Article published In:
Review of Cognitive Linguistics: Online-First Articles

Separation events in Mandarin, Russian and Korean

A crosslinguistic event-categorization study

| University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
| Beihang University
| Beihang University
| Minzu Normal University of Xingyi

Crosslinguistic studies on motion events have revealed that S-languages demonstrate finer-grained lexical categories than V-languages in representing motion manners/gaits. But these studies were restricted to the semantic domain of motion events and confined to a limited number of S- or V- languages. In this paper, we further investigate whether the association between lexical diversity and language typology is manifest in a similar way in the semantic domain of separation events by focusing on Mandarin, Russian and Korean. Our results suggest that: (1) Separation expressions support the diversity-typology correlation proved in motion expressions because the two S-languages Mandarin and Russian demonstrate richer lexical diversity than the V-language Korean; (2) It is further pointed out that apart from language typology, lexical diversity is influenced by multiple factors including lexical resources, conceptual salience, event construal, and event type; (3) Though typologically different, these three languages, in their lexical naming of separation events, are constrained by the biomechanical structure and follow the principle of prototypicality. Overall, this study opens up a new crosslinguistic perspective by showing how lexical diversity is typologically and linguistically driven.

Keywords: crosslinguistic studies, lexical category, separation events, lexical diversity, language typology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.State of art
    • 2.1Motion event categorization
    • 2.2Separation event categorization
    • 2.3Motion-separation comparison
    • 2.4Mandarin, Russian and Korean
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Coding scheme
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Lexical diversity
    • 4.2Beyond S-/V- typology
      • 4.2.1Lexical resource
      • 4.2.2Conceptual salience
      • 4.2.3Event construal
      • 4.2.4Event type
    • 4.3Structural constraints and event categorization
    • 4.4The continuum of event categorization
  • 5.Conclusions and implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 14 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00143.du
References
Ameka, F. K., & Hill, D.
(2020) The comparative semantics of verbs of ‘opening’: West Africa vs Oceania. In H. Bromhead & Z. Ye. Meaning, life and culture: In conversation with Anna Wierzbicka. Canberra: ANU Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ameel, E., Malt, B. C., & Storm, G.
(2008) Object naming and later lexical development: From baby bottle to beer bottle. Journal of Memory and Language, 58 1, 262–285. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Andersen, E. S.
(1975) Cups and glasses: Learning boundaries are vague. Journal of Child Language, 2 1, 78–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beavers, J., Levin, B., & Tham, S. W.
(2010) The typology of motion expressions revisited. Journal of Linguistics, 46 1, 331–377. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berlin, B.
(1992) Ethnobiological classification: Principles of categorization of plants and animals in traditional societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berlin, B., & Kay, P.
(1969) Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M.
(1996) Learning how to structure space for language: A crosslinguistic perspective. In P. Bloom, M. Peterson, L. Nadel & M. Garrett (Eds.), Language and space (pp. 385–436). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
(2005) Why can’t you “open” a nut or “break” a cooked noodle? Learning covert object categories in action word meanings. In L. Gershkoff-Stowe & D. H. Rakison (Eds.), Building object categories in developmental time (pp. 209–243). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
(2012) Ten lectures on language, cognition, and language acquisition. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M., & Choir, S.
(2003) Space under Construction: Language-specific spatial categorization in first language acquisition. In D. Gentner & S. Goldin-Meadwo (eds.), Language in mind: advances in the study of language and thought (pp. 387–427). MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bohnemeyer, J., Bowerman, M., & Brown, P.
(2001) Cut and break clips. In S. C. Levinson & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Field manual 2001, language and cognition group (pp. 90–96). Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Nijmegen: MPI.Google Scholar
Bohnemeyer, J.
(2007) Morpholexical transparency and the argument structure of verbs of cutting and breaking. Cognitive Linguistics, 18 (2), 153–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, C. H.
(1976) General principles of human anatomical partonomy and speculations on the growth of partonomic nomenclature. American Ethnologist, 3 1, 400–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, P.
(2007) She had just cut/broken off her head: Cutting and breaking verbs in Tzeltal. Cognitive Linguistics, 18 (2), 319–330. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chao, Y. R.
(1968) A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Choi, S., & Bowerman, M.
(1991) Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition, 41 1, 83–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, J. D.
(2007) “He cut-break the rope”: Encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events in Mandarin. Cognitive Linguistics, 18 (2), 273–285. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, L., & Guo, J.
(2009) Motion events in Chinese novels: Evidence for an equipollently-framed language. Journal of Pragmatics, 41 (9), 1749–1766. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, W.
(2010) The origins of grammaticalization in the verbalization of experience. Linguistics 48 (1), 1–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, W., Barðdal, J., Hollmann, W., Sotirova, V., & Taoka, C.
(2010) Revising Talmy’s typological classification of complex event constructions. In H. C. Boas (Ed.), Contractive studies in construction grammar (pp. 201–236). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Divjak, D.
(2019) Frequency in language: Memory, attention and learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Essegbey, J.
(2007) Cut and break verbs in Sranan. Cognitive Linguistics, 18 (2), 231–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Franco, K., Geeraerts, D., Speelman, D., & Van Hout, R.
(2019) Concept characteristics and variation in lexical diversity in two Dutch dialect areas. Cognitive Linguistics, 30 (1), 205–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geeraerts, D., Grondelaers, S., & Bakema, P.
(1994) The structure of lexical variation: Meaning, naming, and context (Cognitive Linguistics Research 5). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gennari, S. P., Sloman, S. A., Malt, B. C., & Fitch, W. T.
(2002) Motion events in language and cognition. Cognition, 83 1, 49–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gentner, D.
(2005) The development of relational category knowledge. In L. Gershkoff-Stowe & D. H. Rakison (Eds.), Building object categories in developmental time (pp. 245–275). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Goodenough, W.
(1956) Componential analysis and the study of meaning. Language, 321, 195–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
K. Hale & S. J. Keyser
(1987) A view from the middle. Lexicon project working papers 10. Cambridge, MA: MIT, Center for Cognitive Science.Google Scholar
Janda, L. A., & Nesset, T.
(2010) Taking apart Russian RAZ-. Slavic and East European Journal, 54 (3), 476–501.Google Scholar
Ji, Y. L., Hendriks, H., & Hickmann, M.
(2011) The expression of cause motion events in Chinese and English: Some typological issues. Linguistics, 49 (5), 1041–1077. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kay, P., Berlin, B., Maffi, L., & Merrifield, W.
(1997) Color naming across languages. In C. L. Hardin & L. Maffi (Eds.), Color categories in language and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kay, P., & McDaniel, C. K.
(1978) The linguistic significance of the meanings of basic color terms. Language, 54 1, 610–646. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kay, P., & Regier, T.
(2003) Resolving the question of color naming universals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100 1, 9085–9089. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kwon, I.
(2016) How do Koreans break and cut things?: A cognitive-semantics approach to BREAK predicates and CUT predicates in Korean. Linguistic Research, 33 (1), 65–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, W.
(1973) The boundaries of words and their meanings. In J. Bailey & R. Shuy. New ways of analyzing variation in English (pp. 340–373). Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G.
(1987) Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R.
(1987) Foundations of cognitive grammar, Vol I: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C.
(2007) Cut and break verbs in Yeli Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island. Cognitive Linguistics, 18 1, 207–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liu, D. L.
(2013) Salience and construal in the use of synonymy: A study of two sets of near-synonymous nouns. Cognitive Linguistics, 24 (1), 67–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Majid, A., Bowerman, M., Staden, M. V., & Boster, J. S.
(2007) The semantic categories of breaking and cutting events: A crosslinguistic perspective. Cognitive Linguistics, 18 (2), 133–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Majid, A., Boster, J. S., & Bowerman, M.
(2008) The cross-linguistic categorization of everyday events: A study of cutting and breaking. Cognition, 109 1, 235–250. DOI logoGoogle 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 1, 232–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malt, B. C., Gennari, S., & Imai, M.
(2010) Lexicalization patterns and the world-to-words mapping. In B. C. Malt & P. Wolff (Eds.), Words and the mind: How words capture human experience (pp.29–57). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malt, B. C., Ameel, E., Imai, Gennari, M. S., Saji, N., & Majid, A.
(2014) Human locomotion in languages: Constraints on moving and meaning. Journal of Memory and Language, 74 1, 107–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Narasimhan, B.
(2007) Cutting, breaking, and tearing verbs in Hindi and Tamil. Cognitive Linguistics, 18 (2),195–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pye, C.
(1996) K’iche’ Maya verbs of breaking and cutting. Kansas working papers in linguistics, 21 1, 87–98. Lawrence: University of Kansas. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pye, C., Loeb, D., & Piao, Y.-Y.
(1995) The acquisition of breaking and cutting. In E. Clark (Ed.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Child Language Research Forum. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Saji, N., Imai, M., Saalbach, H., Zhang, Y., Shu, H., & Okada, H.
(2011) Word learning does not end at fast mapping: Evolution of verb meanings through reorganization of an entire semantic domain. Cognition, 118 1, 45–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shaefer, R. P.
(1980) An experimental assessment of the boundaries demarcating three basic semantic categories in the domain of separation. Kansas: University of Kansas.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I.
(1996) Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In M. Shibatani & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Grammatical constructions: Their form and meaning (pp. 195–220). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
(2000) Verbalized events: A dynamic approach to linguistic relativity and determinism. In S. Niemeier & R. Dirven (Eds.), Evidence for linguistic relativity (pp. 107–138). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2004) The many ways to search for a frog: Linguistic typology and the expression of motion events. In S. Stromqvist & L. Verhoeven (Eds.). Relating events in narrative: Vol. 2. typological and contextual perspectives (pp. 219–257). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
(2005) Relating narrative events in translation. In D. Ravid & H. B. Shyldkrot (Eds.), Perspectives on language and language development: Essays in honor of Ruth A. Berman (pp. 115–129). Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle 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 (pp. 59–81). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I. I., Ibarretxe-Antunano, I., Kopecka, A., & Majid, A.
(2014) Manners of human gait: A crosslinguistic event-naming study. Cognitive Linguistics, 25 (4), 701–741. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sloman, S. A., & Malt, B. C.
(2003) Artifacts are not ascribed essences, nor are they treated as belonging to kinds. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18 1, 563–582. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shi, W. L., & Wu, Y. C.
(2014) Which way to move: The evolution of motion expressions in Chinese. Linguistics, 52 (5), 1237–1292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Son, M.
(2009) Linguistic variation and lexical parameter: The case of directed motion. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 15 (1), 213–222.Google Scholar
Tai, J. H.
(2003) Cognitive relativism: Resultative construction in Chinese. Language and Linguistics, 4 (2), 301–316.Google Scholar
(2013) Reflections on typological characterization of Chinese grammar. Human language resources and linguistic typology (pp. 59–88). Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Sinology. Taipei: Academia Sinica.
Talmy, L.
(1985) Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical form. In T. Shopen (Ed.). Language typology and syntactic description: Vol. 3. Grammatical categories and the lexicon (pp. 57–149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2000) Toward cognitive semantics (Volume II): Typology and process in concept structuring. Mass: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Yan, C. S.
(2005) The lexicalization pattern of ‘realization’ in English and Chinese. Journal of Foreign Languages, 1 1, 23–29.Google Scholar