Chapter published in:
Motion and Space across Languages: Theory and applications
Edited by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano
[Human Cognitive Processing 59] 2017
► pp. 419–446

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
Published online: 14 August 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.59.17slo
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