Cover not available
Part of
Motion and Space across Languages: Theory and applications
Edited by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano
[Human Cognitive Processing 59] 2017
► pp. 419–446

Afterword
Typologies and language use

| University of California, Berkeley
The study of encoding of motion events is best approached as a search for potentially interacting factors, linguistic and non-linguistic. Every language presents a cluster of typological variables. In the domain of motion events, sets of variables co-occur in at least two major patterns (verb‑ and satellite-framed). These types are idealizations of a range of diverse solutions to encoding dimensions of Path and Manner. However, the more we probe linguistic expressions of motion events, the more we uncover mixed types, indeterminate types, hybrid forms, and changes in progress. Numerous factors can act to limit or modify the expression of typological potentials – that is, patterns of language use that are predicted by the typological categorization of a language. The encoding of Path and Manner is not carried out independently of a language’s morphosyntactic and morphophonological characteristics. Data of historical linguistics, language contact, and translation are beginning to reveal interactions of factors over time. Suggestive findings demonstrate diachronic transitions between language types (with examples from Latin and Romance languages, Slavic languages, Chinese), as well as changes in the manner verb lexicon over time (English, Italian).
Keywords: linguistic typology, language contact, diachronic linguistics, motion events
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Contributions of linguistic typology
  • 3.Expressing Manners of movement across language types
    • 3.1Boundary-crossing constraints
    • 3.2Lexical diversity in the domain of Manner of movement
  • 4.Language use and diachronic patterns
  • 5.From verb-framed to satellite-framed
  • 6.From satellite-framed to verb-framed
    • 6.1Prefixed satellites: Romance and Slavic languages
    • 6.2Serial verb languages: Mandarin
  • 7.Additional factors influencing typological potentials
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.59.17slo
References (56)
References
Aske, J. 1989. Path predicates in English and Spanish: A closer look. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 15, 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alexander, R. 2006. Bosnian Croatian Serbian: A grammar with sociolinguistic commentary. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Beavers, J., Levin, B., & Tham, S. W. 2010. The typology of motion expressions revisited. Journal of Linguistics, 46, 331–377. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. 1994. Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Berthele, R. 2006. Ort und Weg: Die sprachliche Raumreferenz in Varietäten des Deutschen, Rätoromanischen und Französischen. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009. The many ways to search for a frog story: On a fieldworker’s troubles collecting spatial language data. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & Ş. Özçalışkan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (162–174). New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Brucale, L. 2011. Manner of motion verbs in Latin. Paper presented at the conference Historical-Comparative Linguistics in the 21st Century. Humboldt-Kolleg, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, 22–25 September 2011.
Cardini, F. E. 2008. Manner of motion saliency: an inquiry into Italian. Cognitive Linguistics, 19, 533–570. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carroll, M., Weimar, K., Flecken, M., Lambert, M., & von Stutterheim, C. 2012. Tracing trajectories: Motion event construal by advanced L2 French-English and L2 French-German speakers. Language, Interaction and Acquisition, 3, 202–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, J. 2008. The acquisition of verb compounding in Mandarin Chinese. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Chen, L., & Guo, J. 2009. Motion events in Chinese novels: Evidence for an equipollently-framed language. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 1749–1766. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fanego, T. 2012. Motion events in English: The emergence and diachrony of manner salience from Old English to Late Modern English. Folia Linguistica Historica, 33, 29–85.Google Scholar
Flecken, M., von Stutterheim, C., & Carroll, M. 2014. Grammatical aspect influences motion event perception: Findings from a cross-linguistic non-verbal recognition task. Language and Cognition, 6, 45–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goschler, J., & Stefanowitsch, A. (Eds.). 2013. Variation and change in the encoding of motion events. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hottenroth, P.-M. 1985. Die italienischen Ortsadverbien. In C. Schwarze (Ed.), Bausteine für eine italienische Grammatik. Vol. 2 (385–462). Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Iacobini, C., & Masini, F. 2006. The emergence of verb–particle constructions in Italian: Locative and actional meanings. Morphology, 16: 155–188.Google Scholar
2007. Verb-particle constructions and prefixed verbs in Italian: Typology, diachrony and semantics. In G. Booij, L. Ducceschi, B. Fradin, E. Guevara, A. Ralli, & S. Scalise (Eds.), On-line proceedings of the fifth Mediterranean morphology meeting (157–184). Bologna: Università degli studi di Bologna.Google Scholar
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I. 2006. Sound symbolism and motion in Basque. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
2009. Path salience in motion events. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & Ş. Özçalışkan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (403–414). New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Jovanović, J., & Martinović-Zić, A. 2004. Why manner matters: Contrasting English and Serbo-Croatian typology in motion description. In C. L. Moder, & A. Martinović-Zić (Eds.), Discourse across languages and cultures (210–226). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kopecka, A. 2006. The semantic structure of motion verbs in French: Typological perspectives. In M. Hickmann, & S. Robert (Eds.), Space in languages: Linguistic systems and cognitive categories (83–101). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kramer, J. 1981. Die Übernahme der deutschen und der niederländischen Konstruktion Verb + Verbzusatz durch die Nachbarsprachen. In W. Meid, & K. Heller (Eds.), Sprachkontakt als Ursache von Veränderungen der Sprach‑ und Bewusstseinsstruktur: Eine Sammlung von Studien zur sprachlichen Interferenz (129–140). Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.Google Scholar
Lamarre, C. 2007. The linguistic encoding of motion events in Chinese: with reference to cross-dialectal variation. In Ch. Lamarre, & T. Ohori (Eds.), Typological studies of the linguistic expressions of motion events. Vol. 1: Perspectives from South and Southeast Asia (3–33). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C., Meira, S., & The Language and Cognition Group. 2003. ‘Natural concepts’ in the spatial topological domain – adpositional meanings in crosslinguistic perspective: An exercise in semantic typology. Language, 79, 485–516. DOI logo
Majid, A., Boster, J. S., & Bowerman, M. 2008. The cross-linguistic categorization of everyday events: A study of cutting and breaking. Cognition, 109, 235–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malt, B. C., Gennari, S., Imai, M., Ameel, E., Tsuda, N., & Majid, A. 2008. Talking about walking: Biomechanics and the language of locomotion. Psychological Science, 19, 232–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matsumoto, Y. 2003. Typologies of lexicalization patterns and event integration: Clarifications and reformulations. In S. Chiba et al. (Eds.), Empirical and theoretical investigations into language: A Festschrift for Masaru Kajita (403–418). Tokyo: Kaitakusha.Google Scholar
Mayer, M. 1969. Frog, where are you? New York: Dial Press.Google Scholar
Oh, K.-J. 2009. Motion events in English and Korean fictional writings and translations. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & Ş. Özçalışkan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (253–262). New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Schwarze, C. 1985. “Uscire” e “andare fuori”: struttura sintattica e semantica lessicale. In A. Franchi de Bellis, & L. M. Savola (Eds.), Sintassi e morfologia della lingua italiana d’uso: Theorie e aplicazioni descrittive (355–371). Rome: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. 1996a. From “thought and language” to “thinking to speaking”. In J. J. Gumperz, & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity (70–96.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1996b. Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In M. Shibatani, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Grammatical constructions: Their form and meaning (195–220). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
1997. Mind, code, and text. In J. Bybee, J. Haiman, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Essays on language function and language type: Dedicated to T. Givón (437–467). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003. Language and thought online: Cognitive consequences of linguistic relativity. In D. Gentner, & S. Goldin-Meadow (Eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the investigation of language and thought (157–191). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
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
2005. Relating events in translation. In D. Ravid, & H. B.-Z. Shyldkrot (Eds.), Perspectives on language and language development: Essays in honor of Ruth A. Berman (115–129). Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006. What makes manner of motion salient? Explorations in linguistic typology, discourse, and cognition. In M. Hickmann, & S. Robert (Eds.), Space in languages: Linguistic systems and cognitive categories (59–81). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008. From S-language and V-language to PIN and PIV. Paper presented at the workshop Human Locomotion across Languages. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 6 June 2008.
Slobin, D. I., & Hoiting, N. 1994. Reference to movement in spoken and signed languages: Typological considerations. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 20, 487–505. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Kopecka, A., & Majid, A. 2014. Manners of human gait: A crosslinguistic event-naming study. Cognitive Linguistics, 25, 701–741. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Snell-Hornby, M. 1983. Verb-descriptivity in German and English. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
von Stutterheim, C., Andermann, M., Carroll, M., Flecken, M., & Schmiedtová, B. 2012 . How grammaticized concepts shape event conceptualization in language production: insights from linguistic analysis, eye tracking data, and memory performance. Linguistics, 50, 833–867. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talmy, L. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and lexical description. Vol. 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon (36–149). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1991. Path to realization. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 17, 480–519. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2000. Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. II: Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
2009. Main verb properties and equipollent framing. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & Ş. Özçalışkan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (389–402). New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Troberg, M., & Burnett, H. 2011. Resultative secondary predication in medieval French and the satellite-framed/verb-framed distinction. Paper presented at the Workshop on Verbal Elasticity: Framing the Verb/satellite Distinction from a Biolinguistic Perspective. Centre de Lingüística Teòrica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 3–5 October 2011.
Verkerk, A. 2013. Scramble, scurry and dash: The correlation between motion event encoding and manner verb lexicon size in Indo-European. Language Dynamics and Change, 3, 169–217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vidaković, I. 2006. Second language acquisition of dynamic spatial relations. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Voeltz, F. K. E., & Kilian-Hatz, C. (Eds.). 2001. Ideophones. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilkins, D. 2004. The verbalization of motion events in Arrernte. In S. Strömqvist, & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: Typological and contextual perspectives (144–157). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Wood, R. E. 1972. Dutch syntactic loans in Papiamentu. Revue des langues vivantes / Tijdschrift voor levende talen, 38, 635–647.Google Scholar
Yiu, C. Y.-M. 2014. The typology of motion events: An empirical study of Chinese dialects. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Zlatev, J., & Yangklang, P. 2004. A third way to travel: The place of Thai and serial verb languages 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 (9)

Cited by nine other publications

De Knop, Sabine
2024. The Integration of Frequency Dimensions and Lexicalisation Preferences in Contrastive Analysis. In Constructional and Cognitive Explorations of Contrastive Linguistics, ► pp. 89 ff. DOI logo
Androsiuk, Viacheslav, Oksana Voloshyna & Ivo Svoboda
2023. Perception and understanding of information as determinants of the investigator’s professional competence. Naukovij vìsnik Nacìonalʹnoï akademìï vnutrìšnìh sprav 28:2 ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Brenda, Maria
2023. Elaboration sites and prepositional meaning construction in English and Polish. Research in Language 21:2 ► pp. 117 ff. DOI logo
Sung, Min-Chang
2023. Top-down and bottom-up approaches to teaching English verb-particle constructions. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 21:2 ► pp. 486 ff. DOI logo
Becerra, Rodrigo, Jorge Osorio, Ítalo Cantarutti & Gabriel Llanquinao
2022. Motion Events in L1 and L2 Mapudungun Narratives: Typology and Cross-Linguistic Influence. Frontiers in Communication 7 DOI logo
Sarda, Laure & Benjamin Fagard
2022. Chapter 1. Introduction: The description of motion events. In Neglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description [Human Cognitive Processing, 72], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Fanego, Teresa
2020. On the History of the English Progressive ConstructionJane came whistling down the street. Journal of English Linguistics 48:4 ► pp. 319 ff. DOI logo
Matsumoto, Yo & Kazuhiro Kawachi
2020. Introduction. Motion event descriptions in broader perspective. In Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions [Human Cognitive Processing, 69], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Soroli, Efstathia, Maya Hickmann & Henriëtte Hendriks
2019. Casting an eye on motion events. In The Semantics of Dynamic Space in French [Human Cognitive Processing, 66], ► pp. 250 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 july 2024. 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.