Patterns of Possibility: 2 Participants in Mind: Cognitive Horizons of Being

In our typological deep dive, we examined how languages pattern participants:

• Stable, discrete nouns (English)

• Hierarchically salient entities (Dyirbal)

• Emergent, context-sensitive beings (Yucatec Maya)

• Relationally networked entities (Bantu languages)

These patterns are not merely linguistic choices; they are cognitive affordances, shaping attention, memory, reasoning, and narrative focus.

---

1. Participants and Attention

• English: attention is naturally directed toward discrete entities; agents are foregrounded.

• Dyirbal: attention is modulated by animacy hierarchy; some participants are grammatically prominent, others backgrounded.

• Yucatec Maya: participants are emergent from context; attention flexibly shifts between entities and events.

• Bantu languages: class systems integrate participants into relational networks, tuning attention to roles rather than intrinsic identity.

Cognitive payoff: The default ontological salience of participants shapes what is noticed, foregrounded, and tracked in experience.

---

2. Participants and Memory

• Stability vs. emergence affects how participants are encoded and recalled.

  • English speakers tend to remember discrete actors and their attributes.

  • Dyirbal speakers encode participants in relation to event hierarchies.

  • Yucatec Maya speakers encode participants in dynamic relation to processes.

  • Bantu speakers encode participants as nodes in a relational network, emphasizing roles and agreements over intrinsic features.

Effect: Construal patterns determine the granularity and relational focus of memory traces.

---

3. Participants and Reasoning

• Causal and relational reasoning is shaped by participant construal:

  • English: focus on agents for attribution of responsibility.

  • Dyirbal: hierarchical salience may modulate perceived agency.

  • Yucatec Maya: context-dependent emergence encourages relational inference.

  • Bantu: class systems foreground role-based relational reasoning, integrating participants into event webs.

Insight: Construal patterns influence how humans infer roles, responsibilities, and potential actions.

---

4. Participants and Narrative

• Narrative structuring is guided by participant construal:

  • English: clear protagonist and antagonist arcs.

  • Dyirbal: prominence follows animacy hierarchy; some agents are backgrounded.

  • Yucatec Maya: fluid focus allows narratives to shift attention between emergent participants and processes.

  • Bantu: relational roles shape narrative cohesion; entities are defined by connections rather than discrete identity.

Takeaway: Participant construal opens distinct narrative horizons, determining who or what can occupy focal attention in a story.

---

5. Concluding Reflection

Languages pattern what counts as a participant, and habitual use of these patterns shapes:

• Attention — which beings or entities are noticed

• Memory — how entities are encoded and recalled

• Reasoning — how roles and relational dynamics are inferred

• Narrative focus — who can act, be acted upon, or emerge in stories

In essence, participant construal is a cognitive horizon of being, a scaffold for how speakers inhabit, interpret, and relate to the entities in their world.