Representing agents, patients, goals and instruments in causative events: A cross‐linguistic investigation of early language and cognition

Abstract

Although it is widely assumed that the linguistic description of events is based on a structured representation of event components at the perceptual/conceptual level, little empirical work has tested this assumption directly. Here, we test the connection between language and perception/cognition cross-linguistically, focusing on the relative salience of causative event components in language and cognition. We draw on evidence from preschoolers speaking English or Turkish. In a picture description task, Turkish-speaking 3-5-year-olds mentioned Agents less than their English-speaking peers (Turkish allows subject drop); furthermore, both language groups mentioned Patients more frequently than Goals, and Instruments less frequently than either Patients or Goals. In a change blindness task, both language groups were equally accurate at detecting changes to Agents (despite surface differences in Agent mentions). The remaining components also behaved similarly: both language groups were less accurate in detecting changes to Instruments than either Patients or Goals (even though Turkish-speaking preschoolers were less accurate overall than their Englishspeaking peers). To our knowledge, this is the first study offering evidence for a strong-even though not strict-homology between linguistic and conceptual event roles in young learners cross-linguistically.

The evolutionary origins of syntax: Event cognition in nonhuman primates

“…When people view events, there is a strong tendency to fixate earlier on the agent than the patient (7,8,28). This agent bias also manifests itself in higher accuracy for agents when scanning stimuli very rapidly [<100 ms; (29)(30)(31)], when remembering events (32), or when detecting small changes between events (33). Indeed, the bias might be part of core cognition (34) in humans, attested early on in infants (13), and inscribed into fundamental mechanisms of event processing (8,28).…”

Evidence for a Shared Instrument Prototype from English, Dutch, and German

“…One source of evidence is behavior in tasks probing event cognition. For example, change‐detection studies have demonstrated a conceptual asymmetry between Goals and Sources (Lakusta & Landau, 2012 ; Regier & Zheng, 2007 ) and between Goals and Instruments (Ünal et al., 2021 ). Individuals that constitute more prototypical agents given linguistic diagnostics have been shown to be more prototypical agents in nonlinguistic categorization tasks (Rissman & Lupyan, 2021 ).…”

“…When viewing events, English‐speaking adults are also slower to recognize instruments than agents, patients, or goals, as revealed through patterns of eye‐gaze (Wilson, Papafragou, Bunger, & Trueswell, 2011 ). In addition, both English‐ and Turkish‐learning children are less likely to notice changes to an instrument than to a patient or goal in a change‐detection task (Ünal, Richards, Trueswell, & Papafragou, 2021 ).…”

A dissociation between conceptual prominence and explicit category learning: Evidence from agent and patient event roles.

“…Under the theory that these roles are part of core cognition, there may be a single set of categories underlying both linguistic and conceptual processes. The view that event roles are tightly linked across semantic and conceptual domains is supported by studies investigating thematic role hierarchies (Grimshaw, 1990; Levin & Rappaport-Hovav, 2005; Ünal et al, 2021). For example, adults across a range of languages are more likely to mention Goals than Sources when describing motion events (Lakusta & Landau, 2005, 2012; Narasimhan et al, 2012; Papafragou, 2010).…”