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
References

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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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
Filipović, L.
2007 Talking about motion: A crosslinguistic investigation of lexicalization patterns. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goschler, J., & Stefanowitsch, A.
(Eds.) 2013 Variation and change in the encoding of motion events. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. Crossref
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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 Where do all the motion verbs come from? The speed of development of manner verbs and path verbs in Indo-European. Diachronica, 32, 69–104. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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

Cited by other publications

Fanego, Teresa
2020. On the History of the English Progressive Construction Jane came whistling down the street. Journal of English Linguistics 48:4 ► pp. 319 ff. Crossref logo
Matsumoto, Yo & Kazuhiro Kawachi
2020.  In Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions [Human Cognitive Processing, 69], ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo
Soroli, Efstathia, Maya Hickmann & Henriëtte Hendriks
2019.  In The Semantics of Dynamic Space in French [Human Cognitive Processing, 66], ► pp. 250 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 december 2020. 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.