Cognitive Science Speaker Series
Anna Papafragou, Professor of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania
Title: Dynamic events in mind and language
Abstract:
Humans are surprisingly adept at interpreting what is happening around them and organizing this information in terms of dynamic events. Furthermore, across human communities, language is used to describe the events that we experience. But what, exactly, is an event? In this talk, I propose a theory of eventhood that combines insights from logico-philosophical analysis, cognitive psychology and linguistic theory. On this theory, the representational units of events in cognition rely on abstract underlying structure, including temporal boundaries. In that sense, events are similar to objects (since objects also involve abstract structure, including spatial boundaries). This proposal predicts systematic patterns in the way people spontaneously perceive unfolding events. It also explains otherwise mysterious similarities in how events and objects behave as cognitive entities. Finally, this proposal naturally accounts for the existence of a homology between the cognitive and linguistic structure of events. This framework opens up exciting possibilities for future research on how people represent, remember and talk about what happens.
Jillian Sifuentes
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