Mapping Events onto Language

人们谈论他们的视觉世界中的事件的方式似乎既自然又轻松。然而，这些事件必须在口语和思想语言中表现出来，可以说，尽管有几十年的语言和认知研究，人们在这两种语言之间进行翻译的过程仍然是一个争论的问题。 这个研究问题很复杂，因为语言在编码最简单和最熟悉的事件的方式上有很大的不同。这种跨语言的变异在世界各地的语言中很常见，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，问题是是否存在事件认知的普遍成分，以及事件信息的语言编码是否对这些成分的运作产生影响。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Papafragou博士和Trueswell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上。表征，以及这些表征是否影响视觉世界的概念组织。他们的研究提供了一种创新和多管齐下的方法来研究心灵研究中最基本的主题之一，即人类的感知和认知如何与语言能力联系。由于其彻底的跨学科性质，该项目为认知科学的研究生和本科生提供了独特的培训，包括眼动追踪，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.