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The Semantics of Dynamic Space in French: Descriptive, experimental and formal studies on motion expression
Edited by Michel Aurnague and Dejan Stosic
[Human Cognitive Processing 66] 2019
► pp. 141–177

Manner as a cluster concept

What does lexical coding of manner of motion tell us about manner?

| CLLE-ERSS, Université de Toulouse, CNRS & UT2J, France
The chapter deals with the lexical coding of manner of motion in French. A twofold aim is pursued: to provide a better understanding of what manner is from the semantic point of view and to determine what makes some motion verbs express manner and others not. First, I show that there are five types of linguistic devices involved in the expression of manner: lexical, syntactic, morphological, grammatical and prosodic ones. Next, I propose a more comprehensive definition of the concept of manner, arguing that it is compositional by nature and by no means monolithic. Finally, adopting Levin and Rappaport Hovav’s lexical decomposition approach, I report an in-depth semantic analysis of 562 manner of motion verbs in French and show that manner interpretation in their meaning is generated by a small set of more basic, non-idiosyncratic semantic features which fill a modifier position and whose role consists in diversifying, and thereby in modifying, the root predicate.
Keywords: manner, motion verbs, manner of motion verbs, French
Article outline
  • 1.Five ways to express manner in French
    • 1.1Syntactic encoding of manner
    • 1.2Lexical encoding of manner
      • 1.2.1Predicate decomposition approaches
      • 1.2.2Lexicalization of manner in Talmy’s typological approach
      • 1.2.3Manner as a structural lexical relation
    • 1.3Morphological encoding of manner
    • 1.4Grammatical encoding of manner
  • 2.Towards a more comprehensive definition of manner
  • 3.Manner of motion verbs in French: Where does the manner reading come from?
    • 3.1Studying motion verbs in French: A long-standing tradition
    • 3.2Lexicon of manner of motion verbs in French
    • 3.3Towards an in-depth lexical exploration of manner of motion verbs in French
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Dictionaries
Published online: 29 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.66.04sto
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