Event representation

Bracha Nir
Table of contents

Events are fundamental to human experience. As human beings, we conceptualize our experience of the world around us – as well as our internal sensations and experiences – in terms of events. What does your morning or evening look like? What do you do at work, with friends, with family? What is your preferred way of celebrating a birthday, and what is your least favorite thing to have happen? These and other situations or eventualities make the fabric of our daily life. We perceive them, we participate in them, we interpret them, and we can talk about them from various perspectives.

Full-text access is restricted to subscribers. Log in to obtain additional credentials. For subscription information see Subscription & Price.

References

Bach, E.
1986 “The algebra of events.” Linguistics and Philosophy 9: 5–16.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M. G. W.
1987 Form and Function in the Construction of Narratives: Developmental Perspectives . Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley.
Berman, R. A.
2017 “Word class distinctiveness versus polycategoriality in Modern Hebrew.” In Lexical Polycategoriality: Cross-linguistic, Cross-theoretical and Language Acquisition Approaches, ed. by V. Vapnarsky and E. Veneziano, 343–379. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. and B. Nir-Sagiv
2004 “Linguistic indicators of inter-genre differentiation in later language development.” Journal of Child Language 31(2): 339–380. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. and D. I. Slobin
1994Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Bohnemeyer, J. and E. Pederson
2011Event Representation in Language and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J.
1987 “Life as a narrative.” Social Research 54(1): 11–32.Google Scholar
1991 “The narrative construction of reality.” Critical Inquiry 18(1): 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carroll, M. and C. von Stutterheim
2003 “Typology and information organisation: Perspective taking and language-specific effects in the construal of events.” In Typology and Second Language Acquisition, ed. by A. Giacalone Ramat, 365–402. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Casati, R. and A. C. Varzi
2015 “Events.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Google Scholar
Croft, W.
1991Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The Cognitive Organization of Information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2001Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012Verbs: Aspect and Causal Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 “The structure of events and the structure of language.” In The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure (vol. I), ed. by M. Tomasello. London: Taylor & Francis.
CrossRef DOI logo with hyperlink to permanent DOI
Google Scholar
Croft, W. and D. A. Cruse
2004Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Donald, M.
1991Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Harvard: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dor, D.
2015The Instruction of Imagination: Language as a Social Communication Technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, C. J.
1976 “Frame semantics and the nature of language.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280(1): 20–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1987 “A private history of the concept ‘frame’.” Concepts of Case 4: 28.Google Scholar
Givón, T.
1986 “Prototypes: Between Plato and Wittgenstein.” In Noun Classes and Categorization, ed. by C. G. Craig, 77–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. E.
1995Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2006Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, M.
2000 “Why can’t we talk to each other?Lingua 110(4): 235–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Higginbotham, J. F. Pianesi and A. C. Varzi
2000Speaking of Events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hopper, P.
1987 “Emergent grammar.” Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 13: 139–157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hopper, P. J. and S. A. Thompson
1984 “The iconicity of the universal categories ‘noun’ and ‘verb’.” In Iconicity in Syntax, ed. by J. Haiman, 151–183. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
1995 “The category ‘event’ in natural discourse and logic.” In Discourse Grammar and Typology: A Festschrift for John Verhaar, ed. by W. Abraham, T. Givón and S. A. Thompson, 139–150. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997 “Discourse and the category ’verb’ in English.” Language and Communication 17(2): 93–102. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, R.
1990Semantic Structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A.
1992Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Approach to Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Klein, W.
2009 “How time is encoded.” In The Expression of Time, ed. by W. Klein and Ping Li, 39–82. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuebli, J. and R. Fivush
1994 “Children′s representation and recall of event alternatives.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 58(1): 25–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, W.
1972Language in the Inner City. Pennsylvania: University of Philadelphia Press.Google Scholar
2004 “Ordinary events.” Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections 31–43.Google Scholar
2006 “Narrative pre-construction.” Narrative Inquiry 16(1): 37–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G.
1986 “Classifiers as a reflection of mind.” In Noun Classes and Categorization, ed. by C. G. Craig, 13–52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, S. C.
1996 “Relativity in spatial conception and description.” In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, ed. by J. J. Gumperz and S. C. Levinson, 177–203. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mandelblit, N.
2000 “The grammatical marking of conceptual integration: From syntax to morphology.” Cognitive Linguistics 11(3–4): 197–252.Google Scholar
Narrog, H.
2012Modality, Subjectivity, and Semantic Change: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K.
1978 “How young children represent knowledge of their world in and out of language.” In Children’s Thinking: What Develops?, ed. by R. S. Siegler, 225–273. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
1986Event Knowledge: Structure and Function in Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
1993 “Events, narratives, memory: What develops.” In Memory and Affect in Development. The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology 16, ed. by Charles A. Nelson, 1–24. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
1999 “Event representations, narrative development and internal working models.” Attachment & Human Development 1(3): 239–252. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007Young Minds in Social Worlds: Experience, Meaning, and Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oakes, L. M. and L. B. Cohen
1990 “Infant perception of a causal event.” Cognitive Development 5(2): 193–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Petruck, M.
1996 “Frame semantics.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by J.-O. Östman and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://​benjamins​.com​/online​/hop/Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O.
1985 “Events and reification.” In Actions and Events. Perspectives in the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, ed. by E. LePore and B. P. McLaughlin, 162–171. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rosch, E. C. B. Mervis, W. D. Gray, D. M. Johnson and P. Boyes-Braem
1976 “Basic objects in natural categories.” Cognitive Psychology 8(3): 382–439. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schank, R. C. and R. P. Abelson
1977Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures. London: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Sebastián, E. and D. I. Slobin
1994 “Development of linguistic forms: Spanish.” In Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study, ed. by R. A. Berman and D. I. Slobin, 239–284. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associate.Google Scholar
Shen, Y. and R. A. Berman
1997 “From isolated event to action structure: Stages in narrative development.” In Studies of the Psychology of Language in Israel: Psychology of Language Rreading and Writing, ed. by Y. Shimron, 119–145. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. [in Hebrew]Google Scholar
Shipley, T. and J. Zacks
2008Understanding Events: From Perception to Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I.
1987 “Thinking for speaking.” Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 13: 435–445. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1996 “From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking”.” In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, ed. by J. J. Gumperz and S. C. Levison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. S. K. Breinlinger, J. Macomber and K. Jacobson
1992 “Origins of knowledge.” Psychological Review 99(4): 605. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talmy, L.
1978 “The relation of grammar to cognition: A synopsis.” Proceedings of the 1978 Workshop on Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing, 14–24. Association for Computational Linguistics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylor, J. R.
1995Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M.
1992First Verbs: A Case Study of Early Grammatical Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tversky, B.
1986 “Components and categorization.” In Noun Classes and Categorization, ed. by C. G. Craig, 63–75. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vandepitte, S.
2002 “Causality.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by J.-O. Östman and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://​benjamins​.com​/online​/hop/Google Scholar
Vendler, Z.
1967 “Facts and events.” In Linguistics in Philosophy, ed. by Z. Vendler, 122–146. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Verhagen, A.
2007 “Construal and perspectivisation.” In Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens, 48–81. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
von Stutterheim, C. and W. Klein
1989 “Referential movement in descriptive and narrative discourse.” In Language Processing in Social Context, ed. by R. Dietrich and C. F. Graumann. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
von Stutterheim, C. and R. Nüse
2003 “Processes of conceptualization in language production: Language-specific perspectives and event construal.” Linguistics 41(5): 851–881.Google Scholar
von Stutterheim, C. R. Nüse and J. Murcia-Serra
2002 “Cross-linguistic differences in the conceptualisation of events.” In Information Structure in a Cross-linguistic Perspective, ed. by H. Hasselgard, S. Johansson, B. Behrens and C. Fabricius-Hansen, 179–198. New York: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Woodward, A. L.
1998 “Infants selectively encode the goal object of an actor’s reach.” Cognition 69(1): 1–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zacks, J. M. and B. Tversky
2001 “Event structure in perception and conception.” Psychological Bulletin 127(1): 3. DOI logoGoogle Scholar