The Structure of Events and Event Representations: A Developmental Analysis

Investigated whether recall of events by children under 2 years of age is similar to that of older preschoolers and adults. Experiment 1 used elicited-imitation to test 16- and 20-month-olds' immediate and delayed recall (2-week delay) of familiar and novel events. Ordered recall at immediate and delayed test was superior for familiar events and for novel events with causal relations among the elements; ordered recall of novel events lacking causal relations was significantly lower. Experiment 2 tested children's sensitivity to differences in underlying structure of novel events. Nineteen-, 25-, and 31 -month-olds organized recall around causal relations, in spite of experimental manipulations that interrupted causally connected pairs of elements. The experiments provide clear evidence that, like preschoolers and adults, children as young as 16 months include temporal order information in their representations of both familiar and novel events and that the causal structure of novel events influences their recall. Research on children's memory has amply demonstrated that when children are working in a familiar and meaningful context, they exhibit memory skills far more advanced than they do when working in an unfamiliar context stripped of meaning. This lesson provided the impetus for research on children's memory for everyday events and routines. By interviewing 3- to 8-year-old children about their participation in everyday events, Nelson and her colleagues (e.g., Nelson, 1986; Nelson & Gruendel, 1981,1986) have shown that children as young as 3 years of age recall events in a fashion similar to that of older children and adults. The apparent similarities in the structure underlying the event representations of preschoolers and adults has led to the question of whether the event representations of even younger preverbal and early verbal children are similar as well. It is this question that provides the focus for the present research.

The mental timeline is used as a memory strategy.

Two experiments investigated the focusing properties of thematic roles, while a third experiment investigated the view that thematic role preferences reflect a focusing on the consequences of the represented event. Sentence continuation tasks were used in which subjects wrote continuations to sentence fragments containing two antecedents, each occupying a different thematic role. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed a preference for referring to a particular thematic role regardless of the presence or absence of a pronoun at the start of the continuation and regardless of whether the continuation was part of a different sentence from the one containing the antecedents (Experiment 1) or part of the same sentence (Experiment 2). These preferences were interpreted as being due to a focus on the consequences of the represented event in a mental model of the sentence. Experiment 3 tested this interpretation by using sentence fragments that ended in so (a connective that reinforces the focus on consequences) or because (a connective that conflicts with the focus on consequences). The results confirmed the interpretation: the observed preferences were maintained with so but modified by because The results are discussed in terms of the structure of represented events, top-down and bottom-up processes, and thematic hierarchies. The first mention effect in pronoun comprehension is also discussed.

Structuring Protocols using Exceptions in a LOTOS Extension

Filmic space-time diagrams for video structure representation

ABSTRACT: One of the main objectives of valency lexicons is to identify predicate argument structures evoked by verbs. The analysis used in these resources heavily rests on lexical semantics and as such provides an accurate description of event structure in cases in which a verb is used in its prototypical sense, such as when the verb kick is used as a force verb in the example He kicked the door . However, this approach to event structure representation proves inadequate for examples in which a verb is used in a non-prototypical sense in which additional event participants are evoked constructionally, such as the use of kick in a transfer event: He kicked him the ball . In this paper, we propose a two-tier representation of event structure in which lexical semantics and the semantics of argument structure constructions are dealt with independently. We present a detailed model of constructional analysis that is compatible with lexically based analyses of event structure used in valency lexicons, such as Propbank, and show that a mapping between lexical and constructional representations provides a more comprehensive understanding of the event semantics when compared to a lexical representation alone.

Split-intransitive systems of argument marking provide an excellent opportunity to study the structure of the lexical-semantic representations that underlie argument structure alternations and argument linking rules. Yukatek Maya has a typologically rare split-intransitive pattern of argument marking controlled by overt aspect-mood marking. Kramer and Wunderlich (1999) have advanced an analysis according to which the linking of thematic relations to syntactic arguments is governed by lexical aspect as the sole lexical-semantic property linking principles are sensitive to in this language. Critical evidence against this proposal comes from the transitivity alternations of three classes of intransitive verbs: degree achievement verbs, non-internally-caused process verbs, and posture verbs. Transitivity alternations emerge as being governed by the distinction of internally-vs. externally-caused events. The Yukatek facts suggest that argument linking operates on a lexical information structure (event structure) that partially determines (and thus also underspecifies) both lexical aspect and participant structure.

We propose a new kind of event structure representation for computational linguistics, based on the theoretical framework of FirstPhase Syntax (Ramchand, 2008). We show that the approach not only gives a theoretically well-motivated set of subevents and related semantic roles, it also posits the levels of representation needed for analyzing a linguistic phenomenon that has repeatedly caused problems in computational systems, namely the treatment of complex predication. In particular, we look at V+V complex predicates in Urdu/Hindi and show that Ramchand’s subevent decomposition implemented in a VerbNet-style resource allows for a consistent semantic analysis of these complex events. We also show how the proposed event representation can be added to existing resources in the language, in particular the Hindi-Urdu Treebank and Hindi PropBank.

Events unfold over time, i.e. they have a beginning and endpoint. Previous studies have illustrated the importance of endpoints for event perception and memory. However, this work has only discussed events with a self-evident endpoint, and the internal temporal structure of events has not received much attention. In this study, we hypothesise that event cognition computes boundedness, an abstract feature of the internal temporal structure of events. We further hypothesise that sensitivity to boundedness affects how individual temporal slices of events (such as event midpoints or endpoints) are processed and integrated into a coherent event representation. The results of three experiments confirm these hypotheses. In Experiment 1, viewers identified the class of bounded (non-homogeneous, culminating) and unbounded (homogeneous, non-culminating) events in a categorisation task. In Experiments 2 and 3, viewers reacted differently to temporal disruptions in bounded versus unbounded events. We conclude that boundedness shapes how events are temporally processed.

In organizational research the object of study is often a process, that is, a complex of events and activities that unfolds over time. In this chapter we focus on temporally ordered configurations, which can be defined as those configurations in which conditions occur in a specific temporal order. We illustrate the aims, characteristics, and limitations of several approaches that have been proposed as tools for the analysis of temporal order. Our illustration involves an analysis of the “gestation activities” of nascent entrepreneurs, that is, persons involved in the creation of a new firm. We aim to identify temporal sequences of gestation activities that generate or allow a successful outcome of the gestation process, while an occurrence of the same activities in another temporal order will not generate or allow that outcome. First we discuss Event Structure Analysis and Optimal Matching and conclude that these approaches cannot provide the kind of analysis that we are aiming at in this chapter. Then we discuss Temporal Qualitative Comparative Analysis, for which our analysis points to technical limitations that constrain its application. We then present and discuss an alternative approach, Temporal Necessary Condition Analysis.

The representation of extreme precipitation at small spatio-temporal scales is of major importance in urban hydrology. The present study compares point and radar observations to reanalyse climate model output data for a period of 14 years where there is full spatial and temporal overlap between datasets. The datasets are compared with respect to seasonality of occurrence, intensity levels and spatial structure of the extreme events. All datasets have similar seasonal distributions and comparable intensity levels. There are, however, clear differences in the spatial correlation structure of the extremes. Seemingly, the radar data is the best representation of a “real” spatial structure for extreme precipitation, even though challenges appear in data when moving far from the physical radar. The spatial correlation in point observations is a valid representation of the spatial structure of extreme precipitation. The convective-permitting climate model seems to represent the spatial structure of extreme precipitation much more realistically, compared to the coarser convective parameterized model. However, there is still room for improvement of the convective-permitting climate model for the shortest rainfall durations and smallest spatial scales in comparison with point and radar data.

Note on Supplementary Material Preface by the Series Editor Preface by the Author About the Author 1 The Importance of Events in Conception and Language 2 The Structure and Format of Event Representations 3 Event Segmentation Theory and the Segmentation of Visual Events 4 The Segmentation of Narrative Events 5 Neural Correlates of Event Segmentation 6 Prediction in Event Comprehension 7 Updating Event Models 8 The Event Horizon Model and Long-Term Memory 9 Event Cognition in Aging and Early Alzheimer's Disease 10 Event Representations from Cinema and Narrative Fiction Bibliography About the Series Editor Websites for Cognitive Linguistics and CIFCL Speakers

The representation of events is a central topic for cognitive science. In this series of lectures, Jeffrey M. Zacks situates event representations and their role in language within a theory of perception and memory. Event representations have a distinctive structure and format that result from computational and neural mechanisms operating during perception and language comprehension. A crucial aspect of the mechanisms is that event representations are updated to optimize their predictive utility. This updating has consequences for action control and for long-term memory. Event cognition changes across the adult lifespan and can be impaired by conditions including Alzheimer’s disease. These mechanisms have broad impact on everyday activity, and have shaped the development of media such as cinema and narrative fiction.​

This article presents an experimental investigation of kinematics of verb sign production in American Sign Language (ASL) using motion capture data. The results confirm that event structure differences in the meaning of the verbs are reflected in the kinematic formation: for example, in the telic verbs (THROW, HIT), the end-point of the event is marked in the verb sign movement by significantly greater deceleration, as compared to atelic verbs (SWIM, TRAVEL). This end-point marker is highly robust regardless of position of the verb in the sentence (medial vs. final), although other prominent kinematic measures, including sign duration and peak speed of dominant hand motion within the sign, are affected by prosodic processes such as Phrase Final Lengthening. The study provides the first kinematic confirmation that event structure is expressed in movement profiles of ASL verbs, up to now only supported by apparent perceptual distinctions. The findings raise further questions about the psychology of event representation both in human languages and in the human mind.

Semiotic systems and knowledge representation