|
|
A TYPOLOGY OF MOTION EVENTS REVISITED
John Beavers, Beth Levin, Shiao Wai Tham Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center/Mellon Foundation Graduate Research Program We argue two factors determine the striking regularities and variation in the crosslinguistic encoding of motion events. First, Verb is the only clause-obligatory category that encodes either Manner or Path, though a given verb can only encode one of them. This explains Talmy's typology of Verb- vs. Satellite-framed languages: in the former the verb encodes Path, in the latter it encodes Manner. Second, (ad)verbal categories encode Manner, but numerous other categories (e.g. adpositions, particles, cases) encode Path. The variation in how languages encode motion events derives from motion-independent variation in their available morpholexical inventories and combinatorial options. 
|
