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Thematic roles: Core knowledge or linguistic construct?

Lilia Rissman1,2, Asifa Majid3

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Cognitive science debates the reality of thematic roles like Agent and Patient. Research shows humans abstract these roles, particularly Agent and Patient, with universal cognitive biases supporting their distinction.

Keywords:
Cognitive developmentConcepts and categoriesPsycholinguisticsSemantics

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • The psychological reality of thematic roles (e.g., Agent, Patient) is debated in cognitive science.
  • Some view them as core knowledge components, while others consider them theoretical constructs without empirical basis.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the extent to which humans represent events using abstract role categories.
  • To determine if these categories are shaped by universal cognitive biases.

Main Methods:

  • Review of psycholinguistic and event cognition experiments (adults, children, infants).
  • Analysis of typological studies using cross-linguistic data.
  • Examination of studies on emerging sign languages.

Main Results:

  • Strong evidence for abstract Agent and Patient role categories with a universal bias for distinction.
  • Clear evidence for abstract Goal and Recipient categories, but mixed findings on their distinctness.
  • Lack of clear evidence for abstraction or universal biases in structuring Instrumental roles.

Conclusions:

  • Humans abstract Agent and Patient roles, supported by universal cognitive biases.
  • Abstraction is evident for Goal and Recipient roles, but universal biases for their distinct encoding are less clear.
  • The Instrumental role shows limited evidence for abstraction or universal structuring biases.