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Sensing minimal self in sentences involving the speaker
1Division of Language and Culture Studies, Institute of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tokyo, Japan.
Plos One
|August 28, 2025
Summary
Language structure impacts the minimal self. Sentence variations influence speaker agency and ownership, demonstrating how linguistic framing affects embodied experience and self-perception.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- The influence of language on the narrative self is established.
- Research has explored how third-person subject expressions affect agency interpretation.
- The impact of linguistic structures on the minimal self, specifically agency and ownership, remains less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if variations in sentence structure affect the speaker's sense of the minimal self.
- To examine how expressing first-person involvement in causation or perception influences agency and ownership.
- To provide an empirical basis for cognitive linguistic theories on subjective speaker construal.
Main Methods:
- An online experiment was conducted with participants evaluating Japanese sentences.
- Sentences varied in the degree of speaker involvement in causation or perception events.
- Psychological rating scales were used to measure participants' sense of agency and ownership.
Main Results:
- Lower agency was reported in sentences lacking causation or perception compared to those with these elements.
- Agency and ownership were significantly higher in perceiver-prominent sentences versus perceiver-stimulus-prominent sentences.
- The effect of perceiver-stimulus-prominent sentences on ownership varied depending on the perceived stimulus.
Conclusions:
- Linguistic structure variations distinctly impact senses of agency and ownership.
- Findings support the cognitive linguistic view that sentence structures reflect subjective speaker construal.
- Differences in agency and ownership offer an empirically grounded perspective on embodied experience.
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