Introduction
Languages are not merely tools for naming objects or expressing thoughts—they are ontologies of construal, structuring the field of potential experience along axes of processes, participants, circumstances, relations, and modality. But these lattices do not exist in isolation: they actively shape cognition, culture, and narrative practice. In this post, we explore the interface between linguistic ontology and lived experience, showing how construal patterns ripple outward into thought, sociality, and storytelling.
1. Cognitive Implications of Linguistic Ontologies
A language’s ontology influences how speakers perceive, segment, and interpret experience:
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Process sensitivity: Languages that foreground aspectual patterns (Hopi) or blend states and actions (Warlpiri) orient cognition toward temporal flow and relational dynamics, rather than discrete events.
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Participant individuation: Languages that encode participants relationally (Warlpiri, Hopi) promote a cognition attuned to interdependence and relational positioning, rather than isolated agency.
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Spatial and circumstantial encoding: Obligatory absolute spatial references (Warlpiri) or morphologically encoded situational contexts (Hopi) make speakers highly sensitive to environment and context, shaping navigation, memory, and attention.
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Modality and evidentiality: Grammaticalised evidentiality (Japanese, Hopi) directs attention to source and certainty of knowledge, influencing inference, reasoning, and social negotiation of truth.
In short, the ontology embedded in a language scaffolds habitual patterns of perception and cognition.
2. Cultural Consequences
Language-specific ontologies interact with social norms, values, and collective practices:
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Relational individuation fosters a worldview in which social and environmental relations are primary, shaping kinship systems, resource management, and communal responsibility.
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Temporal construal influences planning, ritual, and narrative sequencing: languages with nuanced aspectual or cyclical temporal categories support cultural practices aligned with cycles, repetition, and continuity.
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Evidentiality and speaker perspective encode social awareness of knowledge sources and responsibility, shaping politeness, hierarchy, and ethical discourse.
Thus, linguistic ontology is not just cognitive; it is culturally productive, structuring patterns of sociality and shared understanding.
3. Storytelling and Narrative Construal
The lattices of language profoundly shape how stories are told:
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Event segmentation: English foregrounds discrete events and clear agentive actions, producing narratives with clear causal chains and protagonist focus.
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Relational and cyclical narrative: Hopi and Warlpiri foreground processes relationally or aspectually, producing narratives that emphasise interdependence, environmental integration, and cyclical time.
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Perspective and epistemic framing: Languages that grammaticalise evidentiality naturally foreground source, reliability, and perspective, embedding narrative judgments directly into discourse.
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Spatial and environmental embedding: Obligatory absolute or relational spatial encoding (Warlpiri, Hopi) roots narratives firmly in landscape and orientation, making place and context narratively central.
In this sense, a language’s ontology directly shapes narrative form, thematic focus, and the felt texture of storytelling.
4. Implications for Relational Ontology
These patterns illustrate a core principle:
Meaning and reality are inseparable, and language is a medium of actualisation.
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Languages mediate how potential experience is structured and perceived.
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Cultural practices, cognition, and narrative are all extensions of these semiotic lattices.
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Studying linguistic ontologies is therefore a study of human experience in action, showing the interplay of construal, cognition, and culture.
In other words, language-specific ontologies are not abstract curiosities; they are practical frameworks for inhabiting and navigating reality.
Conclusion
By moving from lattice to life, we see that language-specific ontologies are both cognitive and cultural engines. They shape perception, social practice, and storytelling, demonstrating the profound consequences of semiotic actualisation. The diversity of linguistic ontologies is not merely a curiosity: it is a testament to the range of possibilities for structuring human experience, the multiplicity of construals through which meaning—and therefore reality—is realised.
Future posts could explore specific case studies of storytelling across linguistic ontologies, showing concretely how narrative forms, characterisation, and temporal sequencing differ when constrained by different semiotic lattices.
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