Granularity in the Verbalization of Events and Objects : A cross-linguistic study Hardback

The study departs from the observation that in expressing ideas, some languages encode more details than others.

It investigates whether languages encode events and/or objects at a coarse-grained (e.g., put, glass) as opposed to a fine-grained (e.g., lay, wine glass) level systematically.

The level of detail is termed granularity, which is viewed as a cline from fine-grained (semantic specificity) to coarse-grained meaning (semantic generality).

Four languages are investigated: German, English, Greek, and Turkish.

The study draws on elicited data from a naming task.

The verbalization of events is based on event and object descriptions in selected semantic domains.

The results reveal significant granularity effects between languages and language types (satellite-framed vs. verb-framed). The study is relevant for scholars interested in linguistic typology, lexical and semantic typology, contrastive linguistics, event representation, psycholinguistics, and cognitive semantics.