Representation of event boundedness in English and Mandarin speakers

Event cognition is sensitive to whether an event is bounded (has a well-defined endpoint, e.g. build a sandcastle) or unbounded (lacks such an endpoint; e.g., play with sand). Boundedness interfaces with telicity in language: telic verb phrases denote events that include an inherent or natural endpoint while atelic verb phrases denote events that lack such an endpoint. Given that languages encode telicity in different ways, could these cross-linguistic differences influence the perception of event boundedness? We address this question by comparing English and Mandarin native speakers. We show that the two groups differ in their use of telicity in event descriptions (Experiment 1) but perform similarly when rating the likelihood of an event having a natural endpoint (Experiment 2) or attending to the temporal structure of bounded vs. unbounded events in a perceptual task (Experiment 3). These findings reveal commonalities in the representation of the temporal profile of events despite cross-linguistic differences.