Can grammatical cues affect the way people activate event knowledge? We used mouse tracking to study the effect of grammatical aspect on the mental activation of instruments in Persian. Verb aspect is defined as how an action or event is extended over time, whether it is perfective (complete) or imperfective (incomplete). We predicted that imperfective aspect would trigger the mental activation of event knowledge, thus making participants mistakenly believe that the instrument with which the action is normally performed was present in the sentence. We tested this hypothesis using manual action verbs. Fifty female participants read a simple active sentence in which an actor had done or was doing an action (e.g., Sara has sliced/is slicing the zucchinis) with an implied instrument (knife). Then, they were presented with a picture of the implied instrument and judged whether the instrument was mentioned in the sentence they just read by clicking on the PRESENT or ABSENT response option. We predicted that participants would be less efficient at clicking ABSENT in the imperfective condition. In line with this prediction, we found that the imperfective condition caused significant deviation to the incorrect response PRESENT. However, no significant time differences emerged. The results are consistent with embodied views of language comprehension.

语法提示会影响人们激活事件知识的方式吗？我们使用鼠标跟踪来研究语法方面对波斯语乐器心理激活的影响。动词方面被定义为一个动作或事件如何随着时间的推移而扩展，无论它是完美的（完整的）还是不完美的（不完整的）。我们预测不完美方面会触发事件知识的心理激活，从而使参与者错误地认为句子中存在通常执行动作的工具。我们使用手动动作动词测试了这个假设。五十名女性参与者阅读一个简单的主动句子，其中演员已经或正在做一个动作（例如，莎拉用暗示的工具（刀）切/正在切西葫芦）。）。然后，他们看到隐含工具的图片，并通过单击 PRESENT 或 ABENT 响应选项来判断他们刚刚阅读的句子中是否提到了该工具。我们预测参与者在不完美的情况下点击“缺席”的效率会降低。与此预测一致，我们发现不完美的条件导致对不正确响应 PRESENT 的显着偏差。但是，没有出现显着的时间差异。结果与语言理解的具身观一致。