Interpersonal verbs: Implicit causality of action verbs and contextual factors

Abstract

The hypothesis that the degree of contextual dependence of interpersonal verbs (as defined by Semin and Fiedler (1988)

Normative study of the implicit causality of 100 interpersonal verbs in Spanish

“…Different variables unrelated to the verb (e.g., sentence structure: active or passive) have been manipulated, even in sentences that describe interactions between inanimate entities (e.g., Au, 1986;Corrigan, 2001;Corrigan & Stevenson, 1994;Frazier, Clifton, & Randall, 1983;Garnham et al, 1992;Garvey & Caramazza, 1974;Garvey et al, 1974Garvey et al, -1975Grober et al, 1978;Rudolph, 1997;Rudolph & Först-erling, 1997a). One of the variables of interest that has been manipulated is gender (Lafrance, Brownell, & Hahn, 1997;Mannetti & De Grada, 1991). For example, Lafrance et al found that gender significantly affects perception of causality in the personal interactions verbs describe.…”

Verb argument structure predicts implicit causality: The advantages of finer-grained semantics

“…With all this in mind, it is worth revisiting the most commonly--cited evidence in favor of the world knowledge hypothesis: evidence that factors such as gender and social dominance relations affect IC judgments (Corrigan, 2001;LaFrance et al, 1997;Maass et al, 1989;Mannetti & De Grada, 1991). For instance, Corrigan (2001) found that participants were more likely to declare the object responsible in sentences like (22) (Rudolph & Forsterling, 1997).…”

“…For this reason, it is of interest to a wide range of researchers. The phenomenon has been used to probe the development of causal schemas in children (Au, 1986;Corrigan & Stevenson, 1994), the stability of these schemas across cultures (Brown & Fish, 1983b), and the conceptualization of social relationships and dominance hierarchies (Corrigan, 2001;LaFrance, Brownell, & Hahn, 1997;Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Gun Semin, 1989;Mannetti & De Grada, 1991). Psycholinguists have used IC as a test case for studying the interplay of bottom--up and top--down processing in language comprehension (Featherstone & Sturt, 2010;Garnham, Traxler, Oakhill, & Gernsbacher, 1996;Greene & McKoon, 1995;Guerry, Gimenes, Caplan, & Rigalleau, 2006;Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006;Long & De Ley, 2000;McDonald & MacWhinney, 1995;McKoon, Greene, & Ratcliff, 1993;Shen & Yang, 2006;Stewart, Pickering, & Sanford, 2000;) and the developmental origins of these processes (Pyykkonen, Matthews, & Jarvikivi, 2010).…”

“…While most authors agree that a verb's bias is due to its meaning, they disagree as to what aspect of meaning is relevant (Au, 1986;Brown & Fish, 1983a;Corrigan, 2001;Crinean & Garnham, 2006;LaFrance, Brownell, & Hahn, 1997;Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Gun Semin, 1989;Mannetti & De Grada, 1991;Rudolph & Forstering, 1997;Semin & Fiedler, 1988, 1991. While there are many differences between proposals, accounts can be roughly grouped into three types: the arbitrary semantic tag account, the world knowledge account, and the semantic structure account.…”

“…Much of this work is influenced by Brown and Fish's (1983a) demonstration that IC pronoun biases correlate with offline judgments of causal responsibility (see 7 & 8, above). Subsequent studies also demonstrated that the IC bias is modulated by the relative social status of the characters in the sentences, with higher--status individuals being seen as more causal (Corrigan, 2001;Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Gun Semin, 1989;Mannetti & De Grada, 1991;LaFrance, Brownell, & Hahn, 1997). These observations led many researchers to propose that IC is an inference based on non--linguistic knowledge about who tends to cause certain types of events, rather than being derived directly from the literal meaning of the verb (e.g., Au, 1986;Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006;Maass et al, 1989).…”