The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to the following talk:
Dynamic events in mind and language
Humans are surprisingly adept at interpreting what is happening around them and organizing this information in terms of dynamic events. Furthermore, across human communities, language is used to describe the
events that we experience. But what, exactly, is an event? In this talk, I propose a theory of eventhood that combines insights from logico-philosophical analysis, cognitive psychology and linguistic theory. On this theory, the representational units of events
in cognition rely on abstract underlying structure, including temporal boundaries. In that sense, events are similar to objects (since objects also involve abstract structure, including spatial boundaries). This proposal predicts systematic patterns in the
way people spontaneously perceive unfolding events. It also explains otherwise mysterious similarities in how events and objects behave as cognitive entities. Finally, this proposal naturally accounts for the existence of a homology between the cognitive and
linguistic structure of events. This framework opens up exciting possibilities for future research on how people represent, remember and talk about what happens.
Date and time: Wednesday, 21st January 2026, 16:00
Host: Eva Wittenberg
*Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP to
get access to the lecture hall.
Best regards,
Andi