This project investigates the semantic and syntactic encoding of actions of cutting and breaking across a range of languages, and examines how children acquire their language-specific semantic categories. The starting point of investigation is an etic grid of event types – a set of videoclips – which vary along a number of parameters (e.g. agent, instrument, object, manner, etc). The clips are used to elicit speaker descriptions from a sample of 28 geographically, genetically and typologically diverse languages. The descriptions are then analyzed using multivariate statistics. These techniques extract recurrent categorisation strategies found across languages, as well as identifying unusual patterns. They also quantify how much structure is shared – if any.

In a separate line of enquiry, we ask whether children show a universal starting point in their acquisition of cutting and breaking events. Using statistical modeling we can demonstrate that four-year-old children are more similar to their adult models than they are to four-year-old children of a different language community, suggesting that there is not a universal starting point.

Researchers

• Felix Ameka on Ewe and Likpe
• Jürgen Bohnemeyer (University at Buffalo, NY) on Yucatec
• Melissa Bowerman, Asifa Majid and Claudia Wortmann on English
• Melissa Bowerman and Enrique Palancar (Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Mexico) on Spanish
• Penelope Brown on Tzeltal
• James S. Boster (University of Connecticut)
• Jidong Chen (California State University Fresno) on Mandarin
• Michael Dunn and Angela Terrill on Touo
• Nick Enfield on Lao
• Marian Erkelens and Miriam van Staden on Dutch
• James Essegbey (University of Florida) on Sranan
• Alice Gaby (University of California, Berkeley) on Kuuk Thaayorre
• Marianne Gullberg on Swedish
• Wilco van den Heuvel on Biak
• Sotaro Kita (University of Birmingham) on Japanese
• Stephen C. Levinson on Yélî Dnye
• Friederike Lüpke (SOAS, London) on Jalonke
• Asifa Majid on Punjabi
• Sergio Meira on Tiriyó
• Bhuvana Narasimhan (University of Colorado at Boulder) on Hindi and Tamil
• Loretta O'Connor on Lowland Chontal
• Asli Özyürek on Turkish
• Enrique Palancar (Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Mexico) on Otomi
• Frank Seifart (Universität Regensburg) on Miraña
• Gunter Senft on Kilivila
• Miriam van Staden on German and Tidore

Representative publications

• Majid, A., Boster, J.S. & Bowerman, M. (2008). The cross-linguistic categorization of everyday events: A study of cutting and breaking. Cognition, 109, 235-250. more >
• Majid, A. & Bowerman, M. (2007). Cutting and breaking events: A cross-linguistic perspective. Special issue of Cognitive Linguistics, 18(2). more >

Contact person

Asifa Majid

The videoclips can be obtained from the Cut & Break page on the L&C Field Manuals website.