SE WHAT? DESCRIPTIONS OF ACCIDENTS VARY ACROSS LANGUAGES AND SPEAKERS
Caitlin Fausey
Stanford University
Saturday, January 20, 11:45 AM MJH Rm 126
How do people talk about causal events? One source of variation in causal event descriptions is illustrated by the following
expressions that could describe the same event: (1) Jon broke the vase (agentive) and (2) The vase broke (non-agentive).
Though both English and Spanish speakers may describe causal events using agentive or non-agentive language, it has been
suggested that English speakers describe accidental events agentively while Spanish speakers talk about these same events
non-agentively. I will present empirical evidence from monolingual and bilingual speakers that suggests that the frequency of
non-agentive descriptions of accidents does vary by language. Further, I will discuss work-in-progress that examines
within-language variation of agentive vs. non-agentive event descriptions. Time permitting, I will present evidence that these
patterns of language use influence how people remember and attribute blame to causal Agents.
