A verb is worth a thousand words: The causes and consequences of interpersonal events implicit in language

Abstract

This research examines people's sensitivity to the causes and consequences of events implicit in interpersonal verbs. In Study 1, adults consistently attributed the cause of an action to the Agent for some action verbs (e.g., telephone), and to the Patient for others (e.g., thank). They consistently attributed the cause of an experience to the Stimulus rather than to the Experiencer for experiential verbs (e.g., amaze, admire). Also, the consequences of interpersonal events were often judged to affect the Patient or Experiencer rather than the Agent or Stimulus. Study 2 showed that adults were sensitive to the causality implicit in interpersonal verbs even when they had not been explicitly asked to infer about the causes of the depicted events. In the last study, preschoolers were also sensitive to the implicit causality in interpersonal verbs, and their causal schemas were quite adult-like. © 1986.