As humans, we make sense of the world by organizing our daily experiences in terms of structured events. Events involve multiple participants, referred to as thematic roles. Here, we explore how thematic roles map onto language by investigating how speakers of two typologically different languages (English, Turkish) describe events that involve more peripheral event participants (Recipients, Instruments), whose conceptual status is highly debated. We manipulated the conceptual status of event participants by including events that either ‘require’ or ‘allow’ Recipients and Instruments.
Results showed that the require-allow distinction did not affect mention of recipients and instruments in any language. However, mention of highly optional event participants (e.g., allowed instruments) was affected by language-specific syntactic encoding options. We conclude that mention of participant roles in language is affected by factors beyond the cognitive salience of the roles.

A cross-linguistic investigation of possession-transfer and instrument events in language production

University of Toronto

Christiana Moser

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