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Temporal construal in sentence comprehension depends on linguistically encoded event structure
1Central European University, Vienna, Austria.
Cognition
|October 19, 2024
Summary
People infer temporal order in language based on event structure. Static states are understood to precede dynamic events, influencing our understanding of time.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Psycholinguistics
- Event Cognition
Background:
- Understanding temporal order is crucial for world comprehension.
- Linguistic expression of temporal order is often implicit.
- Distinctions exist between static states and dynamic events in perception and language processing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if event-structural properties influence temporal order inference in language comprehension.
- To test the prediction that states precede events in mental construal.
Main Methods:
- Conducted seven pre-registered video-sentence matching experiments.
- Experiments were conducted in both English and German.
- Total participant count was 674.
Main Results:
- Participants consistently inferred that states precede events.
- This temporal inference was observed across both languages.
- Findings support the role of event-structural properties in temporal understanding.
Conclusions:
- Temporal language comprehension relies on event-structural properties.
- The study arbitrates between competing theories of temporal comprehension.
- Advances models of how event cognition and language integrate to represent time.
Keywords:
Discourse pragmaticsEvent cognitionLinguistic event typeRelative clausesTemporal construalVideo-sentence matching taskMore Related Videos
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