The way a sentence is structured can influence a speaker's sense of agency and ownership—key components of the minimal self. In an experiment with Japanese sentences, participants rated their sense of agency and ownership as if they had uttered each sentence. Agency was significantly lower in sentences lacking causation or perception compared to those including them, and higher for perceiver-prominent sentences than for perceiver-stimulus-prominent ones. Ownership was also significantly lower when causation or perception was absent, though its relationship with sentence type varied by perceived stimulus. These findings indicate that linguistic structure measurably affects embodied self-experience, supporting cognitive linguistic theories about subjective construal.
Variations in sentence structure can alter a speaker's sense of minimal self—specifically, the sense of agency and ownership over their own actions and perceptions. In experiments using Japanese sentences, the sense of agency was significantly lower when actions or perceptions were absent from the first-person subject's expression. The sense of ownership was significantly lower when both action and perception were absent, and varied by context when action was absent but perception remained. These findings suggest that linguistic choices affect the felt experience of selfhood, bridging the narrative self and the embodied minimal self.
The way a sentence is structured can affect a speaker's sense of agency and ownership—key components of the minimal self. In an experiment with Japanese sentences, participants rated their sense of agency lower when causation or perception was absent from the sentence compared to when either was present. Agency was also higher for perceiver-prominent sentences (e.g., "I saw a star") than for perceiver-stimulus-prominent sentences (e.g., "A star was visible to me"). Ownership was similarly higher for perceiver-prominent sentences, though results for perceiver-stimulus-prominent sentences varied with the perceived stimulus. These findings suggest that linguistic structure can distinctly influence the embodied experience of selfhood.