Spatial frames of reference in Sumu-Mayangna

A linguistic spatial task, conducted with five dyads of Sumu-Mayangna speakers, provides evidence that while speakers have diffuse access to spatial Frames of Reference (FoRs), the direct was most preferred. Further, the absolute FoR is found to be restricted to the lateral/east-west axis, with older generations displaying a greater proportion of use than younger ones. In addition, the possible exploitation of a meronymy system is discussed. A nonlinguistic spatial memory task indicates a bias toward an absolute solution type, and this partly mirrors observed trends in the linguistic task, providing some evidence for alignment between language and cognition.