Article published in:
Languages in Contrast
Vol. 18:2 (2018) ► pp. 207–229

Crossed transposition in a corpus-based study of motion in English and Spanish

| Universidad de León (Spain)

The present paper reports on a translation-based teaching-oriented study of the expression of path and manner of motion (Talmy 1972) in English and Spanish. The aim is to explore contrastive differences by analysing translations, with special attention to crossed transposition (Molina and Hurtado Albir 2002), which implies a double shift of part-of-speech from the source text to the target text, and is the expected type of transfer between a satellite-framed language like English and a verb-framed language like Spanish. Two corpora have been used, a monolingual corpus of Children’s Short Stories, the CSS-corpus, and a parallel corpus English-Spanish, P-ACTRES 2.0. The results show a high tendency for implicitation of either path or manner and for compression in the translations into Spanish, whereas crossed transposition is preferred in the translations into English. Also, some pedagogical applications are suggested for including these motion expressions in TEFL to young learners through storytelling.

Keywords: motion, corpus, crossed transposition, stories, English / Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
  • 3.The corpora
  • 4.Results and discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 15 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.15019.lab
References
Baker, M.
2011 In other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Beavers, J., Levin, B. and Wei Tham, S.
2009 The Typology of Motion Expressions Revisited. Journal of Linguistics 46:2, 331–377. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. and Slobin, D. I.
1994 Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Biber, D.
1993 Representativeness in Corpus Design. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 8:4, 243–257. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bondarko, A.
1991 Functional Grammar. A Field Approach. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chen, L. and Guo, J.
2009 Motion events in Chinese novels: Evidence for an equipollently-framed language. Journal of Pragmatics 411, 1749–1766. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chesterman, A.
1998 Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2016 Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Choi, S. and Bowerman, M.
1991 Learning to Express Motion Events in English and Korean: The Influence of Language-Specific Lexicalization Patterns. Cognition 411: 83–121. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chou, M.
2014 Assessing English Vocabulary and Enhancing Young English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learners’ Motivation through Games, Songs, and Stories. Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education 42:3, 284–297. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Connor, U.
2004 Intercultural Rhetoric Research: Beyond Texts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3: 4, 291–304. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Croft, W., Barðdal, J., Hollmann, W., Sotirova, V. and Taoka, C.
2010 Revising Talmy’s Typological Classification of Complex Event Constructions. In Contrastive Studies in Construction Grammar. Hans C. Boas (ed.), 201–235. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Egan, T. and Graedler, A. -L.
2015 Motion into and out of in English, French and Norwegian. In K. Aijmer and H. Hasselgård (eds). Cross-linguistic Studies at the Interface between Lexis and Grammar. Special issue of Nordic Journal of English Studies 14 (1): 9–33.Google Scholar
Fawcett, P.
1997 Translation and Language. Linguistic Theories Explained. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hijazo-Gascon, A.
2010 La adquisición de eventos de movimiento en segundas lenguas, in Interlingüística 201. UEA Repository.Google Scholar
Hochestein, J., Eisenberg, A. and Naigles, L.
2006 Is he floating across or crossing afloat? Cross-influence of L1 and L2 in Spanish-English Bilingual Adults. Language and Cognition 9 (3): 249–61. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
James, C.
1980 Contrastive Analysis. Singapore: LongmanGoogle Scholar
Kilgarriff, A. Baisa, V., Bušta, J., Jakubíček, M., Kovář, V., Michelfeit, J. Rychlý, P. and Suchomel, V.
2014 The Sketch Engine: Ten Years on. Lexicography, 1–30.Google Scholar
Krzeszowski, T. P.
1984 Tertium Comparationis. In Contrastive Linguistics. Prospects and Problems. J. Fisiak (ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 301–312. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Louhivaara, S.
1998 Aspects of Adverb Position in some Finish and English Texts. In Compare or Contrast? Current Issues in Cross-Language Research. W. R. Cooper (ed.), 145–157. Tampere: University of Tampere.Google Scholar
Molina, L. and Hurtado Albir, A.
2002 Translation Techniques Revisited: A Dynamic and Functionalist Approach. Meta 47(4): 498–512. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E., Brisard, F.
2002 Encoding Motion in Gestures and Speech: Are there Differences in Bilingual Children’s French and English? In Space in Language: Location, Motion, Path and Manner: Proceedings of the 31st Stanford Child Research Forum. Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Pym, A.
2016 Translation Solutions for Many Languages: Histories of a Flawed Dream. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Slattery, M. and Willis, J.
2001 English for Primary Teachers: A Handbook of Activities & Classroom Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I.
1996 Two Ways to Travel: Verbs of Motion in English and Spanish. In Grammatical Constructions: Their Form and meaning. M. Shibatani and S. A. Thompson (eds.), 195–220. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Stringer, D.
2007 Motion Events in L2 Acquisition: A Lexicalist Account. In Cauntnulton, H., Kulatilake, S., Woo, I. H. (eds.), BUCLD 31: Proceedings of the 31st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Vol. II1, 585–96. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
Talmy, L.
1972 Semantic Structures in English and Atsugewi. Dissertation. University of California. Berkeley.Google Scholar
1991 Path to Realization: A Typology of Event Conflation. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 480–519. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 Lexical Typologies. In T. Shopen (ed.) Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. (2nd edition), 66–168. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thornbury, S.
1999 How to Teach Grammar. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Vinay, J. P. and Darbelnet, J.
1958 Stylistique Comparée du Français et de l’Anglais. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar