Aspect and Narrative Event Segmentation
Time is central to human cognition, both in terms of how we understand the world and the events that unfold around us as well as how we communicate about those events. As such, language has morphological systems, such as temporal adverbs, tense, and aspect to convey the passage of time. The current...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of California Press
2019-03-01
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| Series: | Collabra: Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.collabra.org/articles/182 |
| _version_ | 1818417102760968192 |
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| author | Daniel P. Feller Anita Eerland Todd R. Ferretti Joseph P. Magliano |
| author_facet | Daniel P. Feller Anita Eerland Todd R. Ferretti Joseph P. Magliano |
| author_sort | Daniel P. Feller |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Time is central to human cognition, both in terms of how we understand the world and the events that unfold around us as well as how we communicate about those events. As such, language has morphological systems, such as temporal adverbs, tense, and aspect to convey the passage of time. The current study explored the role of one such temporal marker, grammatical aspect, and its impact on how we understand the temporal boundaries between events conveyed in narratives. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants read stories that contained a target event that was either conveyed with a perfective (e.g., watched a movie) or imperfective aspect (e.g., was watching a movie) and engaged in an event segmentation task. Events described in the perfective aspect were more often perceived as event boundaries than events in the imperfective aspect, however, event duration (long vs. short) did not impact this relationship in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 demonstrated that readers were sensitive to grammatical aspect and event duration in the context of a story continuation task. Overall this study demonstrates that grammatical aspect interacts with world knowledge to convey event structure information that influences how people interpret the end and beginning of events. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-14T12:01:27Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-b001175f312f40a88a23844f2f299413 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2474-7394 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-14T12:01:27Z |
| publishDate | 2019-03-01 |
| publisher | University of California Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Collabra: Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-b001175f312f40a88a23844f2f2994132022-12-21T23:01:59ZengUniversity of California PressCollabra: Psychology2474-73942019-03-015110.1525/collabra.182120Aspect and Narrative Event SegmentationDaniel P. Feller0Anita Eerland1Todd R. Ferretti2Joseph P. Magliano3Department of Learning Sciences, Georgia State UniversityUtrecht Institute of Linguistics, Utrecht UniversityDepartment of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityDepartment of Learning Sciences, Georgia State UniversityTime is central to human cognition, both in terms of how we understand the world and the events that unfold around us as well as how we communicate about those events. As such, language has morphological systems, such as temporal adverbs, tense, and aspect to convey the passage of time. The current study explored the role of one such temporal marker, grammatical aspect, and its impact on how we understand the temporal boundaries between events conveyed in narratives. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants read stories that contained a target event that was either conveyed with a perfective (e.g., watched a movie) or imperfective aspect (e.g., was watching a movie) and engaged in an event segmentation task. Events described in the perfective aspect were more often perceived as event boundaries than events in the imperfective aspect, however, event duration (long vs. short) did not impact this relationship in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 demonstrated that readers were sensitive to grammatical aspect and event duration in the context of a story continuation task. Overall this study demonstrates that grammatical aspect interacts with world knowledge to convey event structure information that influences how people interpret the end and beginning of events.https://www.collabra.org/articles/182grammatical aspectsituation modelsnarrative processingevent segmentationlexical aspect |
| spellingShingle | Daniel P. Feller Anita Eerland Todd R. Ferretti Joseph P. Magliano Aspect and Narrative Event Segmentation Collabra: Psychology grammatical aspect situation models narrative processing event segmentation lexical aspect |
| title | Aspect and Narrative Event Segmentation |
| title_full | Aspect and Narrative Event Segmentation |
| title_fullStr | Aspect and Narrative Event Segmentation |
| title_full_unstemmed | Aspect and Narrative Event Segmentation |
| title_short | Aspect and Narrative Event Segmentation |
| title_sort | aspect and narrative event segmentation |
| topic | grammatical aspect situation models narrative processing event segmentation lexical aspect |
| url | https://www.collabra.org/articles/182 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT danielpfeller aspectandnarrativeeventsegmentation AT anitaeerland aspectandnarrativeeventsegmentation AT toddrferretti aspectandnarrativeeventsegmentation AT josephpmagliano aspectandnarrativeeventsegmentation |