Encoding Motion Events In Mandarin Chinese

This book is a corpus-based description and discussion of how Modern Mandarin Chinese encodes motion events, with a focus on how the distribution of verbal motion morphemes is closely associated with the meanings they lexicalize. The book is not only the first work that proposes a finer-grained classification and diagnostics of Chinese motion morphemes from the perspective of scale structure, but also the first to more comprehensively account for the ordering of Chinese motion morphemes. The findings of this study will not only enrich the literature on motion events, but more importantly, further our understanding of the nature of motion events and the way motion events are conceived and represented in the Chinese language. The major proposals and the cognitive functional approach of this work will also shed light on studies beyond motion. The book will be a valuable resource for scholars interested in motion events, syntax-semantic interface, and typology.

This dissertation investigates the relative order of verbal morphemes that express motion in Chinese motion constructions consisting of multiple motion morphemes, e.g., the order of pao 'run' and jin 'enter' in the construction pao-jin fangjian run-enter room 'run into the room'. It argues that the order is predictable. Drawing on recent work on "scale structure", it divides Chinese motion morphemes into four types according to the type of scale each lexicalizes. Then it proposes a Motion Morpheme Hierarchy formed of these four types of motion morpheme that can be used to predict the order of motion morphemes. The hierarchy is supported by two extensive studies of multi-morpheme motion constructions using corpora of recent Chinese novels. In addition, the dissertation proposes a More Specific Constraint that explains why the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy emerges. The results of this study provides new insight into the distribution of motion morphemes in Chinese motion constructions and a more fine-grained analysis of the semantic relationships between the morphemes in these constructions; thus, it contributes to an increased understanding of how motion events are expressed in Chinese. The findings of this study may also illuminate the distribution of motion verbs in other languages, as well as constructions in domains other than motion.

This dissertation investigates the relative order of verbal morphemes that express motion in Chinese motion constructions consisting of multiple motion morphemes, e.g., the order of pao 'run' and jin 'enter' in the construction pao-jin fangjian run-enter room 'run into the room'. It argues that the order is predictable. Drawing on recent work on "scale structure", it divides Chinese motion morphemes into four types according to the type of scale each lexicalizes. Then it proposes a Motion Morpheme Hierarchy formed of these four types of motion morpheme that can be used to predict the order of motion morphemes. The hierarchy is supported by two extensive studies of multi-morpheme motion constructions using corpora of recent Chinese novels. In addition, the dissertation proposes a More Specific Constraint that explains why the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy emerges. The results of this study provides new insight into the distribution of motion morphemes in Chinese motion constructions and a more fine-grained analysis of the semantic relationships between the morphemes in these constructions; thus, it contributes to an increased understanding of how motion events are expressed in Chinese. The findings of this study may also illuminate the distribution of motion verbs in other languages, as well as constructions in domains other than motion.

The linguistic typology of motion event encoding is one of the central topics in Cognitive Linguistics. A vast body of typological, contrastive, and psycholinguistic research has shown the potential, but also the limitations of the original distinction between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages. This volume contains ten original papers focusing specifically on the variation and change of motion event encoding in individual languages and language families. The authors show that some of the central claims about motion event encoding need careful re-examination and reformulation and that individual languages and language families are more variable across space and time than even a refined typology could neatly capture at this time. The volume thus contributes to a more detailed and fine-grained foundation for the investigation of conceptual causes and consequences of different motion-event encoding strategies.

Motion is one of the most basic human experiences, and it provides an important window for looking into human cognition and language. Within the paradigm of cognitive semantics, this book presents a comprehensive study of the conceptualization and linguistic representation of motion in Mandarin Chinese. It focuses on the correlation between the ways in which Mandarin speakers conceptualize motion events and the ways in which they render them and carefully considers the typological properties. In addition to deepening our understanding of motion cognition and expressions, this study also affords insights for L2 learning and teaching of motion in Chinese.

The idea of this book on "Neglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description" comes from the observation that, over the last 30 years, much attention has been devoted to the manner/path divide in relation to the distinction between Verb-Framed and Satellite-Framed languages. This mainstream focus has left aside other aspects of motion event descriptions. The chapters of this volume take an in-depth look at three less-studied aspects of motion expression. The first part of the book focuses on directional deixis, especially in relation to associated motion and visual motion. The second part explores variations in Source-Goal asymmetries. The third part investigates different types of motion event constructions, e.g., with various types of co-events. Many languages are taken into consideration throughout the 11 chapters, which gives the volume a clear typological dimension. This book is intended for students and academics interested in motion, spatial semantics, typological variation and cognitive linguistics.

This comprehensive study concentrates particularly on the use of a closed set of motion verbs in five of the major dialects, including Mandarin, Wú, Hakka, Min and Cantonese. The author shows that these dialects form a continuum with some exhibiting more characteristics of a verb-framed language than the others. The phenomenon reflects the various stages of typological transformation and grammaticalization that the dialects have undergone.

Children who grow up as second- or third-generation immigrants typically acquire and speak the minority language at home and the majority language at school. Recurrently, these children have been the subject of controversial debates about their linguistic abilities in relation to their educational success. However, such debates fail to recognise that variation in bilinguals’ language processing is a phenomenon in its own right that results from the dynamic influence of one language on another. This volume provides insight into cross-linguistic influence in Turkish-German and Turkish-French bilingual children and uncovers the nature of variation in L1 and L2 oral motion event descriptions by evaluating the impact of language-specific patterns and language dominance. The results indicate that next to typological differences between the speakers’ L1 and L2, language dominance has an impact on the type and direction of influence. However, the author argues that most variation can be explained by L1/L2 usage preferences. Bilinguals make frequent use of patterns that exist in both languages, but are unequally preferred by monolingual speakers. This finding underlines the importance of usage-based approaches in SLA.