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

• Published in: Developmental science Vol. 24; no. 6; pp. e13116 - n/a
• Main Authors: Ünal, Ercenur, Richards, Catherine, Trueswell, John C., Papafragou, Anna
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Wiley 01.11.2021; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Accuracy; Blindness; causative events; change blindness; Child, Preschool; Cognition; Cognition & reasoning; cross‐linguistic differences; English; event cognition; event perception; Goals; Homology; Humans; Language; Linguistics; Perception; Preschool Children; Proxy; thematic roles; Turkish; change blindness; cross-linguistic differences; event cognition; causative events; thematic roles; event perception
• ISSN: 1363-755X; 1467-7687; 1467-7687
• DOI: 10.1111/desc.13116

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 English‐speaking 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.