Metacategories and sentence classification

This study examines cognitive representations of the metacategories Action, Act, Activity, Event, Process and State, which are assumed to constitute a conceptual framework enabling us to interpret and organize our perceptions of the world. Using a classification task for simple sentences (subject, verb, object), illustrating different aspects of each of these metacategories, we sought to identify stable features that were capable of characterizing cognitive representations. Our results suggest that, to varying degrees, three dimensions provide a framework for the representation of these metacategories: agentivity, temporality, and transitionality.