The State-Before-Event Inference Emerges Across Tenses
Marx, Elena (Central European University. Cognitive Science Department)
Jardón, Natalia (Central European University. Cognitive Science Department)
Wittenberg, Eva (Central European University. Cognitive Science Department)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Filologia Catalana

Data:	2025
Descripció:	20 pàg.
Resum:	In language, comprehenders often need to infer the temporal order of events to construct a mental model of a complex situation. Dynamicity differences are a key predictor of these inferences: Non-dynamic states are reliably inferred to precede dynamic events. In two studies, we test two theoretical explanations for this phenomenon through temporal order judgments for past-under-past and future-under-future relative clauses in English: According to a tense-mediated account of temporal anchoring, people rely on the conceptual distinction between a more salient reference time-often a dynamic event-and a less salient anchored situation-often a static state. The temporal relationship between the two is determined at the linguistic level by tense meaning: For the past tense, the relationship should be one of anteriority, and for the future tense, it should be one of posteriority. However, the future tense has often been placed closer to modals than to tenses, relegating the question of temporal order to other mechanisms. Alternatively, from a purely cognitive perspective, salience differences between states and events are sufficient to infer temporal order, with states acting as temporal backgrounds for more salient events, regardless of tense. Our results support such a cognitive mechanism: In both experiments, states are backgrounded relative to events. Differences between the experiments furthermore support modal accounts of the semantics of the future.
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Publicat a:	Open Mind, Vol. 9 (2025) , p. 726-745, ISSN 2470-2986

DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00207
PMID: 40474930

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