The Role of Language in Expressing Agentivity in Caused Motion Events: A Cross-Linguistic Investigation

Abstract

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.