Defying chronology: Crosslinguistic variation in reverse order reports

TY - JOUR

T1 - Defying chronology:

T2 - Crosslinguistic variation in reverse order reports

AU - Vanek, Norbert

AU - Mertins, Barbara

N1 - © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2019/3/19

Y1 - 2019/3/19

N2 - Much of how we sequence events in speech mirrors the order of theirnatural occurrence. While event chains that conform to chronology may be easier to process, languages offer substantial freedom to manipulate temporal order. This article explores to what extent digressions from chronology are attributable to differences in grammatical aspect systems. We compared reverse order reports (RORs) in event descriptions elicited from native speakers of four languages, two with (Spanish, Modern Standard Arabic [MSA]) and two without grammatical aspect (German, Hungarian). In the Arabic group, all participants were highly competent MSA speakers from Palestine and Jordan. Standardized frequency counts showed significantly more RORs expressed by non-aspect groups than by aspect groups. Adherence to chronology changing as a function of contrast in grammatical aspect signal that languages without obligatory marking of ongoingness may provide more flexibility for event reordering. These findings bring novel insights about the dynamic interplay between language structure and temporal sequencing in the discourse stream.

AB - Much of how we sequence events in speech mirrors the order of theirnatural occurrence. While event chains that conform to chronology may be easier to process, languages offer substantial freedom to manipulate temporal order. This article explores to what extent digressions from chronology are attributable to differences in grammatical aspect systems. We compared reverse order reports (RORs) in event descriptions elicited from native speakers of four languages, two with (Spanish, Modern Standard Arabic [MSA]) and two without grammatical aspect (German, Hungarian). In the Arabic group, all participants were highly competent MSA speakers from Palestine and Jordan. Standardized frequency counts showed significantly more RORs expressed by non-aspect groups than by aspect groups. Adherence to chronology changing as a function of contrast in grammatical aspect signal that languages without obligatory marking of ongoingness may provide more flexibility for event reordering. These findings bring novel insights about the dynamic interplay between language structure and temporal sequencing in the discourse stream.

UR - https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ling.ahead-of-print/ling-2019-0006/ling-2019-0006.xml?format=INT

U2 - 10.1515/ling-2019-0006

DO - 10.1515/ling-2019-0006

M3 - Article

SN - 0024-3949

SP - 1

EP - 35

JO - Linguistics

JF - Linguistics

ER -