LINGUIST List 25.3039
Thu
Jul 24 2014
Review: Cognitive
Science; Historical Ling; Linguistic Theories;
Semantics; Typology: Goschler & Stefanowitsch
(2013)
Editor for this issue:
Malgorzata Cavar <gosialinguistlist.org>
Date: 31-Mar-2014
From: Konrad Szczesniak
<konrad.szczesniak
us.edu.pl>
Subject: Variation and Change
in the Encoding of Motion Events
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Book announced at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-4939.html
EDITOR: Juliana Goschler
EDITOR: Anatol Stefanowitsch
TITLE: Variation and Change in the Encoding of
Motion Events
SERIES TITLE: Human Cognitive Processing 41
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Konrad Szczesniak, University of
Silesia
INTRODUCTION
Edited by Juliana Goschler and Anatol
Stefanowitsch, “Variation and Change in the
Encoding of Motion Events” is a volume with a
clear agenda. One common goal of this
collection of studies is to demonstrate the
continuum nature of the binary distinction
between satellite-framed and verb-framed modes
of expression of motion proposed by Talmy
(2000a) (2000b). The authors in the volume
argue that it is too simple and untenable to
divide languages into those that express path
in the verb (enter the room) and those that
express manner in the verb and path outside it
(hop into the room). As Kopecka notes, Talmy’s
division, “although clearly fruitful,
nevertheless proved too simplistic to account
for the typological complexity of individual
languages.” (p. 164) Thus, the point being made
is that in its traditional form, Talmy’s
division may be another facile dichotomy; for
maximum accuracy, it should be carefully
qualified and shown to exhibit considerable
variation. This objective is pursued coherently
in two ways, namely through analysis of
examples of variation within the two types of
languages, and through tracing diachronic
change as languages cross the division between
the types over time. This approach is certainly
reasonable and compelling: the cases of
diachronic change offered here are only
possible if the distinction is a continuum; no
seismic changes between satellite-framed and
verb-framed style would be possible overnight
as “one-fell-swoop” transformations.
The volume is a fascinating collection of
studies focusing on how Talmy’s typology of
motion events plays out in languages when
looked at in detail, based on large numbers of
actual uses of motion event phrases. Berthele
justifies this approach by pointing out that
“[t]he typological status of a particular
language is to be determined empirically, based
on corpora, and not via introspection or via
genealogical inheritance.” (p. 58) The
contributions in the volume provide ample
concrete data to evaluate and revise our
thinking about how languages capture motion.
Each chapter offers a study of uses reflecting
the way motion is encoded in languages chosen
by the authors; additionally the authors
include a distillation of their views and
findings accumulated over years of research on
the expression of motion in language.
SUMMARY
Filipocić shows that in Serbo-Croatian, a
satellite-framed language, the conflation of
manner and directionality is constrained by
aspect and morphosyntax. Unlike in English,
where seemingly any manner verb can be used
with a path satellite, Serbo-Croatian resists
uses of verbs such as skakutati (‘skip’) in
patterns like “She was skipping into the
house”, because morphological blocking makes it
impossible to adjust the verb’s aspect to the
boundary-crossing scenario found in such motion
descriptions. In other words, this and other
Slavic languages are not fully satellite-framed
languages. Hijazo-Gascón and Ibarretxe-Antuñano
make similar qualifications, albeit about
languages found on the other extreme of the
continuum. Here too, the main finding is that
textbook examples of verb-framed
languages--Spanish, French and Italian--are not
fully verb-framed languages after all. They
have “Manner verb+adverb structures”. The
authors conclude that the three Romance
languages “are verb-framed languages, but they
show intratypological variation with regard to
the semantic component of Path” (p.50).
Similarly, Berthele looks at the production by
speakers of French and a number of contact
varieties of German and Romansch, and uses a
wealth of statistical data to demonstrate that
languages do not differ from each other in a
simple binary fashion. Instead,
satellite-framed German exhibits signs of
verb-framed behavior, while speakers of the
Romance verb-framed counterparts French and
Romansch allow elements typical of
satellite-framed languages such as relatively
high numbers of manner verbs with path
descriptions. Wälchli and Sölling take a more
panoramic look at motion expression across a
wide range of languages (although they do not
describe each one in detail in their chapter,
they have compared 117 languages). They also
conclude that there are few universal
properties. Compounding the impression of
cross-linguistic variation is the observation
that “[n]o conclusive evidence for underlying
global semantic features such as path was
found.” (p.109) They go on to venture that many
features in motion typology are
“cross-linguistic comparative concepts designed
by typologists and not intrinsic in language
structure.” (p.110) The next two chapters look
at how learners of satellite-framed languages
express motion in these target languages.
Goschler studies Turkish learners of German,
while Jensen and Cadierno look at Turkish and
German learners of Danish. Perhaps the most
important finding in both studies is that when
the mother tongue and the target language are
typologically different, learners do not use
patterns of motion expression typical of the
target language. That is, both studies converge
on the conclusion that speakers of Turkish
(verb-framed) do not use manner verbs in German
or Danish (both satellite-framed) in
proportions comparable the production by German
or Danish speakers.
Then in the second part of the volume, the
authors of four chapters look at how languages
changed their modes of motion expression over
centuries. Kopecka traces diachronic changes in
the development from Old to Modern French, and
shows how French lost its focus on Path, thus
becoming more of a verb-framed language. On the
other hand, Nikitina shows that Greek went in
the opposite direction in its evolution from
Archaic to Classical Greek. Her point of
interest is the use of motion verbs with path
phrases in the accusative and dative case, the
former being directional and the latter
locative. She shows that Greek gradually relied
more on the truly goal-encoding accusative
phrases, thus becoming a more consistently
satellite-framed language. Huber studies
changes in Middle English as it incorporated
French path-conflating verbs (e.g. enter,
ascend) into its motion construction. She
provides data to show that these verbs were
initially used in the same pattern as other
verbs, with prepositional path phrases, but
were eventually allotted separate
constructions. Stefanowitch’s approach is to
treat motion event patterns as a group of
largely independent constructions. Instead of
viewing a language as being either
satellite-framed or verb-framed, one can study
motion constructions available in that
language. Under this analysis, for example,
Romance languages are found to use some
German-type patterns where manner verbs appear
with prepositional phrases expressing
directional motion (e.g. Rose courait au bas de
l'escalier ‘Rose ran to the foot of the
stairs’). In a way, this should not be
surprising, because as Stefanowitsch notes,
“most languages have both path- and
manner-verbs in their lexicon and allow both
the path-in-verb and the path-outside-verb
pattern in actual usage.” (p. 226)
EVALUATION
The overall picture is one of differences of
degree, not kind. A language is not either/or,
but tending toward the satellite- or
verb-framed end of the continuum. To
substantiate this view, the authors identify
many factors that complicate the binary
typology of motion event expression. For
example, Filipović explains limited
satellite-framed expression found in
Serbo-Croatian in terms of morphosyntactic
constraints responsible for disallowing many
manner verbs in path-satellite patterns. The
constraints she identifies apply not only to
Serbo-Croatian, but to similar cases in Polish
and Czech, and probably other Slavic languages
too. Berthele identifies a correlation between
speech community size and the number of manner
and path verbs used by the speakers. When their
speech communities are small, satellite-framed
languages do not necessarily have to feature a
large variety of verbs. That is because in
small tight-knit communities, more common
ground knowledge is shared, “more information
can be taken for granted and less explicit
forms of utterances are licensed”. As a result,
less lexical precision is necessary and fewer
types of verbs are used. Also, the incidence of
verbs depends on the speakers’ “verbal
intelligence” (p.67). This is certainly a fair
observation especially in the case of manner
verbs, given that there are incomparably more
manner verbs than path verbs; the choice of the
former requires more effort, and indeed more
creativity and eloquence, than the choice
between options like ‘go’, ‘leave’, and
‘enter’.
However, while the amount of data and the
thoroughness of analyses offered here are truly
impressive, it seems that part of the
impression of variation is an artifact of the
criteria used to classify a language having
satellite-framed properties. Some contributors
in the volume conclude that a language exhibits
signs of satellite-framed behavior based on
examples of sentences where manner is conflated
with any path phrases. For example, Berthele
observes that speakers of Romance (verb-framed)
languages in his sample (French and three
varieties of Romansch) use manner verbs with
path phrases and provides examples like
(1) il saute sur la ruche
‘he jumps onto the beehive’ (example 5, p.
62)
Similarly, Stefanowitsch gives example (2)
below
(2) Rose courait au bas de l'escalier. (example
3b, p. 226)
‘Rose ran to the foot of the stairs.’
Huber gives an example from Middle English
(3)
(3)Hors þat evir trottid.. It were hard to make
hym aftir to ambill well.
‘A horse that ever trotted - it would be hard
to make it amble well afterwards.’ (example 1a,
p. 206)
While the status of English as a
satellite-framed language is secure enough and
does not need to be defended, the choice of
examples is questionable. A mere use of manner
verbs with path phrases is a rather relaxed
standard, indeed so undemanding that probably
any language can meet it. Under this criterion,
even a classic verb-framed language like
Spanish allows manner verbs directionally:
(4) La botella flotó en la dirección del
mar.
The bottle floated in the direction of the
sea.
A true litmus test is whether a language allows
manner verbs to appear with phrases that
express the resultative element of boundary
crossing (Aske, 1989). When this criterion is
applied, much of the purported variation
disappears -- verb-framed languages cease to
exhibit satellite-framed properties. While
French can indeed afford uses like (2) above,
its satellite-framed potential ends when it
comes to expressing equivalents of sentences
like ‘Rose ran into the room’ (translated
literally as ‘Rose courait dans la pièce’ can
only mean ‘Rose ran inside the room’, not ‘into
the room’).
Also rather dubious are some conclusions drawn
from reports of variation at the opposite end
of the continuum, where satellite-framed
languages can be observed to show signs of
verb-framed behavior. Some authors note that
satellite-framed English also uses the
verb-framed system (through verbs like ‘exit’,
‘pass’, or ‘ascend’), and they point out that,
strictly under Talmy’s typology, this seems to
be against the very nature of English. For
example, Stefanowitsch reports that in the
literature, these verbs cause some
consternation as an “oddity in an otherwise
pure path-outside-verb language” (p. 229). I
believe this is a misunderstanding, a result of
treating the two systems on an equal footing.
The path-in-verb system involving use of verbs
like ‘exit’ or ‘enter’ is probably available to
all languages, satellite-framed and verb-framed
alike. It is simple standard equipment found
not only in classic verb-framed languages, but
also in English and other satellite-framed
languages. On the other hand, the
path-outside-verb system found in
satellite-framed languages is a special
feature, a more complex way of encoding motion.
One could propose an implicational universal
along the lines of “If a language is capable of
encoding motion satellite-framed style, it also
has the option of expressing motion by means of
the verb-framed system.” If this approach is
accurate, any variation on the satellite-framed
side of the division is no longer variation;
the choice between the two modes of motion
expression is a fairly unsurprising option,
like the freedom to occasionally resort to
barter trade. Conversely, a verb-framed
language cannot and does not show true signs of
satellite-framed behavior.
It is not my intention to dismiss the variation
advocated in the contributions. It is clear
enough that, as the authors demonstrate, it is
a hallmark of motion event encoding. The
examples of variation reported in each
contribution--as well as their discussion--are
intriguing, pleasantly stimulating, and indeed
genuinely enlightening, and will certainly be
welcomed by cognitive linguists, typologists
and generally all those interested in the
linguistic expression of motion. However,
perhaps too much is being made of the presence
of variation across Talmy’s divide. To my mind,
the variation does not rule out a clear
division; it does not justify writing off
Talmy’s binary typology as simplistic and
replacing it with a continuum view.
REFERENCES
Aske, J., 1989. Path predicates in English and
Spanish: A closer look.. In: Proceedings of the
Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley
Linguistics Society. Berkeley: BLS, pp.
1-14.
Talmy, L., 2000a. Toward A Cognitive Semantics.
Volume I: Concept Structuring Systems.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Talmy, L., 2000b. Toward A Cognitive Semantics.
Volume II: Typology and Process in Concept
Structuring. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
I am currently involved in work on grammatical
constructions within the Construction Grammar
framework. I am particularly interested in
questions of meaning in schematic grammatical
constructions. I attempt to reconcile new
cognitive approaches with traditional views on
questions such as the division into closed- and
open-class forms, the lexicon and syntax, and
the kinds of meanings that language forms are
capable of conveying.
Page Updated: 24-Jul-2014