Thematic roles: Core knowledge or linguistic construct?

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.