Typological Construal Strategies: Meta-Summary Languages as Ontologies of Possibility

Over the course of this deep-dive series, we have examined six core domains through which languages cut, pattern, and actualise experience:

1. Process – how becoming unfolds

2. Participants – who or what exists, and how

3. Space – where phenomena occur

4. Agency and Causation – how force and influence flow

5. Time – how unfolding is patterned

6. Internal vs. External Phenomena – how experience, perception, and evidence are partitioned

Each post has demonstrated that languages are not representational systems. They do not merely label pre-existing reality. They construct relational horizons, shaping what is experientially possible.

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1. Processes: Patterns of Becoming

Languages differ in how they structure events:

• Linear vs. multi-dimensional

• Agentive vs. event-centered

• Nominalised or embodied processes

Ontological payoff: The default “shape” of becoming varies by language, producing distinct ways for experience to unfold.

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2. Participants: Patterns of Being

Languages pattern participants as:

• Stable or emergent

• Hierarchically salient or relationally networked

• Noun–verb flexible or rigid

Ontological payoff: Being itself is construed differently — as independent entities, relational nodes, or emergent actors.

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3. Space: Patterns of Locating

Languages cut space through:

• Egocentric, geocentric, or embodied reference

• Visibility and perceptual accessibility

• Event-integrated spatial mapping

Ontological payoff: “Where” phenomena exist is a horizon of construal, not a coordinate system.

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4. Agency and Causation: Patterns of Influence

Languages vary in:

• Agent prominence (ergative vs. accusative)

• Morphological or analytic causatives

• Evidentially constrained agency

Ontological payoff: Responsibility, influence, and force are relationally and epistemically distributed.

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5. Time: Patterns of Becoming Across a Horizon

Languages structure temporality via:

• Tense vs. tenseless systems

• Aspectual differentiation

• Cyclical, phase-based, or spatialized temporal metaphors

Ontological payoff: Time is enacted, not measured; it is a horizon of relational becoming.

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6. Internal vs. External Phenomena: Patterns of Access

Languages construe:

• Direct, inferred, or reported experience

• Mental states as relational or internally possessed

• Visibility, accessibility, and epistemic stance

Ontological payoff: Experience itself is partitioned relationally; what counts as known, perceivable, or inferable varies systematically.

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Cross-Domain Patterns

• Each domain is interdependent: process, participant, space, agency, time, and access mutually condition each other.

• Languages are systems of relational cuts, not bundles of features.

• Typology becomes the study of potential worlds actualised through language, rather than the study of forms “encoding reality.”

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Cognition and Narrative Implications

• Speakers habitually attune to the construal patterns of their language.

• Narrative structures, attention, memory, and reasoning are shaped by the ontological cuts their language provides.

• Diversity is not stylistic; it is ontological, offering alternative horizons of experience.

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Series Conclusion

The deep-dive typological series demonstrates:

Languages differ not in what they represent, but in how they make experience possible. Each construal strategy is a local ontology, a patterned potential for living, perceiving, and narrativizing a world.

This framework reframes typology from a catalog of forms to a map of experiential possibility, grounded in relational ontology.

Next steps: With this series complete, we can now explore how these construal strategies interact across typologies, affect cognition, and shape cross-linguistic narrative structures — or move into applications in storytelling, cognition, or linguistic philosophy.