The Encoding Of Motion Events In 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.

Space has long been a popular topic in linguistic research. Numerous books on the subject have been published over the past decade. However, none of these books were based on linguistic data from Chinese and expressions of space in Chinese have been largely neglected in past research. In this volume, not only Mandarin Chinese (the standard language) is investigated; several other dialects, as well as a minority language of China and Chinese Sign Language are studied. Cross-linguistic, synchronic and diachronic approaches are used to investigate phenomena related to space. The authors of this book present different points of view on the expression of space in language and related theoretical issues. As the contributing scholars argue, Chinese shares many common features with other languages, but also presents some particular properties. Space is a topic that is both classical and modern, of enduring interest. These studies of space give insight into not only general linguistics but also other domains such as anthropology and psychology.

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 book provides a systematic, contrastive analysis of the segmentation and representation of English and Chinese Translocative Motion Events (TMEs), which possess Macro-Event Property (MEP). It addresses all the issues critical to understanding TMEs in English and Chinese, from event segmentation, MEP principles and the conceptual structure of TMEs and their constituents, to the representation of Actant, Motion, Path and Ground. The book argues that the corpus-based alignment for the TME segmentation in both languages, the parameters of Actant, Motion, Path and Ground and their relevant statistical description are particularly important for understanding English and Chinese TMEs. The linguistic materialization of Actant, Ground, Path and Motion, together with a wealth of tables and figures, offers convincing evidence to support the typological classification of English and Chinese. The book’s suggestions regarding the Talmyan bipartite typology and Bohnemeyer’s MEP contribute to the advancement of TME studies and language typology, and help learners to understand motion events and English-Chinese typological similarities and differences.

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.