Event Representation in Language and Cognition

by Edited by Jürgen Bohnemeyer , Eric Pederson

• ISBN13: 9780521898348
• ISBN10: 052189834X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-02-14
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Event Representation in Language and Cognition examines new research into how the mind deals with the experience of events. Empirical research into the cognitive processes involved when people view events and talk about them is still a young field. The chapters by leading experts draw on data from the description of events in spoken and signed languages, first and second language acquisition, co-speech gesture and eye movements during language production, and from non-linguistic categorization and other tasks. The book highlights newly found evidence for how perception, thought, and language constrain each other in the experience of events. It will be of particular interest to linguists, psychologists, and philosophers, as well as to anyone interested in the representation and processing of events.

Author Biography

Jrgen Bohnemeyer is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. He is the author of The Grammar of Time Reference in Yukatek Maya (2002). Eric Pederson is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Oregon. He is the co-editor (with Jan Nuyts) of Language and Conceptualization (Cambridge, 1997) and Perspectives on Language and Conceptualization (1993).

Table of Contents

Figures	p. vii
Contributors	p. x
Acknowledgments	p. xii
On representing events - an introduction	p. 1
Event representation in serial verb constructions	p. 13
The macro-event property: The segmentation of causal chains	p. 43
Event representation, time event relations, and clause structure: A crosslinguistic study of English and German	p. 68
Event representations in signed languages	p. 84
Linguistic and non-linguistic categorization of complex motion events	p. 108
Putting things in places: Developmental consequences of linguistic typology	p. 134
Language-specific encoding of placement events in gestures	p. 166
Visual encoding of coherent and non-coherent scenes	p. 189
Talking about events	p. 216
Absent causes, present effects: How omissions cause events	p. 228
References	p. 253
Index	p. 278
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