Cagliari, Italy  15-18 September 2003

ALT V Conference

Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

Intra-typological variation in motion events.
iraidei@euskalnet.net
 

Recent studies on the lexicalisation patterns of motion events in a wide variety of languages (Ameka and Essegbey in press, Ibarretxe in press, Slobin and Hoiting 1993, Slobin 2000, Zlatev and Peeperat in press) have shown that Talmy’s (2000) well-known two-way typology into verb-framed and satellite-framed languages is not enough for explaining some of the main characteristics of these languages in the expression of motion. Among the main shortcomings of Talmy’s classification, these studies have pointed out its impossibility for capturing the differences that exist among languages within the same typological group, mainly the expression and degree of lexical elaboration of the main semantic components of motion.

In this paper, we will deal with the issue of intra-typological variation within the Verb-framed language group. We will focus on the elaboration of the core component of motion –path- and to a lesser extent to that of manner following Slobin’s (1996) three proposals for the description of these components in V-languages: (i) fewer and less expressive and frequent lexical items for manner description; (ii) less frequent and elaborated ground; (iii) narrative attention devoted to scene setting.

Based on data from Frog stories in several verb-framed languages, especially Spanish, Basque, Turkish and Thai, we will show that:

            - Languages in this typological group form a continuum with respect to the elaboration of path that goes from a very poor description of this component (as proposed by Slobin) to a very rich and frequent one. We find the following cline:

-there is a correlation between the structural and typological characteristics of the language and the degree of path elaboration, especially important are verb ellipsis and the adpositional system.

            -there is a correlation between the degree of path elaboration and focus of narrative attention. The more detailed the description of path is the more they focus on the dynamics of movement instead of scene setting.

References

Ameka, F.K. and J. Essegbey, in press, “Serialising languages: satellite-framed, verb-framed or neither”, In L. Hyman and I. Maddieson (eds.), African Comparative and Historical Linguistics (Proceedings of the 32th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, March 2001), Lawrenceville, NJ, Africa World Press.

Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., in press, “Motion events in Basque narratives”, In S. Stromqvist, and L. Verhoeven (eds.), Relating Events in Narrative: Typological and contextual perspectives, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum.

Slobin, D. I., 1996, “Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish”, In M. Shibatani & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Essays in semantics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 195-317.

Slobin, Dan I. & Nini Hoiting. 1994. Reference to movement in spoken and signed languages: Typological considerations.

Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society, 487

505.

Talmy, L., 2000, Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Zlatev, J. and P. Yangklang, in press, “A third way to travel: The place of Thai (and other serial verb languages) in motion

 event typology”, In S. Stromqvist, and L. Verhoeven (eds.) Relating Events in Narrative: Typological and contextual

 perspectives, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum.