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Neglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description: Deixis, asymmetries, constructions
Edited by Laure Sarda and Benjamin Fagard
[Human Cognitive Processing 72] 2022
► pp. 149–172

Chapter 7
Source–Goal asymmetry in Standard Chinese

A comparative study of spontaneous and caused motion events

ORCID logo | Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage | Université Lumière Lyon 2

Source and Goal, which represent two phases of Path of motion (the starting and the ending points respectively), have been largely studied as a case of linguistic asymmetry. Previous studies have demonstrated that speakers tend to express Goals more overtly than Sources when describing a motion event. This chapter aims to investigate the Source-Goal asymmetry in Standard Chinese by exploring the expression of spontaneous and caused motion events in data collected with the help of visual stimuli tools. My findings reveal a Source-Goal asymmetry in motion encoding in both types of events. Furthermore, different aspects of asymmetry that have manifested in Standard Chinese confirm the previous asymmetrical complexity found within individual languages and across languages.

Keywords: crosslinguistic, ending point, phases of path of motion, starting point, visual stimuli tools
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Morphosyntactic resources available in Standard Chinese for Path encoding
    • 2.1Verbal encoding
    • 2.2Adverbal encoding
    • 2.3Adnominal encoding
  • 3.Methodology: Elicitation tools, speakers, and data
  • 4.The encoding of Source-oriented Path, Goal-oriented Path and Source-Goal-oriented Path
    • 4.1Strategy 1: Single linguistic resources
      • 4.1.1The encoding of spontaneous motion events: Verbs, satellites or prepositions
      • 4.1.2The encoding of caused motion events: Satellites, prepositions or modifiers
    • 4.2Strategy 2: Multiple linguistic resources
      • 4.2.1The encoding of simple Path
      • 4.2.2The encoding of complex Path
  • 5.Source-Goal asymmetries in stimuli data of Standard Chinese
    • 5.1Asymmetry 1: Multiple elements for Source encoding vs. Single element for Goal encoding
    • 5.2Asymmetry 2: Source information expressed by modifiers
    • 5.3Asymmetry 3: Source-Goal asymmetry in terms of frequency
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations in example glosses
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 7 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.72.07son
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