Chapter published in:
Broader Perspectives on Motion Event DescriptionsEdited by Yo Matsumoto and Kazuhiro Kawachi
[Human Cognitive Processing 69] 2020
► pp. 63–104
Patterns of path encoding in German
Birgitta Meex | KU Leuven
This chapter proposes a classification of path
encoding in motion events in German. It expands the framework that I
developed for analyzing motion events in a narrow sense (Meex 2004) to motion events
from a broader perspective including deictic, causative, and fictive
motion. The chapter aims to deepen our understanding of how the
conceptual components at the core of German motion event
descriptions, viz. motion, direction, source-path-goal, manner, and
cause, correlate and interact with the conceptual categories of
deixis, aspect, and case. The analysis reveals seven path coding
types, viz. source, intended goal, path of incomplete traversal,
path of complete traversal, boundary traversing path, achieved goal,
and trajective, depending on the aspectual framing (i.e.
summativity, plexity, boundedness, mutativity) of the motion event.
Systematic patterns of co-occurrence of these aspectual elements in
the motion scene are described and their combination with specific
lexical (e.g. deictic expressions) and morphosyntactic (e.g.
inflectional case marking on the noun) categories are examined to
support the analysis. It will also be shown that apart from a few
exceptions, self-motion, caused motion, and fictive motion are
compatible with all seven path coding types discussed, showing that
German uses event-type neutral path expressions.
Keywords: aspect, case, caused motion, deixis, fictive motion
Published online: 11 August 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.69.03mee
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.69.03mee
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