He Gave My Nose a Kick or He Kicked My Nose? Argument Structure Alternations and Event Construal

Research output: Contribution to Book/Report typesChapterpeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

The most fundamental function of language is to enable people to share mental models of their worlds. For a comprehender, the given mental model she is building will be shaped by the lexical items, and also by the syntactic structures, that a speaker is using. In this chapter, I review literature that unearths the mental models formed by comprehenders, based on the grammatical structure they encounter, as mutually informative for both linguistic theory and event and object cognition. This chapter uses the well-studied case of light verb constructions and reviews data from a range of experimental studies that investigated how linguistic structure shapes core aspects of mental models: the conceptualization of event participants, and temporal structure in events.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPsychology of Learning and Motivation - Advances in Research and Theory
EditorsKara D. Federmeier, Duane G. Watson
PublisherAcademic Press Inc.
Pages337-360
Number of pages24
ISBN (Print)9780128150863
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2018
Externally publishedYes

Publication series

NamePsychology of Learning and Motivation - Advances in Research and Theory
Volume68
ISSN (Print)0079-7421

Keywords

  • Argument structure
  • Event construal
  • Eye-tracking
  • Language comprehension
  • Lexical aspect
  • Light verb constructions
  • Linguistic architecture
  • Mass-count syntax
  • Situation models
  • Thematic roles

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