In our foundational series, we established that process construal is not a labelling device; it is the way a language opens a horizon of becoming. Now, in the typological deep dive, we examine how different languages actualise this horizon, revealing distinct patterns of processual experience.
1. Aspectual finesse: Japanese vs. English
English marks aspect relatively simply: I eat / I ate / I am eating. Temporal location dominates; internal structure of the event is secondary.
Japanese, in contrast, has a highly structured aspectual system:
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-te iru signals ongoing or resultant states.
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-ta signals completion, but completion is not merely “past”; it modulates how the event is experienced.
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Habituality and potentiality are morphologically marked, allowing multiple simultaneous construals of unfolding.
Typological insight: Japanese actualises a multi-dimensional event horizon where processes are sliced along axes of completion, persistence, and potentiality, not merely chronological sequence.
2. Event-as-entity: Coast Salish languages
In languages such as Lushootseed, events often behave like nominal entities. “Running” or “falling” is treated grammatically as an object, not primarily as an agent-driven action.
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Agency is optional, relational roles are foregrounded.
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Events can be combined, possessed, or quantified like nouns.
Typological insight: Salishan languages reorient attention from actors to processes as relational nodes, producing a default ontology in which becoming is bounded, relational, and modular.
3. Embodied process: American Sign Language (ASL)
ASL expresses processes through movement, space, and simultaneity:
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A single sign can encode agent, action, direction, and result simultaneously.
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Repetition, size, and trajectory modulate processual meaning.
Typological insight: ASL actualises processes as spatially and temporally co-present phenomena, blending doing, being, and relational effect into one gestural horizon.
4. Cross-linguistic comparison: key contrasts
| Feature | English | Japanese | Salishan | ASL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary axis | Temporal | Aspectual | Nominal-event | Spatial-embodied |
| Agency | Foregrounded | Contextual | Optional | Encoded via movement |
| Process individuation | Linear events | Multi-dimensional | Bounded events | Co-actualised event space |
| Event relationality | Low | Moderate | High | High |
| Experiential salience | Agent & tense | Aspect & result | Event itself | Whole gestalt |
The table demonstrates that processual construal is not uniform. Each language actualises different possibilities for experience, shaping how speakers attend to, remember, and narrate events.
5. Cognitive and narrative consequences
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English speakers: narratives emphasize agentive action, chronological sequence, and causal chains.
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Japanese speakers: narratives foreground event structure, habituality, and process completion nuances.
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Salishan speakers: narratives highlight relations between events and participants; agency is backgrounded.
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ASL users: narratives integrate simultaneity, embodiment, and spatial relationality, producing a narrative rhythm that is multi-dimensional rather than linear.
Cognition: Speakers internalise the default horizon their language makes salient, tuning attention and memory to the patterns their process construal permits.
6. Concluding reflection
This sets the stage for the next deep-dive post: Participant Construal Strategies Across Languages, where we examine how different languages actualise being itself, and how participants are patterned, bounded, and relationally anchored.
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