Having examined process, participant, space, agency, and time, we now turn to the subtlest domain of construal: how languages carve the interface between experience, perception, and evidence.
Relational ontology reminds us: there is no “inner world” waiting to be represented, nor an “outer world” waiting to be named. Languages cut experience into phenomena, specifying what counts as accessible, knowable, or experiencable.
1. Evidentiality and source marking
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Tibetan and Quechua grammaticise evidentiality:
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Direct observation, inference, or report must be marked.
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He saw it rain vs. He inferred it rained are grammatically distinct.
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Turkish similarly marks reported vs. direct knowledge.
Typological insight: Evidentiality relocates epistemic responsibility into the event, shaping how experience is construed.
2. Internal states as relational phenomena
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Japanese and Korean: mental and emotional states are often described as occurring to a participant, not as internal possessions:
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Kanashimu (“to feel sadness”) often frames the emotion as relational or emergent.
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Bodily and affective experiences are distributed across context, relation, and situation.
Typological insight: Internal experience is patterned relationally, blurring the inner–outer divide.
3. Accessibility, visibility, and inference
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Dyirbal and Kalaallisut encode distinctions based on visibility, accessibility, or perceptual availability.
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Some entities or events are grammatically foregrounded only if perceptually present.
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Classical Chinese and Newar mark inference explicitly, showing that how a phenomenon is known shapes its construal.
Typological insight: Phenomena are not universal objects; they are structured by access, perception, and evidential status.
4. Cross-linguistic comparison: key contrasts
| Feature | Tibetan/Quechua | Japanese/Korean | Dyirbal/Kalaallisut | Classical Chinese/Newar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evidential marking | Obligatory | Contextual | Minimal | Explicit inference |
| Internal states construal | Contextual | Relational | Low | Moderate |
| Perceptual accessibility | Medium | Medium | High | Moderate |
| Experience vs. inference | Grammatized | Relational | Low | Explicitly marked |
| Horizon of phenomenon | Event-centered | Relational | Accessibility-based | Inference-based |
5. Cognitive and narrative consequences
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Evidential languages: speakers habitually track source and certainty, producing narratives attentive to perspective and validation.
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Relational internal-state languages: narratives foreground how mental states emerge relationally, not as isolated “inner truths.”
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Accessibility-sensitive languages: narratives structure attention around what is visible, proximate, or known.
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Inference-marking languages: narratives foreground reasoning and deduction, blending perception with interpretation.
Cognition: Construal of internal vs. external phenomena tunes speakers to how experience is accessed, validated, and shared, shaping memory, inference, and relational understanding.
6. Concluding reflection
Internal/external construal is the deepest cut languages make. It patterns:
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What counts as knowable
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What counts as perceptible or inferable
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How mental and affective states are distributed
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How speakers relate to phenomena epistemically
Languages here are ontological operators, not mirrors. Each system opens a distinct experiential horizon, determining how events, participants, and relations are perceived and narrativized.
Series-wide reflection
Across the six typological domains — process, participant, space, agency, time, and internal/external phenomena — we see that:
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Languages actualise different relational horizons,
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Pattern different ontologies of experience,
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And open distinct worlds of possibility for cognition and narrative.
Typology, reframed through relational ontology, is not a catalog of forms; it is a map of the possible ways to inhabit and interpret experience.
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