Event Participants and Verbal Semantics: Non-Discrete Structure in English, Spanish and Mandarin

Lilia Rissman, Kyle Rawlins, Barbara Landau

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Verbs are widely analyzed as functions taking a discrete number of arguments (e.g., drink has two arguments but give has three). Recent studies, however, suggest that English verbs encode Instruments as more or less salient (e.g., the Instrument is more salient for slice, less salient for eat). We conducted a judgment task with adult speakers of Spanish and Mandarin and found that verbs in these languages also encode Instruments as having a relative degree of salience, inconsistent with the discrete model of participant encoding.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Subtitle of host publicationCreativity + Cognition + Computation, CogSci 2019
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages960-966
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)0991196775, 9780991196777
StatePublished - 2019
Externally publishedYes
Event41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, CogSci 2019 - Montreal, Canada
Duration: Jul 24 2019Jul 27 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, CogSci 2019

Conference

Conference41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, CogSci 2019
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period7/24/197/27/19

Keywords

  • argument structure
  • event representation
  • experimental semantics
  • thematic roles
  • verbal semantics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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