TY - JOUR
T1 - Entity, event, and sensory modalities: An onto-cognitive account of sensory nouns
AU - Zhong, Yin
AU - Ahrens, Kathleen
AU - Huang, Chu-Ren
N1 - Funding Information:
The first and the second author would like to acknowledge the grant 1-ZVTL from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The third author’s work is supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council GRF grant (No. 15610621). The second and third authors would like to acknowledge the support of the PolyU-PekingU Research Centre on Chinese Linguistics.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/5/22
Y1 - 2023/5/22
N2 - Nouns in human languages mostly profile concrete and abstract entities. But how much eventive information can be found in nouns? Will such eventive information found in sensory nouns have anything to do with the cognitive representation of the basic human senses? Importantly, is there any ontological and/or cognitive motivation that can account for this noun–verb dichotomy via body-and-world interactions? This study presents the first comprehensive investigation of sensory nouns in Mandarin Chinese, examining their qualia structures formalised in the Generative Lexicon Theory, as well as the time-dependent (endurant–perdurant) properties encoded in their sensory modalities. This study fills the gap in sensorial studies by highlighting the pivotal position of nouns in sensory experiences and provides insights into the interactions between perception, cognition, and language. Further, it establishes, for the first time, the cognitive motivation of the categorial noun–verb bifurcation without presupposing any a priori knowledge of grammatical categories.
AB - Nouns in human languages mostly profile concrete and abstract entities. But how much eventive information can be found in nouns? Will such eventive information found in sensory nouns have anything to do with the cognitive representation of the basic human senses? Importantly, is there any ontological and/or cognitive motivation that can account for this noun–verb dichotomy via body-and-world interactions? This study presents the first comprehensive investigation of sensory nouns in Mandarin Chinese, examining their qualia structures formalised in the Generative Lexicon Theory, as well as the time-dependent (endurant–perdurant) properties encoded in their sensory modalities. This study fills the gap in sensorial studies by highlighting the pivotal position of nouns in sensory experiences and provides insights into the interactions between perception, cognition, and language. Further, it establishes, for the first time, the cognitive motivation of the categorial noun–verb bifurcation without presupposing any a priori knowledge of grammatical categories.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85160091320&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1057/s41599-023-01677-z
DO - 10.1057/s41599-023-01677-z
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2662-9992
VL - 10
SP - 1
EP - 12
JO - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
JF - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 255
ER -