Events in language and thought: The case of serial verb constructions in Avatime

Abstract

Events occur all around us in continuous streams of activity, yet we think and talk about them in terms of discrete units. These units are not predetermined by natural boundaries, but rather, we – as observers, cognizers, and describers – construct them (Schwartz 2008). As constructed entities, they are potentially subject to variation across individual observers and contexts. In fact, studies of event segmentation during perception routinely note considerable individual differences (e.g. Zacks, Tversky & Iyer 2001). These studies have all focused on speakers of English. However, as Evans (2010) notes, there is extreme variation in how different languages encode events. The way we segment ev..