’ of the verbal event
situation (cf. the approaches by
Nevertheless, tense markers are prototypical shifters insofar as they shift the
focus on the displaced viewpoint whereas the primary origo is only maintained in
the background. This is different for markers of evidential and epistemic
modality that display a more complex perspectival structure. As laid out in the
introductory section, there seems to be a strong link between the development of
ToM capabilities and the comprehension of epistemic and evidential modality that
is a rather late development in language acquisition (
(5)
a.
I think of cake and wine.
*That must be cake and wine!
b.
I think that the one lying in her grandmother’s bed is the wolf.
The one lying in her grandmother’s bed must be the wolf!
I think that p [the creature is the wolf]
In contrast to (5a), (5b) leads to the potential for viewpoint contrasts between the level of the sentence subject and the level of the speaker, and as such, the potential for an internal1 and an external1 view in the structural sense (i.e. inside vs. outside the proposition). This is also a crucial difference in comparison to the perspectival structure of root modals, cf. (6).
(6)
a.
Little Red Riding Hood must walk through the woods in order to see her grandma.
→ ‘She is obliged to do so.’
b.
Little Red Riding Hood must be walking through the woods right now.
→ ‘I (i.e. the speaker) guess that she is doing so right now’
(but reality could teach us otherwise).
Root modals like in (6a) are characterized by their biphasicness, since they
refer to two different time intervals, the temporal interval of the modal in the
real world (i.e. the time for which the obligation holds) and the time interval
of the event denoted by the infinitive complement in a possible world. As such,
they display the potential for a focus shift from the present viewpoint to the
future event, as seen in the fact that modals constitute a grammaticalization
source for future tenses (cf.
(7)
Biphasic structure of (present tense) modal verbs:
a.
root meaning
b.
epistemic meaning
(I = intervall; ts = speech time; te = event time; P = proposition)
The perspectival complexity of (7b) is thus based both on the structural
embedding of viewpoints (i.e. inside vs. outside the proposition), the
distinction between two belief contents, and a contrast of veridicality on the
propositional level, i.e. the fact that the proposition could be false. So once
again, the construction integrates external and internal viewpoints at the same
time. As such, they display a pattern of viewpoint integration (i.e. pattern
(iv) in Table
The degrees of perspectival complexity are also identifiable for
perspectivization in narrative contexts. Narratives are perspectival structures
par excellence since they integrate viewpoints of different characters and
narrators and thus offer a set of possible alternate perspectives that allow for
viewpoint switches within the text. However, also narrative perspectivization is
more than perspective-taking for at least two reasons. First, the different
viewpoints are not equivalent alternatives since the viewpoints of characters
and narrators can be embedded in each other (cf.
[…] viewpoints are organized hierarchically and in terms of a network,
with local viewpoint choices achieving overall coherence in what one might
call a top-level or ‘Discourse Viewpoint’ space, from which
lower-level viewpoint choices are overseen. (
As a result, different layers of perspectivization arise. This can be best illustrated by a look at Free Indirect Discourse (FID), a perspectival pattern that is restricted to narrative discourse mode only and thus allows for some insights with respect to the structure of narration in general, cf. (8).
(8)
She was glad. Tomorrow was finally the day she was to see her granny again!
As (8) shows, FID blends together two different viewpoints (cf.
As laid out before, the ‘internal’ vs. ‘external’ can refer to two different aspects, namely (i) the hierarchical difference between the communicative levels of discourse, whereby the narrator has naturally an ‘outside’ view on the character on the discourse level (whether this character is referentially himself or not) and (ii) the question of whether the contents on the propositional level are ‘thoughts’ that can be accessed directly (‘internally’). Due to its functional ‘outside’ position, the perspective of the narrator allows for simultaneous knowledge about his commitment towards the proposition and the course of the story which can include the mental contents of the protagonists. The narrator knows what the protagonist knows, while the reverse would lead to metaleptic structures. In a structural sense then, FID integrates both internal1 and external1 viewpoints at the same time.
On the other hand, however, FID is also characterized by the fact that on the
discourse level, only one perspective is foregrounded, i.e. the
character’s point of view, while the narrator’s voice remains
‘invisible’ and can only be traced back within the grammar, i.e. the
use of tenses and pronouns.
(9)
Am nächsten Tag
‘The next day, Little Red Riding Hood was to see (literally: ‘should see’) her grandma again.’
While FID foregrounds the perspective of the character, the modal verb
construction in (9) restricts the perspective to the narrator’s viewpoint.
He knows what will happen next, whereas the character on the story level is
unaware of the events to come. Such a view from outside is incompatible with the
character perspective which seems to be the cause why the FoF-reading is blocked
in FID (cf.
So is this perspective-
Furthermore, both constructions are based on a contrast between the
narrator’s and the character’s viewpoint. In FoF, the divergent
states of knowledge trigger a narrative tension since the narrator (and the
reader) knows more than the character about the things to come. In FID, the
report from the character’s perspective could turn out as unreliable or
create ironic effects in contrast to the narrator’s viewpoint. In both
cases, the potential contrasts thus call for a third evaluating viewpoint on a
global level from which the perspectives are monitored. This is in line with
Klein & von Stutterheim (
The establishment of such a global viewpoint is also a fundamental developmental
step, as it is well known that stories of young children commonly lack a
coherent macro-organization (cf.
The comparison between propositional attitude ascriptions, epistemic modality, and
narrative discourse structure has thus shown that the different linguistic phenomena
display the same perspectival principles as complex cognitive perspectivization
tasks. For all instances, it would thus be too simplifying to describe the
perspectivization process as
For both cognitive as well as linguistic perspectivization, the crucial
prerequisite is the givenness of alternate, i.e. divergent viewpoints. This
constitutes the basis for perspective-taking in the sense of selecting one
option out of equivalent possible alternatives in terms of
As soon as there is more than one viewpoint available, the possibility of
viewpoint switch arises. This mechanism is reflected in hypothetical
representations as well as instances of direct discourse (
Such forms of ‘shifting’ (
The qualitative difference between primary and secondary viewpoints can lead
to a hierarchical difference when one viewpoint is in the scope of another,
as for example seen above in the distinction between character and narrator
level in narrative discourse. This leads to a structural difference between
internal1 and external1 viewpoints, in other
words, “between a metarepresentation
Whereas viewpoint embeddings are more complex viewpoint constellations than
viewpoint shifting, FID and FoF constructions, false-belief tasks, and
narrative comprehension display an even more complex perspectival structure,
since they are based on the maintenance of (at least) two diverging
viewpoints and require the capability to process the diverging perspectives
of internal1/2 and external1/2 contexts at the same
time. This integration of (potentially) contrasting viewpoints requires a
third external reference point from which the constellation is evaluated. It
is thus again the process of
Degrees of perspectival complexity in C- and L-perspectivization.
C-perspectivization | L-perspectivization | |
---|---|---|
At the beginning of the chapter, we started with the rather trivial and
uncontroversial fact that perspectivization can be seen as a selection of a
viewpoint that restricts the aspects of the object in focus. In this sense,
perspectivization seems at first to be a matter of
As a consequence, phenomena of L- and C-conceptualization such as false belief understanding, propositional attitude ascriptions, epistemic modality, and narrative discourse have been characterized by the fact that they maintain external and internal perspectives at the same time and thus require the capability of confronting perspectives. In this respect, they could be compared to cubistic paintings that iuxtapose different contrasting viewpoints of one object on the canvas. What makes L-perspectivization even more complex than cubistic pictures is yet the fact that, as seen above, it is necessary to distinguish between different local and global levels in order to account for the perspectival viewpoint constellations. L-perspectivization thus appears to be more comparable to the works of M.C. Escher that integrate local deviant perspectives which cannot be true at the same time but yet constitute coherent pictures as seen from a global level. So, in sum, perspectivization seems to capture nothing less than the relational architecture of language. Seen from this viewpoint, perspectivization is indeed fundamental.
C-perspectivization = perspectivization in cognition, FID = free indirect discourse, FoF = future of fate construction, I = interval, L-perspectivization = perspectivization in language, PoV = point of view, ToM = theory of mind, ts = speech time, te = event time, P = proposition
For further differentiation of these two levels see Moll & Meltzoff 2011 and Section 3.
Cf. the different (families of) theories such as ‘theory theory’,
‘simulation theory’, and ‘interaction theory’ (see
But see the two-system approach by Apperly & Butterfill (
As a reaction on the study of Onishi & Baillargeon (
Whether pretend plays are only based on dual representations or require
metarepresentational capacities (and, as such, more than
‘perspective-taking’) is of controversial discussion. While they
display an affinity to metarepresentational tasks in presupposing the awareness
of pretending and, as such, a self-conscious reflection, it is a well-known fact
that pretend plays are observed in children much earlier than the fourth year.
Furthermore, it has been argued that pretend plays do not necessarily require
second-order representations (
The false-belief test as a standard setting for testing ToM capabilities has been
criticized by e.g. Bloom & German (
Similar conclusions can be drawn with respect to the ‘Smarties test’ where children are confronted with an unexpected content. This test also requires to hold active one’s own present view (content = pencils) and the former state of belief (content = sweets) as well as the different knowledge systems of the testee and another person who does not know yet that the box does not contain sweets.
Note that the ‘three-point’ refers to a viewing situation between an
observer, the observed entity and the external view on the relation in-between.
As such, it is not the same as ‘joint attention’, i.e. a
communication process of (at least) two people focusing on the same object of
conversation which is commonly described in terms of ‘triangulation’
but does not require any higher-order intentions. In terms of
perspective-taking, Moll & Metzloff (
Note that metarepresentation according to this definition is not the same as
‘a representation of a representation’ (see
This hierarchical difference is independent from the fact whether the narrator is fleshed out on the discourse level as a figural instance or remains covert.
The narrator’s invisibility has even led to the fact that FID has been a
major argument in challenging the view that every narrative necessarily presumes
a narrator (cf. e.g.
These steps are also compatible with the model by Dancygier (
The author is thankful to the editors and four anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions on a previous version of this paper.
The author has no competing interests to declare.