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Exploring the conceptualisation of locative events in French, English, and Dutch: Insights from eye-tracking on two memorisation tasks

Abstract The present study addresses the influence of language on the conceptualisation of locative events (e.g., the bottle on the table) in French, English, and Dutch which differ greatly in their habitual encoding of locative events. Dutch obligatorily expresses the disposition of the Figure (viz. the bottle) via a Cardinal Posture Verb (CPV) like liggen ‘lie’, staan ‘stand’, or zitten ‘sit’. In French, the preferred locative marker is the neutral copula être ‘be’ which leaves dispositional nuances habitually unexpressed. English straddles the middle: while the neutral copula be is usually preferred, the CPVs are sometimes found because of diachronic reasons. Our study assesses the potential repercussions of these cross-linguistic differences on the perception of locative events via a recognition task involving eye-tracking and is run in a non-verbal and a verbal condition. Our findings show that, irrespective of the condition, recognition performance is affected by the linguistic preferences, which confirms the permanent effect of language on thought even beyond verbal contexts. The analysis of eye-movements corroborates this finding: depending on their language, the participants attend to the stimuli differently. In the verbal condition, language is used as a strategic tool to enhance memorisation and the participants’ eye-movements still reflect cross-linguistic differences.