Our Talk at ELM 2024

I had the pleasure of presenting our latest research at the Experiments in Linguistic Meaning (ELM 2024) conference at the University of Pennsylvania!

🔍 Aspectual Coercion: A New Method to Probe Aspectual Commitments

Our work dives deep into the fascinating world of aspectual coercion, where semantic mismatches in sentences require adjustments in how we understand event timelines. 🕒✨

📝 Abstract

Aspectual coercion arises when there is a semantic mismatch between sentence constituents, necessitating an adjustment in the aspectual classification to align with the sentence’s temporal constraints. Our study introduces a novel method combining aspectual comprehension with event cognition to detect changes in how individuals construe events after reading sentences with varying aspectual information. Participants read sentences—either telic or atelic, with or without coercion—followed by a video clip related to the sentence. They assessed if the actor completed the task and identified any brief interruptions during the event. The results revealed distinct cognitive responses to aspectual coercion, highlighting differences between coercion types. This method advances our understanding of how lexical aspect influences event representation, offering insights into the nuanced effects of aspectual coercion on cognitive processing and event perception.

📊 Key Points

• Telicity and Event Perception: Telic sentences refer to events with inherent endpoints, while atelic sentences denote ongoing activities without specific endpoints.
• Boundedness: Viewers categorize visual events as bounded or unbounded based on the aspectual nature of preceding sentences.
• Interruption Detection: The detection of brief interruptions in videos varied depending on whether participants read telic or atelic sentences, with coercion influencing these patterns.
• Experiment Findings:
  • Telic Sentences: Participants were more likely to miss endpoint disruptions, construing events as bounded. 🏁
  • Atelic Sentences: Participants showed uniform interruption detection rates, indicating unbounded event construals.
  • Aspectual Coercion: Aspectual coercion influenced event construals, with distinct patterns for telic-to-atelic and atelic-to-telic shifts.

👥 Collaborators

• Uğurcan Vurgun
• Yue Ji
• Anna Papafragou

Exciting discoveries ahead—stay connected for more insights and breakthroughs! 🌟🧠