Spatial frames of reference in Yucatec: Referential promiscuity and task-specificity

A referential communication task conducted with five pairs of native speakers of Yucatec Maya produced evidence of " referential promiscuity" , the unrestricted availability of spatial frames of reference (FoRs) and the lack of a default perspective. Speakers switched freely between FoRs and often combined multiple types in single descriptions. In contrast, a recall memory experiment conducted with 18 speakers revealed a strong bias toward responses consistent with the use of geocentric FoRs. It is argued that referential promiscuity makes FoR selection more task-specific, preventing the linguistic conditioning of spatial reference in internal cognition predicted for populations with more constrained linguistic usage.