Mapping Events onto Language

人们以一种似乎既自然又毫不费力的方式谈论他们视觉世界中的事件。然而，这些事件必须用口语和思维语言来表示，尽管经过几十年的语言和认知研究，但人们在这两种语言之间进行翻译的过程仍然是一个有争议的问题。这个研究问题因语言的编码方式有很大差异而变得复杂，即使是最简单和最熟悉的事件也是如此。这种跨语言的差异在世界各地的语言中都很常见，它们提出了关于语言和思维之间关系的深刻问题。在事件认知的背景下，问题是事件认知是否存在普遍的成分，以及事件信息的语言编码是否对这些成分的操作产生影响。在国家科学基金会的支持下，帕帕法拉古博士和特鲁斯韦尔博士将对说不同语言的成年人进行一系列实验研究，以研究动态展开的事件如何映射到语言表征上，以及这些表征是否影响视觉世界的概念组织。他们的研究为思维研究中最基本的主题之一提供了一种创新的多管齐下的方法，即人类感知和认知如何与语言能力联系。由于其完全跨学科的性质，该项目为研究生和本科生提供了独特的认知科学培训，包括眼球跟踪、跨语言和国际工作。

People talk about events in their visual worlds in a way that seems both natural and effortless. However, these events must be represented in spoken language as well as the language of thought, so to speak, and the processes by which people translate between these two languages remain a matter of debate despite decades of linguistic and cognitive research. This research question is complicated by the fact that languages differ considerably in the way they encode even the simplest and most familiar events. Such cross-linguistic variations are common throughout the world's languages, and they raise deep questions about the relationship between language and thought. In the context of event cognition, the question is whether there are universal components of event cognition, and whether the linguistic encoding of event information has an effect on the operation of those components.With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Papafragou and Dr. Trueswell will conduct a series of experimental studies with adults speaking different languages to study how dynamically unfolding events are mapped onto linguistic representations, and whether these representations affect the conceptual organization of the visual world. Their research offers an innovative and multi-pronged approach to one of the most fundamental topics in the study of the mind, namely how human perception and cognition make contact with the language faculty. Because of its thoroughly interdisciplinary nature, this project provides unique training for graduate and undergraduate students in the cognitive sciences, including eye-tracking, cross-linguistic, and international work.