Park Hae In
Department of Educational Theory and Practice, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, United States.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jun 16;13:878277. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.878277. eCollection 2022.
While understanding and expressing causal relations are universal aspects of human cognition, language users may differ in their capacity to perceive, interpret, and express events. One source of variation in descriptions of caused motion events is agentivity, which refers to the attribution of a result to the agent's action. Depending on the perspective taken, the same event may be described with agentive or non-agentive interpretations. Does language play a role in how people construe and express caused motion events? The present study investigated the use of agentive vs. non-agentive language by speakers of different languages (i.e., monolingual speakers of English and Korean, and Korean learners of English). All three groups described prototypical causal events similarly, using agentive language (active transitive sentences). However, when it came to non-prototypical causal events (where the agent was not shown in the scene), they diverged in their choice of language: English speakers favored agentive language (passive transitive sentences), whereas Korean speakers preferred non-agentive language (intransitive sentences). Korean learners of English patterned with Korean speakers, demonstrating L1 influence on their use of English. These findings highlight the effects of language on motion event construal.
虽然理解和表达因果关系是人类认知的普遍方面，但语言使用者在感知、解释和表达事件的能力上可能存在差异。致使移动事件描述中的一个变化来源是施事性，它指的是将结果归因于施事者的行为。根据所采取的视角，同一事件可能会用施事性或非施事性的解释来描述。语言在人们如何理解和表达致使移动事件中起作用吗？本研究调查了不同语言使用者（即英语和韩语的单语者以及英语学习者）对施事性与非施事性语言的使用。所有三组在描述典型因果事件时都类似地使用了施事性语言（主动及物句子）。然而，当涉及到非典型因果事件（场景中未显示施事者）时，他们在语言选择上出现了分歧：说英语的人更喜欢施事性语言（被动及物句子），而说韩语的人则更喜欢非施事性语言（不及物句子）。学英语的韩国人表现得与说韩语的人一样，显示出母语对他们英语使用的影响
