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Agents and Patients in Physical Settings: Linguistic Cues Affect the Assignment of Causality in German and Tongan

Linguistic cues may be considered a potent tool for focusing attention on causes or effects. In this paper, we explore how different cues affect causal assignments in German and Tongan. From a larger screening study, two parts are reported here: Part 1 dealt with syntactic variations, including word...

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Autores principales: Bender, Andrea, Beller, Sieghard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5500659/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28736538
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01093
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author Bender, Andrea
Beller, Sieghard
author_facet Bender, Andrea
Beller, Sieghard
author_sort Bender, Andrea
collection PubMed
description Linguistic cues may be considered a potent tool for focusing attention on causes or effects. In this paper, we explore how different cues affect causal assignments in German and Tongan. From a larger screening study, two parts are reported here: Part 1 dealt with syntactic variations, including word order (agent vs. patient in first/subject position) and case marking (e.g., as ergative vs. non-ergative in Tongan) depending on verb type (transitive vs. intransitive). For two physical settings (wood floating on water and a man breaking a glass), participants assigned causality to the two entities involved. In the floating setting, speakers of the two languages were sensitive to syntactic variations, but differed in the entity regarded as causative. In the breaking setting, the human agent was uniformly regarded as causative. Part 2 dealt with implicit verb causality. Participants assigned causality to subject or object of 16 verbs presented in minimal social scenarios. In German, all verbs showed a subject (agent) focus; in Tongan, the focus depended on the verb; and for nine verbs, the focus differed across languages. In conclusion, we discuss the question of domain-specificity of causal cognition, the role of the ergative as causal marker, and more general differences between languages.
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spelling pubmed-55006592017-07-21 Agents and Patients in Physical Settings: Linguistic Cues Affect the Assignment of Causality in German and Tongan Bender, Andrea Beller, Sieghard Front Psychol Psychology Linguistic cues may be considered a potent tool for focusing attention on causes or effects. In this paper, we explore how different cues affect causal assignments in German and Tongan. From a larger screening study, two parts are reported here: Part 1 dealt with syntactic variations, including word order (agent vs. patient in first/subject position) and case marking (e.g., as ergative vs. non-ergative in Tongan) depending on verb type (transitive vs. intransitive). For two physical settings (wood floating on water and a man breaking a glass), participants assigned causality to the two entities involved. In the floating setting, speakers of the two languages were sensitive to syntactic variations, but differed in the entity regarded as causative. In the breaking setting, the human agent was uniformly regarded as causative. Part 2 dealt with implicit verb causality. Participants assigned causality to subject or object of 16 verbs presented in minimal social scenarios. In German, all verbs showed a subject (agent) focus; in Tongan, the focus depended on the verb; and for nine verbs, the focus differed across languages. In conclusion, we discuss the question of domain-specificity of causal cognition, the role of the ergative as causal marker, and more general differences between languages. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-07-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5500659/ /pubmed/28736538 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01093 Text en Copyright © 2017 Bender and Beller. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Bender, Andrea
Beller, Sieghard
Agents and Patients in Physical Settings: Linguistic Cues Affect the Assignment of Causality in German and Tongan
title Agents and Patients in Physical Settings: Linguistic Cues Affect the Assignment of Causality in German and Tongan
title_full Agents and Patients in Physical Settings: Linguistic Cues Affect the Assignment of Causality in German and Tongan
title_fullStr Agents and Patients in Physical Settings: Linguistic Cues Affect the Assignment of Causality in German and Tongan
title_full_unstemmed Agents and Patients in Physical Settings: Linguistic Cues Affect the Assignment of Causality in German and Tongan
title_short Agents and Patients in Physical Settings: Linguistic Cues Affect the Assignment of Causality in German and Tongan
title_sort agents and patients in physical settings: linguistic cues affect the assignment of causality in german and tongan
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5500659/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28736538
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01093
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