Conceptual Event Units of Putting and Taking in Two Unrelated Languages

Conceptual Event Units of Putting and Taking in Two Unrelated Languages Rebecca Defina (rebecca.defina@mpi.nl) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics & International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, 6500AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands Asifa Majid (asifa.majid@mpi.nl) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 6500AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Abstract People automatically chunk ongoing dynamic events into discrete units. This paper investigates whether linguistic structure is a factor in this process. We test the claim that describing an event with a serial verb construction will influence a speaker’s conceptual event structure. The grammar of Avatime (a Kwa language spoken in Ghana) requires its speakers to describe some, but not all, placement events using a serial verb construction which also encodes the preceding taking event. We tested Avatime and English speakers’ recognition memory for putting and taking events. Avatime speakers were more likely to falsely recognize putting and taking events from episodes associated with take- put serial verb constructions than from episodes associated with other constructions. English speakers showed no difference in false recognitions between episode types. This demonstrates that memory for episodes is related to the type of language used; and, moreover, across languages different conceptual representations are formed for the same physical episode, paralleling habitual linguistic practices. Keywords: Conceptual event units; event segmentation; serial verb constructions; linguistic relativity. Introduction Events occur in a continuous stream with no clear boundaries between them. Despite this continuity, we think and talk about events in terms of discrete and divisible units. Previous research has largely focused on the factors influencing the segmentation of events. This paper examines the question from a complementary perspective: what factors might lead event elements to be grouped together into a single conceptual event unit. When we perceive ongoing activity, we segment it automatically and unconsciously (Kurby & Zacks, 2008; Zacks et al., 2001a). The conceptual event units thus created are structured hierarchically. Each event unit is made up of smaller units, which in turn combine to form larger units (Zacks, Tversky, & Iyer, 2001b). So, what counts as a single conceptual event unit depends to some extent on which level of granularity we are talking about. The choice of granularity level appears to be made at the point of reporting. Prior to that, people segment events at multiple levels of granularity simultaneously (Zacks, Speer, Swallow, Braver, & Reynolds, 2007). Previous research shows that event units are determined by at least three main factors. First, the inherent properties of events, such as points of greater motion, have a large effect on where event boundaries are placed (Newtson, Engquist, & Bois, 1977; Zacks, 2004). Second, repeated co- occurrence, particularly in different contexts, encourages event elements to be grouped together, regardless of their inherent properties (Avrahami & Karev, 1994). Finally, the particular event schema that the person engages for an event affects the way they segment it (Zacks et al., 2007); for instance, whether or not a person understood the actor’s goal influences the way a participant segments the actor’s behavior (Zacks, 2004). The fact that event schemas influence conceptual event structure suggests that language may also play a role here. This paper explores this possibility. Previous cross-linguistic research on the role of language in event cognition has largely focused on differences in the encoding of manner and path in motion events. The results have been mixed: Some studies have found language effects (e.g., Filipovic, 2011; Finkbeiner, Nicol, Greth, & Nakamura, 2002; Kersten et al., 2010), but others have not (e.g., Gennari, Sloman, Malt, & Fitch, 2002; Loucks & Pederson, 2011; Papafragou, Massey, & Gleitman, 2002). More recently, scholars have begun to explore other aspects of language and how they might influence event cognition, particularly with respect to causal actions (e.g., Fausey & Boroditsky, 2011; Wolff, Jeon, & Li, 2009). For example, Wolff et al. (2009) found that the semantic property of whether or not a language allowed an intermediary actor to function as an agent affected both the syntactic and non- linguistic partitioning of events, consistent with the proposal that language may play a role in event segmentation. In Wolff et al.’s (2009) study both the semantic and the syntactic differences are potential instigators of the non- linguistic event segmentation patterns. The current study narrows in on the potential link between syntactic encoding in particular and the concomitant non-linguistic partitioning of events. One type of syntactic structure that is particularly interesting for event cognition is serial verb constructions (SVCs).These constructions allow multiple verbs to be placed within a single clause without coordination or subordination (Aikhenvald, 2006; Durie, 1997). The particular syntactic features vary across languages, though there is a shared set of core, prototypical features