If you want a quick kiss, make it count: How choice of syntactic construction affects event construal
Name
1-s2.0-S0749596X16302480-main.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
715.74 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
90c68e4e55e64367fe176a358570a17c
Author(s)
Wittenberg, Eva
Levy, Roger
Date Issued
2017
Journal
Journal of Memory and Language
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Wittenberg, E., and R. Levy. "If You Want a Quick Kiss, Make It Count: How Choice of Syntactic Construction Affects Event Construal." Journal of Memory and Language 94 (2017): 254-71.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2016 The Author(s) When we hear an event description, our mental construal is not only based on lexical items, but also on the message's syntactic structure. This has been well-studied in the domains of causation, event participants, and object conceptualization. Less studied are the construals of temporality and numerosity as a function of syntax. We present a theory of how syntax affects the construal of event similarity and duration in a way that is systematically predictable from the interaction of mass/count syntax and verb semantics, and test these predictions in six studies. Punctive events in count syntax (give a kiss) and durative events in mass syntax (give advice) are construed as taking less time than in transitive frame (kiss and advise). Durative verbs in count syntax (give a talk), however, result in a semantic shift, orthogonal to duration estimates. These results demonstrate how syntactic and semantic structure together systematically affect event construal.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JML.2016.12.001
