2.3. Review of the previous studies on motion in language
2.3.1. Studies on the typology of motion verbs
These studies are characteristically described on the basis of description and comparison between English motion verbs and motion verbs in other languages. Thus, these studies started with exploration into the roles of verbs in decoding motion to constitute common patterns. The destination of these studies is to identify typical conflations of the semantic components into each type of motion verbs in each language.
First of all, the study related to this field is “Path predicates in English and Spanish” by Jon Aske (1989). His paper was conducted on Talmy’s work by seeking an answer to the question of why a language accepts or fails to accept motion lexicalization patterns other than its predominant one. In particular, he contrasted the lexicalization patterns of motion in Spanish with the lexicalization patterns of motion in English. The main method used in his research was a translation. Consider the examples of English-Spanish translation (Aske, 1989:1).
English expressions Spanish expressions
Run out Salir corriendo
Rub in Meter frotando
Drive away Irse en coche
Pull off Quitar de un tirón
Aske concluded that the parts of English complex predicates consisting of a verb plus an additional word or phrase such as “out” and “in” (Talmy calls path satellites) cannot be translated into Spanish because Spanish does not have manner-plus motion verbs. In terms of “away” and “off” (Talmy calls result satellites), Spanish prepositional system has a little bit distinction in comparison with the English prepositions because the preposition like
“away” can be translated into “en”, and “off” into “un”. More importantly, he argues that Spanish cannot express motion as English does because English has a wide range of path prepositions and adverbs denoting directions or Paths, whereas Spanish path prepositions cannot be expressed in adverbs without a preposition object.
Second, based on Talmy’s binary typology, Ozuyrek & Kika (1999) shed light on differences in speech, gesture and conceptualization by examining how Manner and Path are expressed in English and Turkish. In order to conduct this research, Ozuyrek &
Kika investigate how the speakers of two typologically different languages in the two contexts use their speech as well as spontaneous gestures to denote motion events in narrative discourse by allowing 14 native English speakers and 16 Turkish speakers to watch an animated cartoon and to narrate what they saw.
The result reveals that Turkish belongs to the group of V-framed languages, which encodes the Path of motion in verbs (e.g, gir (enter), cik (exist), in (descend) whereas English belongs to the group of S-framed languages, which encodes the Path of motion in a satellite (e.g., into, out, up, etc). Therefore, when expressing manner of motion, English speakers can easily encode Manner in a verb and Path in a satellite within one verbal clause, whereas in Turkish, Path is encoded in a verb and Manner tends to be encoded as a subordinate to the main verb (e.g.,
ENGLISH “ROLL DOWN”
Verb Satellite
Manner Trajectory
TURKISH “YUVARLANARAK INIYOR
V-roll V-descend
Manner Trajectory
Figure 2.17. A manner motion event in English and Turkish
Finally, the research involving verbs of motion and sentence production in second language was conducted by Antonijevie & Berthaud (2009). This study aimed to examine how both English and French native speakers produced sentences in which verbs of motion were used in the second languages. In terms of methodology, the authors chose two groups of participants including (i) English native speakers and (ii) French native speakers, then asked them to describe 38 pictures with moving characters by speaking in English for French speakers and in French for English speakers. All oral productions in second languages were recorded, and then the participants in two contexts were asked to translate into their first languages to ensure that they understand the pictures correctly.
The result shows that English is dominantly manner framed whereas French is dominantly path framed language. That is to say, motion verbs in English mostly carry information about the Manner how action is performed but Path is described by grammatical elements (satellites). In French, verbs of motion encode the Path of motion while the Manner can be described by a prepositional phrase. In addition, the result indicates that speakers of either language use the structures of their first languages to produce sentences of motion in the second languages. This is because the manner verbs are far more flexible in terms of syntactic frame, which make native speakers be more successful in using this strategy for French verbs. Moreover, seeing that the path verbs are not flexible in French, French speakers always make errors when they try to use the path verbs in French in the same ways of the manner verbs in English.
To sum up, the previous studies associated with crosslinguistic motion verbs mostly focus on investigations into the characteristics of motion verbs. In addition, these
studies do with how native and non-native speakers use first languages second languages to expression motion verbs but they discount the roles of motion verbs in denoting distinct motion events.