Events and argument structure

Tracing the logical form tradition in event semantics from Davidson through the present day reveals an architecture of striking structural depth: every participant inhabits its own event layer, reference to individuals drops out entirely, and the recurring monadic, conjunctive format of logical form is forced by the compositional system itself. Independent evidence from psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and event cognition converges on structurally similar conclusions. Surveying that evidence reveals a striking dissociation: evidence for prelinguistic, polyadic event concepts in contrast to the massively monadic expressions described by the event semantics surveyed here. I argue that such a dissociation can be explained by a two-level cognitive architecture on which stable compositional symbols provided by the language system are satisfied by rich, domain-specific conceptual content provided by extralinguistic cognitive systems. Such moves may be leveraged to answer questions the field has long left open, such as the debate between absolute vs specific thematic roles. Altogether, this article characterizes the logical form tradition as aiming towards a formal, empirically-motivated candidate for a Language of Thought, specialized in representing what happens, who is involved, and how.

Second version (to be revised; please do not cite without permission)