Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous research on basic-level object categories shows thereis cross-cultural variation in basic-level concepts, arguingagainst the idea that the basic level reflects an objectivereality. In this paper, I extend the investigation to the domainof events. More specifically, I present a case study of verbs ofingestion in Maniq illustrating a highly specific categorizationof ingestion events at the basic level. A detailed analysis ofthese verbs reveals they tap into culturally salient notions.Yet, cultural salience alone cannot explain specificity ofbasic-level verbs, since ingestion is a domain of universalhuman experience. Further analysis reveals, however, thatanother key factor is the language itself. Maniq’s preferencefor encoding specific meaning in basic-level verbs is not apeculiarity of one domain, but a recurrent characteristic of itsverb lexicon, pointing to the significant role of the languagesystem in the structure of event concepts.