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How children and adults encode causative events cross-linguistically: implications for language production and attention

ABSTRACT This study investigates the implications of language-specific constraints on linguistic event encoding for the description and online inspection of causative events. English-speaking and Greek-speaking adults, 3-year-olds, and 4-year-olds viewed and described causative events, which are composed of Means and Result subevents, in an eye tracking study. The results demonstrate cross-linguistic and developmental differences in the informational content of causative event descriptions. Across age groups, Greek speakers were more likely than English speakers to mention only one causative subevent, and across language groups, adults were more likely than children to mention both subevents. Finally, for speakers in all age and language groups, preparing different types of event descriptions changed the way that events were visually inspected, shifting attention towards to-be-encoded subevents. These findings offer some of the first evidence about the development of the language production system, the attentional mechanisms that it employs, and its workings in speakers of different languages.