Cover not available
Part of
Motion and Space across Languages: Theory and applications
Edited by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano
[Human Cognitive Processing 59] 2017
► pp. 205–228

Chapter 7
Non-actual motion in language and experience

 | Lund University
Dynamic descriptions of static situations, e.g. The road goes through the forest, have attracted a lot of attention in semantics. In cognitive linguistics, terms such as “fictive motion” and “subjective motion” are often used to describe such sentences. While these terms are taken to be largely synonymous, I argue that they are analytically different, and furthermore point to different possible experiential motivations behind this phenomenon. This leads to the pluralistic and integrative framework of “non-actual motion”. Within this framework, an elicitation study with speakers of Swedish, French, and Thai was designed and conducted. The results suggest that non-actual motion expressions are conventionalized in all three languages. The language-specific resources for expressing actual motion are used, but with elements suggesting actual motion demoted.
Keywords: fictive motion, motion semantics, subjective motion, semantic typology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Non-actual motion
    • 3.1Motion affordances and capacity for self-motion
    • 3.2Visual scanning
    • 3.3From simulation to imagination
    • 3.4Summary
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Material
    • 4.2Research questions
  • 5.Non-actual motion in Swedish, French, and Thai
    • 5.1NAM expressions or not?
    • 5.2A semantic analysis of NAM expressions
    • 5.3Summary
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.59.09bol
References (32)
References
Barsalou, L. W. 2009. Simulation, situated conceptualization and prediction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences, 364, 128–289. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blomberg, J., & Zlatev, J. 2014. Actual and non-actual motion: Why experientialist semantics needs phenomenology (and vice versa). Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 13(3), 395–418. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blomberg, J. 2014. Motion in language and experience: Actual and non-actual motion in Swedish, French and Thai. Ph.D. Dissertation, Lund University.Google Scholar
2015. The expression of non-actual motion in Swedish, French and Thai. Cognitive Linguistics, 26(4), 657–696. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brandt, L. 2009. Subjectivity in the act of representing: The case for subjective motion and change. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(4), 573–601. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013. The communicative mind: A linguistic exploration of conceptual integration and meaning construction. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. 1977. The theory of affordances. In R. Shaw, & J. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, acting, and knowing (127–143). Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc.Google Scholar
1979. The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Husserl, E. [1935] 1975. Experience and Judgement. Evanston, IL: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. I: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. 1990. Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2001. Dynamicity in grammar. Axiomathes, 12, 7–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005. Dynamicity, fictivity and scanning: The imaginative basis of logic and linguistic meaning. In D. Pecher, & R. A. Zwaan (Eds.), Grounding cognition: The role of perception and action in memory, language and thinking (164–197). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006. Subjectification, grammaticization, and conceptual archetypes. In A. Athanasiadou, C. Canakis, & B. Cornille (Eds.), Subjectification: Various paths to subjectivity (17–41). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matlock, T. 2004a. Fictive motion as cognitive simulation. Memory & Cognition, 32(8), 1389–1400. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004b. The conceptual motivation of fictive motion. In G. Radden, & K.-U. Panther (Eds.), Studies in linguistic motivation (221–248). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2010. Abstract motion is no longer abstract. Language & Cognition, 2(2), 243–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matsumoto, Y. 1996. Subjective motion in English and Japanese. Cognitive Linguistics, 7(2), 183–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. [1939] 1962. Phenomenology of perception. New York: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Overgaard, S. 2012. Visual perception and self-movement: Another look. In A. Foolen, U. Lüdtke, T. Racine, & J. Zlatev (Eds.), Moving ourselves-Moving others: Motion and emotion in intersubjectivity, consciousness, and language (81–104). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Richardson, D., & Matlock, T. 2007. The integration of figurative language and static depictions: An eye movement study of fictive motion. Cognition, 102(1), 129–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rojo, A., & Valenzuela, J. 2004. Fictive motion in English and Spanish. International Journal of English Studies, 3(2), 123–149.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. 2004. The many ways to search for a frog: linguistic typology and the expression of motion events. In S. Strömqvist, & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: Typological and contextual perspectives (219–257). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Sonesson, G. 2010. Semiosis and the elusive final interpretant of understanding. Semiotica, 179, 145–258.Google Scholar
Stosić, D., & Sarda, L. 2009. The many ways to be located. In M. Brala Vukanović, & L. Gruic Grmusa (Eds.), Space and time in language and literature (39–60). Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Talmy, L. 1983. How language structures space. In J. H. L. Pick, & L. P. Acredolo (Eds.), Spatial orientation: Theory, research, and application (225–282). New York: Plenum Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2000a. Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. I: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
2000b. Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. II: Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tranströmer, T. 1996. April och Tystnad. Sorgegondolen. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag.Google Scholar
Zlatev, J. 2003. Holistic spatial semantics of Thai. In E. Casad, & G. Palmer (Eds.), Cognitive linguistics and non-Indo-European languages (305–336). Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zlatev, J., & Yangklang, P. 2004. A third way of travel: the place of Thai in motion-event typology. In S. Strömqvist, & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: Typological and contextual perspectives (159–190). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Jia , Junwen
2024. Spatial Concepts within Syntactic Structures: The Topology-Imagery Hypothesis. Litera :2 ► pp. 104 ff. DOI logo
Cappelle, Bert
2020. Looking into visual motion expressions in Dutch, English, and French. In Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions [Human Cognitive Processing, 69], ► pp. 235 ff. DOI logo
Knop, Sabine De
2020. The embodied teaching of complex verbal constructions with German placement verbs and spatial prepositions. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 18:1 ► pp. 131 ff. DOI logo
Knop, Sabine De
2020. Expressions of motion events in German: an integrative constructionist approach for FLT1. CogniTextes 20:Volume 20 DOI logo
Moore, Kevin Ezra
2020. Moving Time vs. Frame-relative motion. Constructions and Frames 12:2 ► pp. 272 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.