How a Human Agency-Marked Language (Tagalog) Conceptualizes Supernatural Agents

This paper analyzes CSR theories of agency attribution to supernatural agents (SAs), specifically the extent to which specific properties (psychological vs physiological) result in human-like versus nonhuman-like understandings. To test the relationship between properties and agential understanding, we analyze 40 native Tagalog (Filipino) speakers who currently reside in the Philippines. Tagalog is distinct in that it linguistically differentiates between human and nonhuman agents through case markers and determiners. It is therefore offers a productive opportunity to explore the extent to which these speakers label a given supernatural agent as human-like or not based on specific properties. In addition to using a non-WEIRD dataset and a linguistic analysis rare in the field, this study builds on recent work both analyzing Tagalog in the context of CSR and investigating the properties generally assigned to God and other SAs.