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Talking about Motion

Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS)


This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical
Studies in Language.

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Volume 91
Talking about Motion. A crosslinguistic investigation of lexicalization patterns
Luna Filipovi

Talking about Motion


A crosslinguistic investigation
of lexicalization patterns

Luna Filipovi
University College London

John Benjamins Publishing Company


Amsterdam/Philadelphia

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of


American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Filipovi, Luna.
Talking about Motion : A Crosslinguistic Investigation of Lexicalization Patterns / Luna
Filipovi.
p. cm. (Studies in Language Companion Series, issn 0165-7763 ; v. 91)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Motion in language. 2. Lexicology. 3. Grammar, Comparative and general-Verb. I. Title.
2007
P120.M65F55
401'.4--dc21
2007030697
isbn 978 90 272 3101 7 (Hb; alk. paper)

2007 John Benjamins B.V.


No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. P.O. Box 36224 1020 me Amsterdam The Netherlands
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Mami & Luzzi

Table of contents

Acknowledgments
chapter 1
Introduction
1.1
Why study lexicalization patterns? 1
1.2
Definition of the subject and the approach 5
chapter 2
The point of departure: Data, methodology and theory
2.1
Data and method description 9
2.2 How the two systems work 13
2.3 Typological claims 16
2.4 Typology in action 20
2.5
Problems encountered 23
2.6 The notion of satellites 33
chapter 3
The proposed approach and central assumptions
3.1
Introducing situation types 37
3.2 Events in reality vs. events in language 49
3.3
Contra aspect? 56
chapter 4
The heart of the matter: Main argument
chapter 5
Data analysis for English
5.1
What the tenses (do not) tell us 79
5.2
What verbs (do not) tell us 83
5.3
Particles that appear only in boundary-crossing expressions 84
5.4 Particles used in both boundary-crossing and non-boundarycrossing expressions 89

ix

37

69

79

Talking about Motion

5.4.1
5.4.2
5.4.3
5.4.4

Object of the preposition 92


Sentence complex 96
Defaults 99
Narrative context 105

chapter 6
Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian
6.1
The importance of being a prefix 109
6.2 OD-/DO-: deixis, aspect, boundary 113
6.3 Other prefixes 122
6.4 Ups and downs 128
6.5 Other things we need to know about prefixes 129
6.6 In need of direction: directional verbs and pattern frequency 131
chapter 7
Moving on: Issues for further reflection and research
7.1
Two levels of representation: two sides of the same coin? 137
7.2
Between a rock and a hard place: lexical and/or construction
meaning 145
chapter 8
Conclusion: Moving forward

109

137

157

Bibliography
Dictionaries: 165
Corpora: 165
References: 165

165

Appendix 1

175

Appendix 2

177

Index

181

Acknowledgments

I hereby express my gratitude to the Economic and Social Sciences Research


Council UK, whose generous support in the preparation of this study for publication was granted in the form of a postdoctoral fellowship, award number: RES-000270143. My PhD research, on which the study is based, was supported by a
number of institutions, which I would also like to thank on this occasion: Cambridge Overseas Trust, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Open Society Institute, Leventis Foundation, Studenica Foundation, Churchill College Cambridge
and Cambridge University Board of Graduate Studies. My special thanks to the
three distinguished scholars who shaped my development as a linguist, Professors
Ranko Bugarski (Belgrade), Peter Matthews (Cambridge) and Dan Slobin (Berkeley). On a more personal note, I am infinitely grateful to my family and friends,
who are my main source of strength and inspiration in life and work.

Language human speech is an exhaustible abundance of manifold treasures.


Louis Hjemslev
Prolegomena to a Theory of Language

chapter 1

Introduction
1.1 Why study lexicalization patterns?
The research presented here has the aim of uncovering the underlying mechanisms in the process of lexicalization crosslinguistically. The term lexicalization
means the way experience is rendered into languages via the semantic content of
lexical items that are used to express experiential categories (cf. Talmy 1985).
Studying lexicalization patterns provides insights into how speakers of different languages organize experiential data in their accounts of events. It has been
observed that a limited number of components of events is lexicalized in all languages, but there is still significant variation in the way this is done in individual
languages or language groups. The starting point of the present research was
choosing an experiential domain that pertains to universality, and then determining what kinds of linguistic means are used to express it. In this way, one can detect
the components of events that are relevant for speakers and the constraints in languages that determine the manner in which those components will be lexicalized.
We also investigate the possibility that languages are not just different means of
expressing the same components. In different languages we notice tendencies to
express some components more often than others, to omit components (or not to
typically express them), or to have constraints in the system that prevent speakers
from expressing certain components in particular structures that are habitually
used in the lexicalization of a domain. This in effect helps us predict what kind of
information is likely to be provided in the accounts of events in different languages and explain certain aspects of language variation.
The domain chosen for our purpose is that of motion events, because motion
is one of the primary experiential domains in human life and therefore bound to
be lexicalized in all languages. A number of approaches has been suggested for
dealing with issues related to lexicalization patterns in motion expressions, most
of which have concentrated on the meaning of verbs or verb+PPs. There is no
doubt that verb meaning is central to any account of motion lexicalization in languages, but there are many other elements that are indispensable to the analysis.
Therefore, the present research targets all the relevant factors that are crucial to the
process of rendering motion events into linguistic expressions. The roles of verbs,

Talking about Motion

prepositions, prefixes, verb phrases, prepositional phrases, external and internal


arguments and specific constructions will be dealt with and it will be proved that
a comprehensive systemic overview is necessary in order to provide an adequate
analysis of the lexicalization process in different languages.
Our analysis is aimed at making and supporting three major general claims:
i. In fathoming the way lexicalization processes work it is essential to establish
how different levels of language structure (e.g. morphology, syntax and lexical
semantics) interact in rendering events into a linguistic expression. It is not
enough, and can often be misleading, just to establish whether a component of
an event is lexicalized in a verb or in a particle in a particular language.
ii. The fact that two languages show a certain degree of similarity in the way they
express a certain component of an event (e.g. the Manner component of motion events expressed in the verb) does not provide enough predictive power
for potential hypothesizing about the whole process of lexicalization of a particular experiential domain.
iii. It is next to impossible for any theoretical approach to provide adequate explanations for all phenomena in all languages. Certain theories fare better when
accounting for a number of phenomena in certain languages, but there is
hardly an all-encompassing theory on offer on the linguistic market and
why should there be any theory of this kind at all? We will demonstrate that in
accounting for important natural language phenomena theoretical quibbles
prove to be impeding rather than revealing. We will try to come up with an
eclectic approach, not limited by any single theory in particular, but rather
drawing on a number of sources, combining, selecting and dynamically formulating general principles that can guide the study of meaning in language.
Apart from these general claims, our research aims at proving these major points
regarding the two particular languages that we will focus on, namely English and
Serbo-Croatian:1
i. The two languages have been said to demonstrate the same lexicalization patterns when it comes to the domain of motion events. We will prove that noticing
only the similarities between the two while disregarding the noticeable differences in this lexicalization process proves to be detrimental to the analysis of the
way the two languages function when it comes to expressing motion events.
1. We use the term Serbo-Croatian because linguistically Serbian and Croatian are still one
and the same language, although it is nowadays more politically correct to refer to them as two
separate languages. We used sources from both Serbia and Croatia, and the issue is in essence a
political one, irrelevant for our purposes (see Bugarski (1997) for more detailed explanations on
language policies and tendencies in the Balkans; cf. also kiljan (2000)).

Chapter 1. Introduction

ii. Although English and Serbo-Croatian show certain undeniable similarities in


the lexicalization patterns, the differences are equally noticeable and prevent
the two from being classified as the same type within the typology suggested
in Talmy (1985). We explain the importance of taking into consideration and
further analyzing intratypological variation as well as interactions among different typological dimensions.
iii. When starting from experiential data, we should not only focus on the components of events and their expression in languages, but also on the complete
network of more finely grained spatial and temporal relations, extracting features that are relevant for speakers, and explaining how they find their way into
linguistic expressions. We assume that there is a certain number of features that
are universally perceivable and thus potentially likely to be expressed in all
languages. However, different interaction patterns of language-specific systems
of lexical semantics, syntax and morphology may coerce speakers of a particular language into referring to some aspects of events more often than speakers
of some other languages. This, in effect, affects the information content of an
expression. We make no predictions regarding any cognitive consequences at
present, but discuss the ways in which our study of lexicalization mechanisms
can be used further in order to carry out tests that could reveal the nature of
event representation. We will look into how those universally perceivable features of motion events (e.g. whether there was a boundary in the way of a moving Figure and whether it was crossed or not) and language-specific patterns
interact and vary depending on what kind of events are described. Some languages have restrictions when it comes to using manner verbs to refer to situations in which a moving Figure crossed a boundary, and speakers can use manner verbs only when describing an event where no boundary was crossed.
Other languages allow certain manner verbs to be used when location has already been changed but not in expressions referring to the exact moment when
the moving Figure was changing location. We intend to look into reasons behind, and the consequences of, this kind of different patterning.
Although we stated that we would mainly focus on two languages, English and Serbo-Croatian, we will also illustrate the main points in support of our argument with
examples from Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, Albanian and Mandarin Chinese.
We will analyze accounts of motion events that have past reference, and we will explain the choice of tenses in those expressions as we progress with our analysis.
The way in which we analyze lexicalization patterning crosslinguistically here
bears relevance to the study of lexicalization of domains in general.We look for the
important spatial and temporal features of motion events and patterns that are used
in different languages to express them while taking in consideration all levels at

Talking about Motion

which meaning is conveyed (namely morphology, syntax and lexical semantics),


and not just meanings of certain lexical classes, e.g. verb meaning or preposition
meaning. Thus, we offer a comprehensive insight into the relevant features of different systems and establish how they compare crosslinguistically. The mere fact that
some languages have richer lexicons of manner verbs than some other languages,
for example, does not tell us anything about how or when those verbs can be used.
Perhaps it is more correct to talk about verbs in motion expressions rather
than motion verbs because sometimes verbs other than motion verbs are used in
the expressions of motion, e.g. verbs of sound emission (as in He buzzed out of the
room). However, the central place in motion expressions belongs precisely to motion verbs, so they are our starting point.
We also propose two algorithms for understanding motion expressions in Serbo-Croatian and English and illustrate how they differ because of the different
levels at which contributions to the meaning of a motion expression as a whole are
made. Two original hypotheses with regard to the Serbo-Croatian lexicalization
pattern (termed morphological blocking and combinatory potential) will be put forward. A multilayered theoretical discussion of a number of approaches to meaning
towards which our study assumes a bias-free attitude is one of the key advantages
of our approach. We also use only attested examples that reflect real language use,
in both speaking and writing.
We start by assuming the existence and distinctiveness of three levels: the level of events as they occurred in reality, the level of conceptualization of events and
the level of the linguistic expression of events. We have to reiterate our central aim
here, which is to show that the information content (i.e. presence/absence of particular information) of the message is habitually affected as a consequence of different lexicalization patterns and language-specific, systemic restrictions. We do
not tackle conceptual representations at present, but we indicate the directions in
which questions regarding the conceptual level can be addressed in the context of
our research (chapter 7). This decision is reminiscent of the view expressed in icFuchs (1991: 80), whereby knowledge of the world and conceptualization are
kept apart explicitly. Knowledge of the world would consist of interrelated information that a language user possesses with regard to an experiential domain, and
the conceptual structure is the principle (or principles) on the basis of which that
knowledge is organised. We do not make any claims regarding conceptualization
at present, and rely on knowledge of the world in our pursuit of defining the perceptual and linguistic chunking of motion events.
We discuss the segmentation of events in more detail since it bears relevance
to our main arguments (cf. 3.2). Segmenting events as they occurred is not necessarily mapped one-to-one with the way they are segmented when lexicalized in
different languages. Moreover, criteria for defining and segmenting events are

Chapter 1. Introduction

highly disputed in linguistics, psychology and philosophy. What we deal with here
are verbalized events, since verbalization is the fundamental medium through
which they can exist, as it were, for others, apart from the speaker/witness. In the
process of speaking or writing, experiences are filtered through language into verbalized events (Slobin (2000b)). The initial point is an attempt to single out possible mechanisms for individuating verbalized events and their components, i.e. the
recurrent principles on the basis of which segmentation seems to be carried out in
a language. Talmy identified the relevant components of events in a number of
cognitive domains as well as the means to lexicalize them across languages. The
regularities of these lexicalizations formed the basis for the typology he proposed
(Talmy (1985)). However, at the same time, when speakers use language-specific
devices to express those universal event components, additional meanings can be
conveyed. As a result, certain lexicalization patterns facilitate the presence of one
kind of information over another (e.g. direction over manner of motion), the patterns are then reinforced, with consequences potentially reaching beyond the systemic differences and habitually affecting the content of expressions and language
use in general.In other words, treating languages as different vehicles for expressing the same, universal meanings could work to an extent, but then languagespecific expression of those (universally) shared meanings has to be taken into
consideration. This interplay of possibly universal and language-specific factors in
domain lexicalization is one of the central themes in the present study.
1.2 Definition of the subject and the approach
We will first look at some ways of defining what a motion event is and how to define motion in general.One definition is given by Rudzka-Ostyn (1988: 517):
In essence, spatial motion is nothing else than a series of consecutive changes in
the relationship of location holding between a given object and its domain.

This definition emphasizes the aspects of motion events related to change-of-state


events in general.Change-of-location can be seen as a kind of change-of-state, a subdomain in a big group of events, which comprises different kinds of events that have
the characteristic change over time. This does not give us the most precise definition
of what motion events in particular are, and therefore we look for other definitions
that point out some other aspects of the domain we are interested in, which are more
relevant for our research. It is important to emphasise here that the notion of change

Talking about Motion

will have a central place in the spatio-temporal network we propose. Ikegami (1970:
87) gives the following simple, but straight-to-the point definition:
Verbs of motion are understood in this paper as those verbs which refer to
changes in locus.

ic-Fuchs (1991: 15) follows Fillmore and provides a definition that emphasizes
the spatial and the temporal frame within which motion events occur. Namely, if
we want to say that something has moved in the sense of linear locomotion, the
moving Figure must have started out at one place at one time and ended up at
another at a later time (ibid.).
Miller (1973: 338) has a similar view:
[] a language must have a rich supply of words for indicating how an object
that is at place P1 at the time T1 comes to be at place P2 at some subsequent time
T2.

It is interesting to note that Fillmores and Millers definitions coincide with Aristotles (1970) view of motion, whereby locomotion is considered primary. Quite a
different view is suggested by Wierzbicka (1972: 97):
Movement cannot be interpreted as a change of place (although a change of place
may be the result of movement) because a moving object is not at any definite
place at any moment unless it stops. That is to say, a man walking in the garden
may well be said to be in the garden, but if his movement is continuous he can
never be said to be in a particular point in the garden.

She completes her definition by stating that movement is not being somewhere
(successively in different places) but becoming somewhere (ibid.). Therefore, Wierzbickas definition has the following formulation:
X is moving in P = X can be thought of as becoming part of different parts of P.

Wierzbickas definition provides a starting point for a philosophically inclined discussion of event segmentation in the context of spatio-temporal continuity (more
of which in chapter 3), but we shall rely on Fillmores and Millers definitions,
which are based on the perceptual foundations of motion, and the present research
will follow their approach. As noted in ic-Fuchs (1991: 16) Aristotles view, and
the definitions by Fillmore and Miller better reflect the way motion events are
lexicalized in languages. Intuitively, they seem to sum up in simple terms how we
think about motion.

Chapter 1. Introduction

The present analysis will also follow the lines advocated within the event-frame
approach, which was proposed by Talmy (1996).2 This approach builds on Fillmores frames, where a words meaning can be understood only with reference to
a structured background of experience, beliefs, or practices, constituting a kind of
conceptual prerequisite for understanding the meaning (Fillmore and Atkins
1992: 76). The event-frame approach differs from Fillmores frames, because, as
Talmy (1996: 238) explains, event-frames are a generic category, quite likely universal across languages. Talmys view on events and expression of events also diverges slightly from the postulates of Langackers Cognitive Grammar related to
the linguistic expression of events. The main difference between the two, as Ungerer and Schmid (1996: 223) put it in a nutshell, lies in the treatment of adverbials. In Langackers approach, adverbials are analyzed on the clause level as referring to the setting of the event, which exhibits a low degree of prominence and is
therefore somewhat neglected in the analysis. By contrast, Talmys event-frame
analysis regards adverbials as explicit specifications of the Path component in the
case of motion events for example (e.g. She flew across the channel). Talmys notion of event-frames widens the investigation to include the previously neglected
adverbials and other less prominent parts of the clause structure. The two approaches (Langackers and Talmys) are not incompatible. Nevertheless, the present
analysis will refer to the motion events as defined within the event-frame approach
because of the importance given to previously less prominent parts of clause structure, which, as we will see, can play a crucial role in deciding what kind of an event
an expression refers to.
Another matter of relevance here is how to define what we mean by semantics
and semantic level, since we will define our field of research as semantic. Here the
differentiation made by Matthews (1995) makes it clear and helps us deal with issues like interfaces among morphology, syntax, and lexical semantics. There are
two ways in which we can define what semantics should comprise: semantics 1
(narrow sense; dealing, for example, with sense relations) and semantics 2 (wider
sense; studying jointly all levels where meaning is construed: morphology, syntax,
lexical semantics, and even more broadly, obliterating the sharpness of the semantics/pragmatics distinction). Our view of semantics is based on the latter definition, thus accepting that the lexicon belongs to semantics, and so by implication,
do the semantic relations in syntax that are a projection of it, and the ways in
which they are realized formally. The meaning of a linguistic unit is not confined
to a given level; rather, its meaning is accessible for any linguistic process or context

2. In chapter 3 we provide a discussion on distinguishing events in reality from verbalized


events, the latter of the two being the subject of our study.

Talking about Motion

in which that meaning is relevant. The motivation for rigidly restricting various
types of meaning to different levels of language disappears.
Summary
This is a study of lexicalization of motion events in English and Serbo-Croatian,
with contrastive examples from other languages, such as Spanish, Italian, Russian,
French, Mandarin Chinese and Albanian. Motion is primarily defined as a change
of location. One of the main arguments is that a study of lexicalization should incorporate detailed analyses of language-specific interaction among all levels where
meaning is conveyed, namely morphology, syntax and lexical semantics. In this
way, some underlying principles of lexicalization will not be left out, as has been
the case in some previous studies, and they may provoke a rethink of the typological classification of languages based on their lexicalization patterns. This is also
an invitation to look more closely into intratypological differences. The central
point of the language contrasts presented here will be to show how the information content of a message (in this case, a motion expression) is conditioned by
certain language-specific systemic restrictions. This study also promises to show
how motion events could be classified on the basis of verbalized information.

chapter 2

The point of departure


Data, methodology and theory

This chapter provides an insight into the material used for this study and investigates some of the research that has been carried out within the domain of motion
events and its lexicalization in different languages. Some of the results of previous
studies critically discussed here have been incorporated into the present research,
leading to further investigation of the relevant issues. The broad typological strokes
in which languages had been presented give a broad picture of lexicalization that
excludes many important language-specific features that throw a different light on
the classification of languages and their mechanisms of lexicalization. The present
study takes the typology as a point of departure and moves towards a more finelygrained account of how motion events are expressed in a language.
2.1 Data and method description
The database for this research consists of dictionary and corpus data from English
and Serbo-Croatian. For English, we used the Oxford English Dictionary on CD
ROM and the British National Corpus (BNC) on-line. For Serbo-Croatian we used
two dictionaries: one by Matica Srpska and one by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the Croatian National Corpus on-line. We collected combinations of English verbs of manner of motion and the relevant directional particles
(into, out of , across, over, through, onto, and under). A list of manner verbs in
English was taken from Levin (1993), and then simple past forms of all the verbs
were checked in the British National Corpus on-line in combinations with the directional particles.1 We also did a corpus search with directional particles only as
keywords in order to find examples of motion expressions that contain verbs other
than manner of motion verbs. The corpus data for English was very extensive so
there was no need to add examples from the Oxford English Dictionary, which we
just consulted for definitions of lexical meaning. For Serbo-Croatian, however, we
1.

See appendix 1.

Talking about Motion

could not find confirmation in the corpus for all manner of motion verbs, so we
included examples that we found in the two dictionaries of Serbo-Croatian in our
corpus when we consulted them in order to make the list of verbs of manner of
motion and check their lexical meanings. We realized that the number of verbs
prefixed by OD-/DO- (typically indicating movement to/from the speaker/scene
(deictic location)) is much higher than those prefixed by any other prefix in SerboCroatian.2 Thus, we first collected all the verbs prefixed by OD-/DO- from the
dictionaries, and then checked in the corpus for confirmation that those verbs
could be prefixed by other prefixes, even though there was no mention of them in
the dictionary data (the relevant prefixes being IZ- out of , U- into, PRE-across/
over, PRO-through, NA-onto, POD-under). We then searched the corpus for
examples of all prefixed manner verbs.
The first thing we noticed was that many verbs that exist in the dictionaries
prefixed with OD-/DO- do not appear with other prefixes. Therefore, we can state
that if a verb is found prefixed by only one kind of prefix, it is prefixed by OD-/
DO-. Nevertheless, we have checked in the corpus if all the verbs that are not
found in the dictionary prefixed by prefixes other than OD-/DO- could possibly
be found in the corpus data. We combined verb roots with prefixes that we did not
find confirmation for in the two dictionaries, and we discovered that no such examples were found in the corpus data either. We did not have to limit ourselves to
a certain number of examples, as was the case with examples in English, where
tokens were numerous, because there were not that many examples found for each
verb in Serbo-Croatian. We included all Serbo-Croatian examples that came up in
our search. The quantitative difference between English and Serbo-Croatian examples could easily be due to the fact that Croatian National Corpus is significantly smaller than the BNC. This is not a problem for our study, because we were
primarily interested in the existence, use and frequencies of certain prefixed verbs
forms in order to provide a complete picture of a domain lexicalization in SerboCroatian, without aiming to contrast the frequency statistics with English
verb+preposition combinations. The frequencies of prefixes in Serbo-Croatian are
relevant because they confirm the preference for the deictic OD-/DO- verbs in
Serbo-Croatian motion expressions even when verbs prefixed otherwise are possible, and that the frequency of the deictic OD-/DO- verbs is greater on the whole
than those of verbs prefixed otherwise. The frequency of English prepositions is
not discussed in the same vein because quantifying their productivity in English
will not reveal any kind of relevant constraints since their combinability with
2. Serbo-Croatian prefixes appear in capital letters. They are morphophonemes that stand for
all the phonetically changeable forms, which depends on the initial sound of the verb they precede (e.g. OD- is realised as either od- or ot-).

Chapter 2. The point of departure

manner verbs is free. This means that motion expressions in English are not conditioned by verb+preposition combinability as is the case with Serbo-Croatian
prefix+verb occurrences. In other words, we are not interested in the frequency of
individual prepositions in English at present because that is not the object of our
study. It could be possible that, by chance, in our limited corpus data of English,
into will be more frequent then onto just because there happened to be more
scenes of this kind described in the data, not because onto is subjected to any kind
of system restrictions as opposed to into. The use of prepositions with manner
verbs and their accumulation is unconstrained in English, and any manner verb
can combine with any of the prepositions, which is not the case with prefixed manner verbs in Serbo-Croatian.3 It is not the use of prepositions per se that is restricted in Serbo-Croatian either, but rather the prefixed verbs combinability with prepositions. Therefore, general preposition frequencies are not of interest here and are
not discussed further.
We excluded all metaphorical uses of motion verbs in both languages and
senses of prepositions that did not relate to the direction of motion. The additional difficulty in the process of collecting data in Serbo-Croatian was the fact
that one dictionary (Matica Srpska) was not sufficient as a starting point because
of its rather small volume, and the other dictionary (SANU), although extremely
comprehensive and detailed, is only half-finished (the last published volume lists
entries down to half way through letter N, the last word being nedotruo), and additional data were provided by checking the database compiled for the SANU dictionary.4 There were not many examples of motion expressions in either dictionary
or SANU database data, and neither source was available in electronic form. Our
only way of checking if some manner verbs can be prefixed by prefixes other than
OD-/DO- was to look for them in the Croatian National Corpus. The corpus
search also provided information regarding frequencies of prefixed manner verbs
and construction environments where they appear. Therefore, our corpus data for
both English and Serbo-Croatian were the major source of information for our
research. We ended up with 1769 examples for English, and 1326 for SerboCroatian. The reason why we carried out a corpus search on selected forms (simple
past in English and prefixed perfective verbs in Serbo-Croatian) is a principled
one. These tenses are the typical ones used in descriptions of experienced events in
3. This freedom may be universally restricted depending on vector constraints; cf. Bohnemeyer (2003) for the proposed argument uniqueness constraint (AUC), which concerns the
semantic uniqueness of Path argument roles that can be mapped onto Ground-denoting expressions within single clauses.
4. We are most grateful to the Institute of the Serbian Language at the Serbian Academy of
Sciences and Arts for granting permission to access the database.

Talking about Motion

the two languages repectively. This is also the key data which offers the relevant
insights into the intratypological differences that are the focus of our study and that
provide the main support for our arguments. Other tense forms and examples are
included to illustrate the relevant typological contrasts (even though they had not
been taken into consideration within the typology itself), but are not studied based
on corpus data because they are not crucial for making our claims about language
contrasts within the typology.
Verbs and prepositions used in motion expressions in English are compiled
searching the BNC on-line to locate all the combinations of motion verbs in simple
past and prepositions and/or adverbs. For each verb 50 or fewer examples are taken
into consideration (examples for the verbs that had more than 50 entries were randomly selected).5 The examples containing the past progressive tense were not collected systematically, because the verbs in past progressive do not pose a significant
problem in determining what type of motion events are being referred to. Although
some examples with the past progressive tense are provided to illustrate its use in
certain situation types and contrast it to the simple past tense, they are not a part of
the main corpus we prepared for the purposes of this analysis. The focus is on the
verbs in simple past and their combinations with prepositions, because this tense is
most frequently used in relating past events. At the same time, it causes numerous
difficulties, because it can be used, with certain restrictions, in expressions of all
kinds of events, unlike the past progressive. Iterative and habitual meanings are not
included, because they are seen as a separate topic for research.
For Serbo-Croatian, the corpus assembled contains examples with prefixed
manner verbs (examples from both dictionaries and the electronic corpus). Examples with unprefixed manner verbs are not in focus because they are not problematic from either the morphological or lexical semantic point, unlike the prefixed
ones. Directional verb frequencies have also been collected for Serbo-Croatian,
and they are analyzed separately, not as a part of the main corpus we prepared. The
reason behind this is our aim to contrast English and Serbo-Croatian expression
of the manner of motion in the verb, and thus our main corpus consists of manner
verbs. However, directional verbs in Serbo-Croatian deserve special treatment due
to their morphological peculiarities and high frequency of use. We point out in
our main discussion in chapter 4 that there are occasions where manner verbs are
not used, imperfective directional verbs being the only option in motion expressions in Serbo-Croatian, and we discuss the reasons why these situations occur.
We illustrate the contrast between the use of perfective directional and perfective
manner verbs in Serbo-Croatian by providing the number of tokens in motion
5. This has been done only for English; for Serbo-Croatian all examples found in the corpus
are included.

Chapter 2. The point of departure

expressions available in the corpus data. These pieces of information hold the key
to our claims regarding the lexicalization of motion events in Serbo-Croatian and
the ways in which it contrasts with the English pattern.
We stated that we chose to collect examples in simple past for English and
perfekat (past perfective) for Serbo-Croatian, because these two tenses are the
most frequent in the accounts of events. They are not absolute translation equivalents, although they often can be (cf. Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca (1994) and also
chapter 3). Perfekat in Serbo-Croatian is formed with the present tense of the auxiliary verb jesam (be) and participles marked for number (sg. and pl.) and gender (m.f. in 1st and 2nd person sg.and pl., and m.f.n. in 3rd person sg. and pl.):
(U)TRATI (RUN INTO)
singular

plural

Ja sam utrao/utrala.
I be-COP into-run-PST-PFV-SG-M/F

Mi smo utrali/utrale.
We be-COP into-run-PST-PFV-PL-M/F

Ti si utrao/utrala.
You be-COP into-run-PST-PFV-SG-M/F

Vi ste utrali/utrale.
You be-COP into-run-PST-PFV-PL-M/F

On/ona/ono je utrao/utrala/utralo.
He/she/it be-COP into-run-PST-PFV-SGM/F/N

Oni/One/Ona su utrali/utrale/utrala.
You be-COP into-run-PST-PFV-PL-M/F/N

We can say that in the case of agentive motion events, which are being analyzed in
the present research, one event begins with the Figure moving from a location and
ends with the Figure stopping at a different location. In verbalization, any portion
of an event can be gapped (i.e. not expressed; cf. Talmy (1996)). We chose to carry
out our analysis on the sentence level (cf. also Slobin and Hoiting (1994)), where we
consider an expression to be referring to one verbalized event if it contains one
subject and one verb with accumulated directional phrases (as is the case in English) and also if it contains more than one verb in Serbo-Croatian in such a way
that the verbs have the same stem and are just prefixed differently so as to be able
to lexicalize different Path segments. This was the main criterion on the basis of
which we determined what our database will consist of and how to collect the data
from the dictionaries and the corpora.
2.2 How the two systems work
Before we concentrate on individual examples in these two languages, we shall
briefly refer to some of their systemic features. In English, as many researches have

Talking about Motion

confirmed, the dominant pattern in motion expressions by far is manner


verb+directional particle (as in She dashed out). We will be analyzing all manner
of motion verbs in English from the list given in Levin (1993) (cf. appendix 1), and
their combinations with the following directional particles: in, into, out, out of ,
across, over, through, on, onto, and under.
In Serbo-Croatian, both prefixed and unprefixed manner verbs are used in
motion expressions. The unprefixed manner verbs combine freely with directional
particles, just like in English. When it comes to the prefixed verbs, the direction is
expressed both in the prefixes, which are morphologically attached to the verb
root in the form of bound morphemes, and in the prepositions that follow the
prefixed verb. The prefixes and the prepositions can, but need not, be of the same
phonetic appearance. Originally, the prefixes were prepositions (some of them adverbs), but they now form a compound with the verb root, adding their prepositional meaning to the basic meaning of the verb root (Stevanovi (1989: 434),
Stanoji et al.(1989: 151), Grickat (1966/67)). There is a large number of these
prefixes, but these are the ones that cover most of the relevant spatial relations in
translative motion:
DO dotrati (run to smb./sth.), doetati (walk to smb./sth.), etc.;
Move to a speaker/scene/location in the manner of action described by the
verb root.
OD odjuriti (dash from smb./sth.), otetati (stroll from smb./sth.),etc.
Move from a speaker/scene/location in the manner described by the verb
root.
PRE pretrati (run across or over), preskoiti (jump across or over), etc.
Move across or over in the manner described by the verb root.
U uleteti (fly into), uskoiti (jump into), etc.
Move inwards in the manner described by the verb root.
IZ iskoiti (jump out), istrati (run out), etc.
Move outwards in the manner described by the verb root.
PRO protrati(run through), proteturati (stagger through), etc.
Move through a space in the manner described by the verb root.

Chapter 2. The point of departure

POD podvaljati se (roll under REFL), podleteti (fly under), etc.


Move to a space under something in the manner described by the verb root.
NA natrati (run onto), naskoiti (jump onto), etc.
Move onto a space in the manner described by the verb root.

All these prefixes also have many other meanings. They can be employed to signify only a change of aspect without adding any other component of meaning (e.g.
direction). This is pure perfectivization (cf. Grickat (1966/67)). Prefixes are also
used to turn non-transitive verbs into transitive verbs, and to express a semantically different kind of action from the one expressed by the verb root. Here are
some examples:
a) trati (an imperfective intransitive verb to run) vs. pretrati (a perfective
intransitive or transitive verb, meaning either to run across sth., or to run the
whole length of sth.). (Compare: Trao je ceo dan. (He ran all day.) vs.
Pretrao je ulicu (ACC) (Either: He ran across the street, or He ran the whole
length of the street.))
b) mutiti (an imperfective verb; to stir (e.g. ingredients)) vs. izmutiti(a perfective verb; to stir until the final product/stage is achieved).
c) itati (an imperfective verb; to be in the process of reading) vs. proitati (a
pefective verb; to have read).
d) staviti (a perfective verb; to put) vs. dostaviti (a perfective verb; to deliver).
Serbo-Croatian, like English, has verbs that conflate Motion and Path, i.e. directional verbs, such as ui (enter), izai (exit), popeti se (ascendREFL), sii
(descend), proi (pass), etc. 6 All of these forms are perfective. Imperfective directional verbs also exist (IPFV: ulaziti- enter, izlaziti-exit, penjati seascend(REFL), silaziti-descend, prolaziti-pass, etc.). However, the perfective
and imperfective directional verbs do not seem to have the same derivational relationship like the perfective and imperfective manner verbs. The perfective/imperfective difference in directional verbs is not the result of prefixation. The perfective
stems seem to be monomorphemic, even though technically they consist of directional prefixes (e.g. U- meaning into) and the neutral verb to go (ii), as in, for
example, U- + ii = ui (enter). The imperfective forms seem to be derived differently and are not morphologically related to their perfective cousins. We can
6. The fundamental difference is the fact that directional verbs (such as enter, exit, etc.) are
much more formal and less frequent in English, while in Serbo-Croatian they represent the
statistically favorite means on the whole for lexicalizing motion events (cf. chapter 6 and also
Vidakovi (2006) for some experimental evidence from spoken Serbo-Croatian).

Talking about Motion

not talk of derivation by prefixation (e.g. U- + laziti) with the imperfective forms
here because the latter part, *laziti, is not licenced. We have a rather different
derivation: ulaz (entrance) + -iti(inf ending)=ulaziti (enter-IPFV). This morphological detail has to be highlighted here, because it is important for our explanation why only imperfective directional verbs can be used in expressions of certain situation types in Serbo-Croatian.
2.3 Typological claims
Leonard Talmy first put forward the proposal of a typology of the worlds languages
on the basis of the way they map schemas (cognitive notions) onto surface (linguistic) expressions.7 First, Talmy assumes that one can isolate elements separately
within the domain of meaning and within the domain of surface expression. Second, he examines which semantic elements are expressed by which surface elements.8 This relationship is largely not one-to-one. A combination of semantic elements can be expressed by a single surface element, or a single semantic element by
a combination of surface elements. We subscribe to the principle that Talmy (1985)
proposes, whereby one should start from universal experiential domains in linguistic research, and not from certain structures or categories in some languages, which
are then looked for and claimed to be found in all languages, or said to exist in all
languages underlyingly, but are not necessarily realized on the surface.9
Talmy suggests that one can find a range of typological patterns and universal
principles. His early study on the topic (Talmy 1975) was the cornerstone of this
rather novel approach to old linguistic questions. He specified the range of surface
participants (grammatical categories such as nominal, prepositional, and verb
constituents) and their semantic equivalents (Figure, Ground, Path, and Motion).
7. We will not delve into detailed arguments about how schemas should be defined, and how
they are treated by different authors. For us, at present, it is important to give a working definition, which can be formulated as mental representations of events, based on cognitive processing
of data. For example, the schema for causation would consist of representations of a causer, the
action performed by the causer, the object it was performed on, and the outcome, as in: He
painted the door red.
8. Talmys semantic elements, are in fact not components on the semantic level of representation consisting of potentially language-specific semantic features, but rather universal components of events themselves as cognised by speakers. Talmy does not precisely specify a distinction here between semantic representation and conceptual representation, the importance of
which we discuss in detail in chapter 7. It seems that these elements are part of conceptual representation rather than what we would call semantic.
9. cf. Croft (2001); also Bowerman (1997).

Chapter 2. The point of departure

The terms Figure and Ground are borrowed from Gestalt psychology. According to
Talmy, a motion event has four basic components:



Motion: Presence of motion


Figure: The moving object
Ground: The reference-point object with respect to which the Figure moves
Path:
The course followed by the Figure with respect to the Ground

A typical example of an expression of a motion event would be: The ball rolled
down the hill. In this sentence, the ball expresses the Figure, the hill refers to the
Ground, and the Path is expressed by the particle down (termed satellite by
Talmy). The verb root (roll) itself conflates Manner and Motion. Lexicalized manner of motion seems to be an additional component in motion expressions, since
an expression of motion events can appear without it (e.g. The ball went down the
hill). In experience, Manner is an indispensable experiential component of a motion event, because every change of location from A to B must have been carried
out in a certain manner. Cause is another additional component, but unlike Manner, it is not inherently present in all motion events (e.g. agentive motion, as opposed to caused motion). To this array, Choi and Bowerman (1992: 86) add Deixis
(e.g. expressing motion towards the speaker vs. away from the speaker), which
seems to play a role in the lexicalization of motion events in some languages that
is comparable to that of components such as Manner or Cause. They state (ibid.)
that although Talmy (1985) apparently regards deixis (which he terms direction)
as closely related to Path in his analysis, deixis often patterns differently from other kinds of Path in the way it is lexicalized (e.g. in many languages deixis is expressed in main verbs that have the meaning of come and go away from even
though other kinds of Path are not typically lexicalized in the verb system). However, we should emphasise that deixis should be seen as a part of the expression of
a motion event rather than part of the motion event itself. Deixis is the process of
referring to an object or an event that is positioned or is occurring at a certain
point with relation to the speaker or hearer in a communicative situation.10 Therefore, it is not an inherent part of events as such.
In Talmys analysis of how languages express motion, a motion event is defined
as a situation containing movement of an entity or maintenance of an entity at a
stationary location (1985: 60). What is meant by movement is directed or
translative motion that results in a change of location. The maintenance at a
stationary location means either a static situation or a contained motion that
results in no overall change of location (e.g. jumping up and down, walking around
in one place, etc.). What is meant by situation on this occasion is apparently what
10. We discuss deixis in more detail in chapter 6.

Talking about Motion

we would rather term an event. The point Talmy made by clarifying this distinction here was that one should distinguish between two major groups of motion
events: one in which the Figure does not remain at a certain location, but rather
changes location by moving (i.e. directed motion, as in He ran into the park), and
the other in which the Figure stays within the boundaries of a location (i.e. motion
at a location, as in He ran in the park). The meaning of particles that convey the
former kind (directed motion) we refer to as directional, and the meaning of those
that convey the latter (motion at a location) is said to be locational.
For the purpose of our research we had to limit our focus to a particular type
of motion events, and we opted for agentive motion because it constitutes the basis
for the formulation of the typology.11 This includes directed motion as well as motion at a location, and sometimes the same means are used to express both kinds
in English. We also mention caused motion in our discussion, but only when certain examples are considered relevant for a point we want to make, as causation is
in itself a separate, although related, topic for research.
Not all types of semantic-to-surface mapping are to be given the same attention, according to Talmy (1985), but only the ones that constitute the pervasive
pattern in a particular language. The concern is to understand how such patterns
compare across languages. The question asked first by Talmy is whether languages
exhibit a wide variety of patterns, a comparatively small number of patterns (a typology), or a single pattern (a universal). The interest would primarily lie in the
last two cases, as well as in the case where a pattern does not appear in any language (universal exclusion).
Talmys suggestion, though cautious and tentative, is that most of the worlds
known languages can be classified into three categories. Languages that characteristically map the core schema onto the verb will be said to have a framing verb and
to be verb-framed languages.12 Included among such languages are Romance, Semitic, Japanese, Tamil, Polynesian, most Bantu, most Mayan, Nez Perce, and Caddo.13 On the other hand, languages that characteristically map the core schema
onto satellites are said to have a framing satellite and to be satellite-framed languages, and included among these are most Indo-European (excluding Romance),

11. Agentive motion is also referred to as voluntary, self-caused or internally caused by


different authors; cf. Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995); see also Croft (1990).
12. The core schema is that of the Figure changing location, the essential component thus being
the Path of motion (X MOVES FROM A TO B; X at A at T1; X at B at T2; T stands for time).
13. We are aware that individual languages and families are listed together here, but that is
exactly how they are given.

Chapter 2. The point of departure

Finno-Ugric, Chinese, Ojibwa, and Warlpiri (cf. Talmy (1985), Talmy (1991)).14
The third category proposed in the typology could go under the heading of satellite-framed languages, and therefore the major dichotomy can be defined as that
between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages.15 Satellites are defined as
certain immediate constituents of a verb root other than inflections, auxiliaries,
or nominal arguments (Talmy 1985: 102), like prefixes in Slavic languages or adverbs like in as in He walked in without saying a word. The definition of a satellite is debatable and it is discussed in detail in section 2.6.
What seems to be Talmys prevalent interest is to see what kind of information
about motion is encoded in the verb itself and how much is conveyed by some
other means. In the case of expressions of motion, the core information is that of
Path (since motion events are defined as change of location), and it is expressed
within the verb itself in verb-framed languages, and via satellites in satellite-framed
languages. The verb complex, which is the focus of attention in Talmys analysis,
consists of a verb root and satellites. Satellites relate to the verb root as periphery
(or modifiers) to a head (Talmy 1985: 102). The representational example that he
provides to illustrate the basic dichotomy between the two major types of languages in the typology is the following (descriptions of a bottle floating out of a
cave in English and Spanish): The bottle floated out. vs. La botella sali flotando.
(The bottle exited floating.) In English, a satellite to the verb, out, conveys the
core information about the Path of the moving Figure, whereas in Spanish it is the
verb itself, salir (exit), that conveys this piece of information. Note also that supporting information about the manner of motion is conveyed by the verb in English and by the gerund flotando (floating) in Spanish. These patterns are quite
pervasive in the two languages. English has a large collection of verbs of motion
that convey Manner (walk, run, crawl, fly, etc.), combinable with a large collection of Path satellites (in, up, to, across, etc.). Spanish prefers verbs of inherent
directionality, i.e. Path verbs like entrar enter, bajar descend, subir ascend, etc., with more restricted non-directional verbs of motion and a less developed lexicon with regard to manner verbs (cf. Slobin (1997a)).
14. Framing in this context refers to the process of mapping the core schema (in this case the
Path of motion) onto elements in the motion expression (e.g. verbs or satellites).
15. The third category of languages seems rather marginal considering the number of languages it comprises (out of those that are known so far). Also, it can be classified under the same
heading as the satellite-framed languages, since it maps its core of the schema (i.e. the Path
component) in a similar way, i.e. onto satellites. The members of the third group (to which Atsugewi and Navajo are said to belong) differ from the satellite-framed languages group proper,
as defined by Talmy, because their verb roots convey a different piece of information from the
one provided by the verbs within the satellite-framed group (they lexicalize the Figure component in the verb as opposed to Manner), but the Path is still rendered via satellites.

Talking about Motion

2.4 Typology in action


Slobin ((1996), (1997a)) has applied Talmys typology in his analysis of samples from
narratives in different languages (English, Spanish, Turkish, and Russian), which
were both experimentally elicited narratives based on a picture story (The Frog
Stories) and narratives from literary texts of English and Spanish novelists together
with their respective translations. In both types of narratives he finds confirmation
that the form and content of descriptions of motion events are heavily shaped by the
typology of lexicalization patterns. He particularly concentrates on establishing a
firm basis for distinguishing between languages that are satellite-framed (S-languages) and those that are verb-framed (V-languages). He also addresses the literary
consequences (e.g. the pace of narration, rhetorical style, etc.) that arise from the
differences in lexicalization in English and Spanish (Slobin (1996)).
According to Talmys typology, English is a satellite-framed, and Spanish is a
verb-framed language. The major dichotomy seems feasible to Slobin on an overall
scale, but he emphasizes that some modifications of the framework advocated by
Talmy are required. Slobin notes that Spanish does not always behave like a verbframed language, and some additional constraints to the classification seem to
have emerged. He uses the term boundary-crossing in his analysis, to refer to those
kinds of events where there is a boundary to be crossed on the way of the moving
Figure.16 Boundary-crossing is experientially (perceptually) salient and Slobin has
shown that it is also salient in language, whereby S-languages and V-languages
differ significantly precisely in the lexicalization of boundary-crossing. The important point he made was that, apparently, when a non-boundary-crossing situation
is to be expressed, Spanish speakers (and those of all other Romance languages)
can use the combination of manner verb+directional particle and accumulate
Ground elements onto a single verb, which is the pattern typical of satellite-framed
languages (Slobin (1997a: 443)):

(1) a. So then the three men walked slowly and without visible agitation through
the streets, from the jail to the marshy point.
(1 manner verb; 3 Grounds)
b. As, pues, los tres hombres caminaron lentamente y sin agitacin visible
por las calles, desde la crcel hasta el extremo de la marisma.
(1 manner verb; 3 Grounds)
(back translation: Thus, then, the three men walked slowly and without
visible agitation through the streets, from the jail up to the edge of the
marsh.)
16. cf. Aske (1989) for the initial proposal regarding the importance of telicity on this occasion,
developed further in terms of boundary-crossing in Slobins work.

Chapter 2. The point of departure

However, if boundary-crossing is to be expressed, Romance languages cannot offer manner verbs+directional particles and such expressions typically tend to have
one Ground element per verb (Slobin (1997a: 438)):

(1) c. English: I ran out the kitchen door, past the animal pens, towards Jasons
house. (1 manner verb; 3 Grounds)
d. Spanish: Sal por la puerta de la cocina, pas por los corrales y me dirig a
casa de Jasn. (3 directional verbs; 3 Grounds)
(back translation: I exited through the kitchen door, passed by the animal
pens, and directed myself to Jasons house)

Where English offers one verb, Spanish gives three. It is conspicuous that all three
encode Path in Spanish, and that the Manner component is absent. A translator
has to make choices when fitting one language to the patterns of another, as it
were. The translator could have indicated in (1d) that one part of the Path was
traversed running (e.g. sal corriendo), but this very choice would have foregrounded Manner, which had not been done in the original.By the same token,
repetition of corriendo (running) with all three verbs would have been stylistically intolerable. Such decisions in translation are not simply stylistic or aesthetic;
rather, they are strongly influenced by the typologies of the source and target languages (Slobin (1997b)).
By the same token, different carving of the motion event continuum can be
seen in Russian, even though Russian and English belong to the same typological
group. The fact that Russian has three prefixed manner verbs in (2a), and the English translation contains one manner verb, does not mean that English speakers
describe one event whereas Russian speakers describe three. They refer to the same
event, but in Russian, one cannot amass all the directional phrases onto one manner verb. Shull (2003) argues that in Russian, the prefix combines almost exclusively with a single preposition that is its equivalent in terms of the spatial relation
expressed (e.g. OT-with ot (from)) or with a few principal prepositions, although
she does not discuss prefixed verb combinability with prepositions and accumulation of prepositions in motion expressions in detail.17 That could be the reason
why one prefixed manner verb cannot be used to express the whole of the Path of

17. The limitations of prefix combinability with prepositions in Serbo-Croatian are of central
importance to our arguments (cf. chapters 2, 4 and 6) and perhaps a future contrastive study of
other Slavic languages could draw parallels with respect to the role of prefixes in the lexicalization of the domain of motion events, as well as other cognitive domains.

Talking about Motion

motion in Russian. Slobin (p.c.) provides the following example from Dostoevskys
Bratja Karamazovy, which illustrates this point:

(2) a. on obeal bolim krujkom, erez pereulok, dom Fedora Pavlovia,


probeal Dmitrovskuju ulicu, perebeal potom mostik i prijamo popal v
uedinennyj pereulok
he around-ran in big arc, through lane, house of Feodor Pavlovi,
along- ran Dmitrovskaja street, across-ran then little bridge and directly
fell into adjoining lane

It would be translated into English as:


(2) b. he ran in a big detour, through the lane, past Fyodor Pavlovichs house,
along Dmitrovsky street, across the bridge, right into the adjoining lane

And if we go beyond the isolated verb complex, which we have to do in order to


provide an adequate account of how motion events are lexicalized, we face a new
set of issues to be taken into consideration. As Slobin argues, an examination of
narrative data requires attention to the extended depiction of motion across clauses, and to go beyond the simple motion event to what he calls the journey (a complete sequence of motion events until the Figure stops moving). Similarly, Brinton
(1988) contends that the verb complex only (verb+particle) is not a sufficient
foundation for establishing some essential syntactic and semantic relations in a
system. We discuss the role of narrative in chapter 5.
Slobin (1996: 199) goes on to say that the diversity of English verb+satellite is
impressive. He also notices many other interesting points. For example, English
tends to give more locative information (source/goal), as in They fell into the water. Spanish speakers tend to use bare verbs (Se cayeron They fell), twice as
often as English speakers:
(3)



Los tir
a un precipicio donde habia harta agua.
Them throw-PST-3SG at a cliff
where had much water.
Entonces se
cayeron.
Then
REFL fall-PST-PFV-3PL
[The deer] threw them at a cliff where there was lots of water. Then they fell.

Spanish speakers would most often omit the relevant spatial points (i.e. initial,
medial and final) and describe a series of scene-settings rather than continuous
dynamic action (Slobin (1996: 204)). Slobin concludes that it would appear that
descriptions of motion tend to be richer in manner detail in English than in Spanish (ibid.). Information about the Ground component is given via objects of prepositions in the prepositional phrases that can follow one verb in an expression.
Spanish speakers tend to limit themselves, when using a prepositional phrase with

Chapter 2. The point of departure

a verb of motion, to one per verb, whereas English speakers can use many with a
single verb of motion. The problem facing the Spanish translator is whether or not
to allot a separate clause to each part of the Path segments in a complex Path (e.g.
(1d)) that are associated with a single verb in the English original.
Slobin was particularly interested in how Spanish translators cope with the
abundance of English locative detail. In addition, he states that manner of motion is
apparently far more salient in English narratives than in Spanish. Spanish translators omit Manner information about half of the time, whereas English translators
actually add Manner to the Spanish original in almost a quarter of their translations
(Slobin (1996: 212)). This is due both to the considerable lexical differences between
the two languages and the associated syntactic means of expressing Manner.
2.5 Problems encountered
Even though there have been many studies of the systemic differences between the
descriptions of motion in English and Spanish, we still encounter some unresolved
problems. Spanish is deemed to be a verb-framed language in that the core meaning of a motion event Path of motion tends to be expressed by the verb itself, as
already shown. However, Spanish (as well as other Romance languages) does have
verbs that are neutral with regard to Path, and some of them encode manner of
movement and occur with what appear to be satellites (e.g. correr abajo run
down). Slobin points out that after introducing boundary-crossing, one is able to
account for examples like this that seem to undermine the typology. When we
compared English and Serbo-Croatian, we noticed some other constraints that
should be introduced in order to preserve the typology. The question appears to be
how far we can stretch the typology without significantly decreasing its predictability. Moreover, even the prototypical V-languages show signs of disobedience
to their typological classification (cf. inter alia Naigles et al.(1998), Berthele (2004),
Lemmens (2005), Baicchi (2005)).
In the English example The bottle floated under the bridge, the meaning expressed can be both boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing in spatial
terms, and consequently the utterance can be interpreted as expressing either directional or locational meaning. In French, however, according to some authors
(cf. Fong and Poulin (1998) and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995)), the equivalent of this kind of expression (or more precisely verb+preposition) can only have
non-boundary-crossing, locational meaning, which is deducible as the only

Talking about Motion

possible interpretation.18 Romance languages (in this case French, but Spanish and
Italian certainly have the same option) can express Manner in the verb and Path in
a particle.19 The constraint proposed here by Slobin is that they may do so only in
non-boundary-crossing situations (as in the example (1b)). But then we encounter
the following examples in French (Asher and Sablayrolles (1996: 198)):

(4) a. Jean a couru dans le jardin. Il a vu le chat travers la fentre et a voulu


lattraper.

b. John ran into the garden. He saw the cat through the window and wanted
to catch it.
c. Jean a couru dans le jardin. Il a voulu sentraner pour la comptition.
d. John ran in the garden. He wanted to train for the competition.

Obviously, the situation in (4a) is a boundary-crossing one, apparently defying the


typological predictions. This need not undermine the claim that in Romance languages the preferred pattern is a directional verb in motion expressions, but indicates that explanations for individual cases should be sought in other directions,
namely in the meaning and diachronic development of individual prepositions
and their combination with different verbs, as well as the expression of tense and
aspect categories, and not only in whether Path is expressed in the verb or some
other element.
There are further issues related to certain expressions of motion events in
French. Fong and Poulin (1998: 3233) point out that it is important to know what
must follow the preposition, as in the case of travers. They contend that the example in (5a) is correct, and the one in (5b) is not because travers needs to be
followed by an object of a preposition which clearly expresses a barrier (or a

18. It would be very important to attest the examples that these authors provide, because the
same authors claimed that dans (in/into) cannot be used in the expressions that are boundary-crossing, illustrated not to be apparently so by Asher and Sablayrolles (examples in (4)). It has
to be attested whether it is possible to find an expression of a situation type where sous (under)
could be used in the boundary-crossing sense. We offer more discussion on under in particular
in chapter 5.
19. Boundary-reaching situation types are not discussed in further detail here, as they seem
uncontroversial.In French, as well as in Spanish (cf. Aske (1989); also Naigles et al.(1998)), if
the reference is to a situation when a boundary is not crossed, but only reached, manner
verb+directional particle are used freely (e.g. Fong and Poulin (1998: 32)): Le poisson a nag
vers la rive (The fish swam towards the river bank) and Lenfant a couru vers sa mre (The
child ran towards her mother).

Chapter 2. The point of departure

boundary) that is crossed. This is so in (5a) but not in (5b), marked as? by Fong
and Poulin:
(5) a. Le poisson a nag travers la chute deau.
The fish swam through the waterfall.
b. ?Lenfant a couru travers la pice.
The child ran across the room.

In the example (5a) a manner verb is used with a directional preposition. Even
though this pattern is not as favored in French as the one where a directional verb
is used in motion expressions, they do occur, and when they do not, there is a
reason for it. We can say that in the case of (5a), the English translation contains a
manner verb, which is the most natural choice in that language and the manner
expressed is the inherent manner of motion of the Figure involved (i.e. fish normally move by swimming). A directional verb would be a marked option in English in general and especially so in this case, although still possible in an imaginable but obscure context (e.g. if the fish changed location in an untypical manner,
for example travels as a pet in a bowl on a ship, when the verb cross would be used
and manner probably further specified in an adjunct). However, the French sentence in (5a) does not seem acceptable to a great majority of French native speakers to whom it was presented for the purpose of the present study.20 They reasoned
that it was precisely because fish move by swimming that it is most natural to use
just traverser (cross) and unnecessary to specify the manner of motion. The
manner verb in French that the two authors offer here might be the result of language contact (e.g. Canadian French in contact with English).21 Moreover, even if
we accept the possibility of a manner verb+directional particle as an existing (but
limited) lexicalization option for boundary-crossing in French, it is not certain
that the situation referred to in (5a) is necessarily a boundary-crossing one. We
shall return to this point shortly.
By the same token, it is important to notice a more serious problem with the
example (5b). It was intended for an illustration that the use of travers is impossible because room (la pice) is not considered to designate a boundary. However, this example does not serve its intended purpose. The English sentence itself
given as an equivalent is not an expression of a boundary-crossing situation strictly

20. The example was tested on 20 native speakers of French and 19 out of 20 subjects confirmed
it was unacceptable (one speaker who accepted it said it was extremely marginal).
21. D. I. Slobin (p.c.) also thought this could be the case.

Talking about Motion

speaking.22 It is difficult to fathom which situation type the expression in (5b) refers to (The child ran across the room erratically for 10 minutes? Or there was
space across the room where the child ran?). An event containing boundary-crossing in English can be expressed as The child ran through the room, which could
then potentially more clearly refer to the situation when the child entered running,
passed through the room and ended up in the back garden for example (although
a non-boundary-crossing interpretation is available with through as well). A required expression in French would still not contain a manner verb+directional
preposition, but the reason is not the impossibility to construe la pice (the
room) as a boundary. We need to focus on why travers is not ideal for comparison with English through or across, which are the two most frequent translation equivalents. 23
A possible explanation for this is offered in Stoi (2001), where the meanings
of par and travers (neither of which could be an adequate equivalent for English across or through) are analyzed in detail. He contends that travers needs a
complement which expresses a location that the Figure has to make his/her way
through, whereas par expresses an intermediary space that is a connection between an initial and final location, Thus, neither par nor a travers can be used to
express boundary-crossing, but rather locate the moving Figure during the displacement or location change, unlike the often offered English translational equivalents across and through, which can include all the stages (initial, medial and
final). The use of par and traversis illustrated in (6a) and (6b) respectively:
(6) a. Ils sont entrs/sortis/passs/rentrs par le jardin.
They entred/exited/passed/returned via the garden.
b. Le soldats marchent travers la ville.
The soldiers marched their way through the town

Expressions with par refer to a transitional process, implying the whole trajectory
from the intial to the final location via the connecting (medium) space, such expressions are normally telic, thus the use of directional verbs. Expressions with a
travers refer mainly to processes, they are atelic (cf. the classification of Vet (1994))
and they refer to movement through a location that is functionally not primarily
viewed as a passage (cf. Stoi (2001)). The expression in (6b) is acceptable with
mediums such as le bois (woods) or les dunnes (dunes), whereby the moving
Figure finds its way through the spatial configuration. The location such as room
22. Across in English can be used to refer to both boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing
situations, but here it is considered inappropriate for the point that Fong and Poulin wanted to
make.
23. For a detailed analysis and an insightful account see Vet (1994).

Chapter 2. The point of departure

(la pice) in the example (5b) not only cannot be taken to refer to a boundary in
French if travers is used, but it also does not normally refer to a location through
which passage is sought. The acceptability of the example in (5a) for some speakers
could potentially be better understood if we think of the waterfall not as a boundary but rather a location through which the moving Figure (the fish) finds its way,
which in this context could be seen as space that is normally not understood to be
a passage itself. Finally, we are not sure where examples such (5a) are attested and
the extent to which this combination of manner verb+ travers applies in different
contexts. Stoi (2001) further contends that the uses of the two prepositions in
French are conditioned by rather different conceptualizations of the state of affairs,
depending on whether the object of a preposition is considered to be a connecting
space between the initial and a final stage that are implicit but not expressed (in
which case par is used), or the space through which one had to make way (when
travers is used).
This is just an illustration of the difficulties one encounters when scratching
the surface of the lexicalization process in languages based on a small piece of evidence in this case, but by no means an insignificant one. On the contrary, the examples provided so far have shown that it is not enough just to state that Manner
or Path is expressed in a verb.
We will briefly draw a parallel with a related situation in another Romance
language, Italian. It is possible to use a manner verb in both (7a) and (7b) in Italian, but the distinction is made via the auxiliary: when a boundary-crossing meaning is to be expressed, the auxiliary to be (essere) is used; when the non-boundary-crossing meaning is to be expressed, to have (avere) is used, and there is no
doubt that the interpretations of the following two expressions are distinct:24
(7) a. Ha
corso
nella stanza. 25
have-COP run-PTCP in the room
He ran in the room.
b.
corso
nella stanza.
be-COP run-PTCP in the room
He ran into the room.

In both cases, we have the preposition en (in/into), and again as with French
dans, we come across examples of the use of manner verbs+directional particles
24. All our informants for these two examples in Italian were speakers from northern Italy (10
of them), and it might be the case that the use of manner verb+directional particle in the examples in (7) rather than a directional verb+manner adjunct could be more common in some regions as a consequence of language contact (Northern Italy with German-speaking neighbors).
25. Here the preposition en is realised as nella because of the following noun (la stanza).

Talking about Motion

in boundary-crossing situations both in the literature and among native speakers.


It should be possible to trace the development of the relevant prepositions and see
how these two uses evolved, how one or the other started being considered primary, and whether and how the relevant distinctions were made in the past.
Baicchi (2005) argues that in order for Romance languages to replicate the
English pattern, certain features of FORCE must be present, such as immediacy,
high degree of intensity or a component of resistance (counterforce). Examples
such as I flung out of his hut and They rushed into the little cabin to rush out incontinently (ibid.: 524) would be rendered into Italian via a manner verb+directional
particle, just like in English. She also notices that Manner+Motion conflation is
more frequent in Italian than in Spanish, because the Germanic structure has exerted a stronger influence on Italian for historical reasons, borrowing of Germanic
constructions being present already in Latin (ibid.: 516). Therefore, we emphasize
again here the importance of auxiliary and verb meaning, as well as preposition
meaning, and suggest that comprehensive research is necessary, looking into both
the synchronic situation, matters like frequency of different patterns, and diachronic development of the relevant elements and constructions.
Obviously, the situation is far from being a clear-cut one. A number of researchers from different camps voiced their concerns and contributed to a number of
clarifications regarding the typology and its predictive power (Aske (1989), Ibarretexte-Antuano (2001), Naigles et al.(1998), Slobin (1996), (1997), (2000), Talmy
(2000)).26 Some studies provide examples that apparently contradict some typological claims (e.g. Asher and Sablayrolles (1996), Fong and Poulin (1998)), but
they represent an indication of a further necessity to explore the typological classification and account for processes that underline specific cases rather than a serious undermining of the typology itself. Some authors experimentally test the nature of different encoding and its influence on language use. For example, Naigles
et al.(1998) argue that Spanish speakers do not provide conclusive evidence that
their pattern shows consistency as predicted within the typology. The study points
out that the typological characterization of Spanish has changed substantially since
the initial typological specification by Talmy (Naigles et al.(1998: 524)):
The set of motion events supposed to require Path conflation has become more
and more restricted, from all descriptions of motion events (Talmy (1985)) to just
those describing motion events with definite endstates or origin (Aske (1989),
26. Ibarretexte-Antuano (2001) confirms that although Basque shows a tendency to express
Path in the verb, and is classified as a verb-framed language, there is also a tendency in Basque
to provide an extensive elaboration of Path, i.e. accumulation of directional elements that follow
the verb, thus having more than one directional element with one verb in an expression, which
is a feature of satellite-framed languages.

Chapter 2. The point of departure

Jackendoff (1990)), to just those describing motion events that cross boundaries
(Slobin and Hoiting (1994)).

Naigles et al.(1998) also pointed out that the use of different stimuli and methodology could also affect the results. For example, Slobin (1996) targeted narrative and
highlighted the difference in narrative styles between English and Spanish, whereby
English speakers use many more verb types than their Spanish counterparts. Naigles
et al.(1998) used dynamic stimuli (video-clips) that produced contrasting results,
which do not demonstrate absence of varied verb types in Spanish. This indicates
that the context of language use can have a significant, albeit not entirely understood, role (ibid.: 547). Having all this in mind, we can state that the invaluable
insights of the typology itself are not irrevocably undermined, and it still remains
the driving force behind numerous research projects, which in return indicate the
ways in which the typology could be refined and become more accurate.
If we have to come up with a generalized conclusion, we can say that, on the
whole, statistical, corpus and experimental data suggest that the habitual tendency
in Romance languages is to express the Path of motion in the verb (Slobin (1996),
(1997a), (2000a), (2004)). Nevertheless, the examples analyzed so far indicate that
important additions to the typology may come up if a detailed analysis of a number
of language-specific semantic features within the Romance and Germanic groups
of languages becomes available, since some seem to show a number of divergences
from the main template. A number of researchers provide further confirmation of
this assumption. Slobin (2004) acknowledges that morphosyntactic structure plays
a role in lexicalization, in particular with regard to prefixes in Russian. A cline in
the typology within a language (German) was proposed by Berthele (2004), who
argues that a language and its dialects can differ along certain typological parameters and shows how dialectology can contribute to the refinement of the typology.
Similarly, Lemmens (2005) talks of a cline of salience within the typology in
crosslinguistic expression of location events (i.e. posture), and discusses significant differences within one language family (Germanic), which calls for further
and more detailed study of typological variation. Important insights could become
available by studying the effects on lexicalization of the following: tense and aspect, unergative vs. unaccusative meanings and different uses of auxiliaries (cf.
Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995)), preposition and VP meaning, as well as lexical and construction meaning (cf. Croft (2001), Goldberg (1995), (2005)) in individual languages. A comprehensive study that is presented here could serve as a
model to be applied in the study of other languages because our approach combines a number of sources and unifies them in a single account of meaning within
a lexicalized cognitive domain observed from a crosslinguistic perspective.

Talking about Motion

We suggest that there might be a kind of typological continuum with regard to


salience of Manner, whereby Serbo-Croatian will occupy a place between the Germanic and the Romance group (cf. Filipovi (1999), (2001), (2006a)). There is a
possibility that this continuum is quite a vibrant environment due to intratypological variation. Languages may show similarities in lexicalization on one level
(e.g. lexical), but not on another (e.g. constructional). It could also be the case that
the occurrences of certain verb+particle combinations and constructions are
guided by selectional restrictions of a verb (cf. Narasimhan (2003)) or morphosyntactic restrictions of a construction. In further support of this position, we refer
to Narasimhan (2003), who argues in favour of localizing crosslinguistic variations
at the phrasal level rather than only at the lexical level. Lexical items that are similar across languages might be constrained in different ways in how they combine
phrasally (ibid.: 158). She demonstrates that classifying Hindi as a verb-framed
language obscures a number of principles in motion lexicalization of that language.
She explains that the combinability of Hindi manner verbs with directional phrases depends not only on aspectual factors (such as telic vs. atelic), but also on the
more general semantic profile of the verb itself (ibid.).
We initially wanted to inquire into how similar English and Serbo-Croatian
are when it comes to expressing motion, since previous typological claims classified them as the same type. For our pilot study, we started by choosing two literary
texts, an English original and a Serbo-Croatian original, and the translations of
these two books into Serbo-Croatian and English respectively.27 We also collected
some experimental data, where native speakers of Serbo-Croatian with advanced
fluency in English were given the task to translate certain expressions of motion
events from English into Serbo-Croatian.28 We wanted to see whether and how
27. The data from the narratives consist of 70 descriptions of motion events in English, collected from the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell and its translation into Serbo-Croatian by
Vera Lebovi, as well as 40 descriptions of motion events in Serbo-Croatian from two short
stories by Ivo Andri, Prokleta avlija and Pria o vezirovom slonu, and their translation into
English by Celia Hawkesworth.
28. The experimental data were elicited from 15 native speakers of Serbo-Croatian (all Cambridge graduates, whose participation was voluntary) and their purpose was twofold: a) to obtain translations of non-literary descriptions of motion events from English into Serbo-Croatian
and to see how the native speakers of Serbo-Croatian cope with the abundance of English locative detail, and b) to check on the basis of Slobins examples, whether native speakers of SerboCroatian exhibit some similar tendencies to Spanish speakers when translating accounts of motion events from English. The participants were given 25 simple sentences in English to
translate into Serbo-Croatian, and 10 sentences in Serbo-Croatian to be translated into English.
Some of the examples in the experiment have been taken from Slobin ((1996), (1997)), where
they had the purpose of highlighting the difference in patterning between English and Spanish
verbalized motion events.

Chapter 2. The point of departure

consistently the manner detail from the English original would be rendered into
Serbo-Croatian. Although speakers of both languages show certain similarities in
their descriptions of motion events (e.g. use of manner verbs on numerous occasions), it was obvious that there was a number of rather noticeable differences in
the motion expressions in the two languages (cf. Filipovi (1999), (2001)). In the
Serbo-Croatian translation of the English text the information about Manner
seems to be omitted (or simplified) on a number of occasions, very much like
translations into Spanish in Slobins reports. In more than a half of the examples
from our data (40 out of 70), the information about the manner of motion has
been omitted in the Serbo-Croatian translation, simplified (e.g. by using a less
complex verb), or expressed in another way, usually by an adverbial (Filipovi
(1999)). For example:
(8) a.


They tiptoed from room to room.


Obili
su
sobe na prstima.
Around-go-PST-PFV-3PL be-COP rooms on tiptoes.
They went around the rooms on tiptoes.

b.


They saw him toiling up the slope


Videli su ga kako se
s
mukom penje
They saw him how REFL with pain
climb- PRS-IPFV-3SG
They saw him climbing with pain

Manner is completely omitted from the translation in Serbo-Croatian in the following examples:
(9) a.


All the animals trooped into the big barn.


Sve su
ivotinje dole u veliki ambar.
All be-COP animals came into big barn.
All the animals went into the big barn

b.


They all raced out into the pasture together.


Zajedno su
pole
na pau.
Together be-COP started to go on grazing.
They went to the pasture together

The reason for the differences that are detected is sought in the restricted combinability of prefixed verbs with different prepositions and what turned out to be the
relevant factor for this behavior of Serbo-Croatian is a particular morphosyntactic restriction that prevents all verbs from being prefixed by all prefixes, and consequently prevents their unlimited use in motion expressions. This original proposal is discussed in detail in chapter 6. Also, English has a much more developed
lexicon of manner verbs and a strong influx of new words, especially through

Talking about Motion

conversion from nouns to verbs. It is a common and productive process, which is


not the case in Serbo-Croatian.
In the case of example (9b) it could be argued that the translation itself is quite
unfortunate, because the translator had a better option, namely to use a semantically
simpler manner verb (because the precise prefixed equivalent for racing out does
not exist), and possibly specify Manner further in an adjunct, as we suggest in (9c):
(9) c. Svi su
izjurili
na panjak trkajui se.
All be-COP out-rush-PST-PFV-3PL onto pasture racing REFL
All ran out onto the pasture racing.

Thus, there is a translation in Serbo-Croatian that is more faithful to the original,


but not quite the same, since the manner detail still had to be provided outside the
verb in order to render the meaning conveyed in English correctly. Even if we take
this factor into consideration, we still have significant differences to uncover, and
many more examples to account for. This is just a starting illustration that prompted us to look into the matter in more depth.
We stated that the combinability of prepositions with verbs in English is free,
but it seems to obey a universal constraint proposed by Bohnemeyers (2003) and
termed argument uniqueness constraint (AUC), which concerns the semantic
uniqueness of Path argument roles that can be mapped onto Ground-denoting
expressions within single clauses. It requires each expression of a semantic argument expressed in a single clause to be assigned a unique argument role (Bohnemeyer 2003: 110). The AUC also affects the coding of Path roles in such a way that
in simple clauses only one Path role (e.g. source, goal, route, etc.) can be assigned
to only one Path-expressing element. This is an apparently universal constraint on
the coding of motion events at the syntax/semantics interface (ibid.). This constraint checks examples like: * Sally walked across the hall to the entrance out of
the library crosslinguistically (ibid.). Thus, accumulation of prepositional phrases
is not unregulated, even in English. On the more language-specific front, the morphology of Serbo-Croatian, being rather complex, prevents the use of prefixed
manner verbs and their combinations with Path particles without restrictions. Especially with semantically more complex manner verbs, if we want to express
change of location, thus including information on both Path and Manner in the
verb, we might happen to have an adequate manner verb, but it might not be able
to be prefixed by the particular prefix that we need in order to express the direction of motion we want. We would have to use other means available, e.g. a verb
lexicalizing Path instead, and express Manner in some other way (examples in
(8)), or use a semantically simpler manner verb that can be prefixed by the adequate prefix (example (9c)). We wanted to search for reasons that lie in the essence
of how the lexicalization mechanisms operate in different languages and why

Chapter 2. The point of departure

languages that have the same possibility to express one component (e.g. Manner)
in the verb do not do it in the same way and with the same frequency. This search
brought us to the point where we had to uncover what morphological, syntactic
and lexical semantic features of the two systems play decisive roles when it comes
to deciding what pieces of information about events are habitually expressed and
with what prominence. Obviously, we can learn very important things by studying
lexicalization patterns crosslinguistically, but what is the right way to do it? We
argue in chapter 3 and onwards that our approach is the most adequate one.
We can make a preliminary conclusion here that there is more to lexicalization
patterning than just determining whether the Path component is lexicalized in a
verb or in a particle. Slobins remark (p.c.) is that verb- vs. satellite-framing is only
one typological dimension, and it intersects with the morphosyntactic typology. He
goes on to say that
what is neat about Slavic is that the Path satellites (verb prefixes) have a primary function, namely aspect (another typological dimension in this case, the
degree of grammatical expression of aspect). These additional typological factors
apparently conspire to reduce the attention to manner of motion in Slavic languages, as compared to Germanic. However, the availability of some constructions that allow for manner verb + Path expression seems to make a more frequent
option in Slavic than in Romance languages.

A related comment comes from Lehrer (1992: 250). She points out that Talmy
stresses the fact that it is necessary to examine characteristic patterns of lexemes to
arrive at a satisfactory typology, since English also has a few verbs that incorporate
the moving Figure instead of Manner (e.g. (It) rains), and Spanish has verbs of motion that incorporate Manner. Therefore, one must examine a large number of items
and a large number of semantic fields in order to find significant generalizations
(ibid.). Her view is that there will be an interaction between the packaging notion
of lexical typology as envisioned by Talmy and morphological typology (ibid.).
2.6 The notion of satellites
We have already established the validity of the proposal to start from general experience universal to speakers of all languages, and then find out the ways in which
different parts of events are rendered in different languages, including possible
consequences this process might have on various language-related activities (e.g.
acquisition, translation, narrative stylistics, etc.). We also pointed out some of the
emerging problems in different languages, mentioning just a few most conspicuous ones related to the two languages that are of prevalent interest for us at present,

Talking about Motion

i.e. English and Serbo-Croatian. We will now discuss the notion of satellite and
explain why a very narrow definition suggested and adopted in some previous
studies is not considered to be adequate here.
A satellite in Talmys terms refers to those elements that were traditionally
known as adverbs. This becomes more obvious when we consider what Talmy insists on, namely that satellites for expressing Path should be distinguished from
prepositions (and he focuses on analysing satellites only). It may be so because this
sometimes seems to be a fuzzy area in English. Talmy insists that no confusion can
occur in most Indo-European languages, where the two forms have quite distinct
positional and grammatical characteristics. For example, in Latin, Classical Greek
and Russian, the satellite is the prefix to the verb while the preposition accompanies the noun and governs its case. English, perhaps alone among Indo-European
languages, regularly places satellite and preposition next to each other in sentences. Nevertheless, according to Talmy (1985), there are still ways in which the two
kinds of forms satellites and prepositions are distinguishable. We will explain
why, even though it may be possible to distinguish between the two, it is of no
relevance for this kind of research.
Talmy contends that only prepositions will disappear when the Ground nominal is omitted; a satellite remains (Talmy 1985:105). Then, the two classes of forms
do not have identical memberships: there are forms with only one function or the
other. For example, together, apart, and forth are satellites that never act as prepositions, while from, at, and toward are prepositions that never act as satellites.
He contends that the directional particles that follow the verb and are not followed
by a noun are considered to be satellites, as opposed to prepositions, which are
followed by a noun and cannot follow the verb on their own.
Talmy offers evidence in support for his satellite/preposition distinction,
which we think is not fully persuasive. He contends that English has a special feature, detected also for example in Mandarin Chinese (ibid.). There is a number of
forms like past that behave like ordinary satellites when there is no final nominal,
as in: I saw him on the corner, but I just drove past, but appear without any preposition when there is a final nominal, as in I drove past him. Forms like these have
properties of both a satellite and a preposition. According to Talmy the distinction
could be made on the basis of stress. He claims that these forms receive heavy
stress as satellites, whereas as prepositions, they receive a light stress. Because of its
special behaviour, according to Talmy (ibid.: 106) a form like past might be considered a coalesced version of satellite plus a preposition a satellitepreposition.29
29. This is very reminiscent of what Bolinger (1971) termed adpreps, which are particles that
can function both as adverbs and prepositions.

Chapter 2. The point of departure

However, this argument cannot sustain even very simple criticism. In He


drove in, the last word is tonic, i.e. the adverb (or Talmys satellite) in. In the example He drove in through the gate, the last word, i.e. gate gets the tonic stress.
Although according to Talmy in should be a satellite here as well, it does not get
the heavy (tonic) stress. On the other hand, in the example provided by Talmy that
is supposed to illustrate the fact that when an element is used as a preposition it
does not have a heavy (tonic) stress, we clearly see that this is not the case: in He
drove past him, past would normally have a tonic stress, unless the speaker wanted to emphasize the pronoun at the end, e.g. He drove past him, not her.
It is still not clear why Talmy treats out as a satellite, and of as a preposition in
He ran out of the house, when it could be freely said instead to be a complex preposition out of . Also, can one adopt a criterion, which seems to be ensuing from
Talmys account, that satellites are not followed by a nominal, whereas prepositions
are, as in, for example: He ran across vs. He ran across the street? We have to remark that the expressions without the nominal would be said (normally at least) in
contexts where across what would be understood. There are many cases in English
where one can equally talk of a preposition+latent (understood) complement.
Therefore, this diagnostic for deciding what to treat as a satellite and take into consideration in the analysis by Talmy does not seem justified. Moreover, satellites and
prepositions are equally relevant in the expression of Path.
English seems to be particularly problematic when it comes to drawing the
line between different parts of speech in expressions like the ones we are discussing because of the difficulty in establishing criteria for precise defining of different
categories such as phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs, phrasal-prepositional verbs,
and other verb+particle combinations. By the same token, historically, it is wellknown that the morphological simplification of English has led to the change of
usage of directional particles that were prefixally bound to the verb in Old English,
but later became free morphemes that followed the verb.30 Since the complexity of
this issue would require a thorough analysis and exemplification of its own, only
the aspects relevant to the present study will be highlighted.
We consider the satellite/preposition distinction unnecessary, because we are
determined to look into all particles that express Path (whether they are followed
by a noun or not) and determine their relevance for the expression as a whole. It
turns out that it is not of any consequence for this type of analysis to draw a line
between satellites and prepositions. We treat them all as Path particles. A particle is
considered relevant for us as long as it is used in expressesions of the direction or
location of motion, whether followed by a noun or not. There is a related distinction
30. The reverse process happened in Serbo-Croatian (cf. Grickat (1966/67), Stanojic et
al.(1989), Stevanovi (1989)).

Talking about Motion

drawn elsewhere and formulated as the distinction between intransitive and transitive use of prepositions (cf. Palmer (1987)). They both play an important role in
expressing direction of motion and will be treated as particles that express the Path
of motion in expressions of motion events, with a tentative distinction between the
expressions in which they form a unit with a verb and those when they seem to be
forming a unit with a noun that follows (they follow the verb on their own, or are
themselves followed by another element). Thus, some Path particles can be used as
both intransitive and transitive (to use Palmers terms), whereas others can be either one or the other. The difference their use makes for the meaning of a motion
expression as a whole, in combination with other factors in sentence structure, will
be one of the focal points in the present analysis. For example, the satellite in can
follow the verb with or without the noun, which significantly alters the meaning of
an expression (compare: He ran in vs. He ran in the house). The interpretation of
the whole expression can be either directional or locational, depending on whether
there is a noun following the preposition or not.
Summary
We presented the data and methodology we used for the purpose of this study.
This chapter also introduced the typology (Talmy (1985)) that served as a starting
point in our contrasting of languages. We pointed out some problems of the typological classification and discussed examples from our pilot study as well as those
from a number of other related studies. We highlighted the effect of typological
variation in an applied linguistic setting, i.e. in the process of translation. Some
potentially problematic examples that we discussed are not aimed at seriously undermining the typology, but rather at signaling directions in which future research
prospects and typological improvements could be sought. A proposal to treat the
typology as a cline is put forward, to be elaborated and further confirmed with
evidence from different languages in the following chapter. The interaction of different typological dimensions and intratypological contrasting of languages
emerge as two particularly resourceful areas for further investigation.

chapter 3

The proposed approach


and central assumptions

3.1 Introducing situation types


There is number of studies that have tackled these same issues in the past, but to
our knowledge, not in the systematic way outlined here. We choose to start from
situation types, rather than compile lists of verbs, for example, analyze their meanings, and contrast them crosslinguistically on the paradigmatic or syntagmatic
level, which was the case in some previous studies (cf. ic-Fuchs (1991); Levin and
Rappaport Hovav (1995)). We by no means deny the central role verbs play in
lexicalizing the domain of motion events, but we are not able to make all the relevant predictions about lexicalization patterns in a language based only on their
meanings. We use them as cues for searching the corpora, and this was the most
logical and practical way to collect expressions of motion events for our research.
However, our analysis neither starts nor stops with verb meanings. The justification for the way in which we proceeded with our research is found in a simple
criterion, which is to start from experiential categories, i.e. motion events, and see
what means are used in languages to express different spatial and temporal features pertaining to them. It will be evident that our proposed situation types are
related to the Vendlerian classification of events into states, activities, achievements and accomplishments, as well as to the notion of telicity. We did not base
our analysis on those notions because of a number of problems. Namely, Vendlerian classification is sometimes taken to be the classification of verbs, VPs or events
themselves, and this causes confusion, especially when one author discusses this
classification as referring to both verbs and events in the same paper or study. Telicity is also considered to pertain sometimes to verbs, sometimes to VPs and
sometimes to events. We discuss these phenomena further in section 3.2.
Situation types are defined within the spatial frame as boundary-crossing,
boundary-reaching, and non-boundary-crossing. The term boundary-crossing refers to overcoming a physical boundary that a moving Figure encounters. These
distinctions are taken to be universally perceivable, and we willl try to confirm that
speakers habitually observe them when they talk about motion events. Apparently,

Talking about Motion

languages tend to provide the means to draw the above-mentioned distinctions


related to the spatial information to be expressed, and we noticed that this in effect
relates to the distinctions made within the temporal frame. We established that
there are three major temporal features, also potentially universally distinguishable,
on the temporal axis: if an expression relates to a motion event in which the change
of location had not occurred (at the time the event was witnessed), we have the nochange phase; if an event was occurring at the moment of witnessing it, we are
talking about the moment-of-change phase; and finally when the change of location
has been observed, we have the change-occurred temporal feature of an event.
The two domains, spatial and temporal, are intertwined: when a boundary is
crossed or is being crossed, a change has occurred or is occurring; when no boundary is crossed, such an event has the temporal feature of no-change. For example:

(1) a. He ran into the room. (boundary-crossing/change-occurred)

b. He ran in the park. (non-boundary-crossing/no-change)

We can sum up the relevant spatial and temporal features of motion events of these
kinds in Table 1:
Table 1. Situation types
Spatial

Boundary-crossing

Boundary-reaching

Temporal
Change-occurred
Moment-of-change
No-change

+ (2a)
+ (2b)

+ (2d)
(+)

Non-boundarycrossing

+ (2c)

Examples:

(2) a. He ran into the room.

b. He was running into the room when I saw him.


c. He ran/was running across the field for a while.
d. He ran to the door.

The terms situation types and events are not mutually interchangeable. One event
in reality could be construed or witnessed at different moments in time and what
situation types register is the spatial configuration at the moment of witnessing or
reporting an event (cf. 3.2 for more elaboration). A complete motion event is defined by change of location whereby a moving Figure is at a location A at a certain
point in time and then as a result of motion ends at another location B at a different

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

point in time. An expression of a complete motion event is the following: He ran


out of the room onto the balcony. The expression refers to a boundary-crossing/
change-occurred situation type. The expression He staggered into the room also
refers to a situation type with the temporal feature change-occurred, whereby the
moving Figure was outside the location expressed as the final destination and then
as the result of motion ended up at a different location. The initial location (somewhere outside the room) is not expressed, but it can be inferred. This process of
omitting certain elements in expressions is called gapping (Talmy (1996)). The attention is focused on the last part of the motion event (reaching the destination)
and this can be understood as windowing of attention (ibid.). Moment-of-change
is a phase whereby the moving entity is changing location, but has not reached the
final point B (e.g. He was staggering into the house when I saw him (but he did not
make it, because he fainted on the threshold)). Here again the initial point of motion is gapped, but is inferred to be different from point B where the moving Figure
is (perhaps) going to end up. No-change phase refers to the situation type when
neither initial nor the final point are expressed and cannot be inferred, but the
moving Figure was said to be in the process of motion: He ran across the fields.
Boundary-crossing can occur completely, in which case change-occurred is
expressed, or a moving Figure can be seen at the moment where the boundary was
being crossed, in which case we are talking about the moment-of-change phase. If
no boundary is crossed, we have a no-change phase of event, because a motion
event is defined by the presence of spatial anchoring points that refer to change
(from A and/or to B). Until the moving Figure ends up at a different location from
the one it started at, we cannot talk about change of location. In the case of the nochange phase we do not have any inferrable information about either the starting
point A or the final point B. We have to emphasize here that when we use the term
no-change for a phase in motion events, it does not necessarily mean that the
Figure did not change location at all (e.g. stayed in a state of perpetual motion at
one spot), because it is highly unlikely that any motion event continues without
change. It just means that when the speaker lexicalized the relevant event, he focused on the fact that the moving Figure was at a certain location (as in: He ran in
the park), or that the moving Figure was involved in directed motion but the
speaker is not aware or simply does not provide information about initial and/or
final location points (as in: He was running towards the park).
The term boundary is not always understood in the sense of a barrier but rather as the point in space which marks the border between the new spatial configuration and the previous one with which the Figure interacted. The kind of spatial
configuration that the noun following the preposition designates is very important
for the interpretation of spatio-temporal features of events that lie in the essence of
our situation types. Establishing whether something is considered a boundary or

Talking about Motion

not can influence the meaning of the whole expression and will be discussed at
length in chapter 5.
The (+)marking in Table 1 indicates that this situation type (boundary-reaching/moment-of-change) is possible, but it is not considered in great detail here for
the following reasons: a) strictly speaking, it is not a motion situation type and it is
not expressed by motion verbs, but rather with verbs of arriving and leaving, which
are considered to be a separate category (cf. Levin (1993)), and b) it could be subsumed under other situation types if motion verbs were used to describe it. An
example of that situation types would be the expression I was arriving at your door
when my phone rang. It is also questionable whether door refers to a boundary or
is rather seen as a goal (as a part of source-path-goal schema; cf. discussion below).
Generally, the moment when a boundary is reached seems hard to stretch because reaching a boundary seems to be an instant rather than a process. If we try to
use a manner of motion verb to express boundary-reaching/moment-of-change,
we can see that the situation type referred to is actually that of non-boundarycrossing/no-change type (still directional, not locational): I was running to your
door when my phone rang (the pattern in (2c) in Table 1). Therefore, the boundary-reaching/moment-of-change situation type does not figure in our situation type
templates, but we acknowledge the possibility of this spatio-temporal combination
in the context of arriving/leaving, which is related to, but not a part of, strictly
speaking, the main network of situation types in motion events.
Boundary-reaching/change-occurred situation type (cf. (2d) in Table 1) expressions are generally not analyzed in detail in the literature because they do not
seem to cause problems in crosslinguistic comparisons. The systemic restrictions
(e.g. the impossibility of using manner verbs in verb-framed languages) seem to
apply only when boundary-crossing needs to be expressed, not when the boundary is reached or non-existent on the Figures path (cf. chapter 2.). However, we
included boundary-reaching in our table in order to illustrate the whole spatiotemporal network that underlies the situation types, and we discuss it when we
analyze the means of lexicalizing the situation types in English and Serbo-Croatian
respectively. Certain English examples of boundary-reaching deserve (and do get)
some more attention in chapter 5 because of their potentially problematic interpretation. In Serbo-Croatian, boundary-reaching situations have straightforward
lexicalization due to the transparent morphological marking, which we will explain in detail. They do not serve the purpose of highlighting our central claims
regarding the contrast between the two languages in focus at present, but they are
analyzed in chapter 6 when we explain non-deictic uses of prefixed OD-/DOverbs, which in that case convey the meaning of boundary-reaching.
We cannot commit ourselves to the claim that the situation types we propose
pertain to universality, i.e. that they would be absolutely applicable in analysis of

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

all the worlds languages. We had to abstract certain components of events, within
both the spatial and the temporal frame, in order to allow adequate comparison of
the two languages we have focused on at present, and we selected the features that
we found to be helpful in revealing numerous relevant aspects of domain lexicalization that are comparable across languages. When we looked at the data from
different languages and some previous research, we concluded that many languages seem to have the means to draw the distinctions we propose, which we will illustrate by examples from Albanian and Mandarin Chinese in this section. Our
analysis based on situation types may prove to be, if not universally, then at least
widely applicable in language contrasting.
Our spatio-temporal features are physically and perceptually salient. We can
assume their universality based on shared human experience and perceptual capabilities when it comes to understanding notions such as presence or absence of
change in space and time. Nevertheless, it does not mean that what is universally
perceivable will be also universally expressed. Languages may make more numerous and subtler distinctions within the spatio-temporal framework than the ones
we propose, or may not draw these distinctions explicitly on every occasion at the
level of analysis we assume here (sentence level). We also noticed that sometimes
one event can be referred to differently, whereby different spatio-temporal features
are selected in verbalization, but those references will still represent what in reality
is one and the same event that is only witnessed or described at different points
during its occurrence. Thus, the spatial and temporal features we singled out are
features of events (or parts of events) selected in verbalization, and we shall see
how speakers of different languages place motion events within the spatio-temporal framework based on the means their languages provide them with. We will
show that there are situations in which an English speaker is not obliged to draw
distinctions in the kind of structurally explicit way that a Serbo-Croatian speaker
has to do. We do not analyze personal factors involved in production and processing of patterns by individuals, because we consider it a different, although related,
field of research, which would involve more elements related to intraspeaker characterization, and thus be more of a psycholinguistic character, which is beyond the
scope of the present analysis. We recognize that our analysis is more geared towards interpretation mechanisms and guidelines, especially for non-native speakers. It brings benefits to first and second language acquisition, foreign language
teaching and translation in particular.1
When choosing our approach and methodology, we considered doing our data
analysis based on the source-path-goal schema. We acknowledge this possibility
1. For example, see Naigles et al.(1992) for data on early acquisition in children where these
differences in lexicalization patterns are detected.

Talking about Motion

here, even though we do not employ it. This schema could be useful to us. The way
of interpreting the meaning of grammatical functions in terms of image schemas is
explicitly acknowledged by Langacker ((1987), (1991a)). Image schemas, in the
sense of Lakoff (1987) and Johnson (1987), are fundamental conceptual notions,
dynamic patterns that function somewhat like the abstract structure of an image,
and thereby connect up a vast range of different experiences that manifest the same
recurrent structure (Johnson (1987: 2)). This last characteristic (connecting up a
vast range of experiences) makes image schemas particularly suitable for generalizations across different types of linguistic phenomena (Serra-Borneto 1997: 195).
This schema is very general and while it may be helpful in the analysis of some
motion expressions, it may be less helpful in analysing some others like He ran
across the field all afternoon. Here we do not know either of the defining points
and we cannot say much about this event except perhaps that source and goal are
gapped and the Path component is present. We acknowledge the justification for
using this schema in certain analyses, but in our study, we need to talk about features that are perceptual (i.e. boundary-crossing/change-occurred, non-boundarycrossing/no-change, etc.), rather than conceptual (schematic). If analyzed according to our situation types, He ran across the field for 10 minutes is an expression
of non-boundary-crossing/no-change type. We provide more finely grained information (spatial and temporal) about events as described if we use the spatio-temporal features that form the situation type network.
We will now illustrate some differences in the means employed by different
languages in expressing the relevant spatial and temporal features. We will also
look into whether these languages just use different means to express the same
meanings, or they prompt speakers to convey some meanings more often than
others, habitually omitting or including certain pieces of information depending
on lexical availability and the difficulty or ease with which they are inserted in the
structure of a lexicalization pattern. Our aim is to reveal the extent to which languages draw the distinctions we deemed relevant, and how one can know which
real-life situation an expression refers to, especially in situations where one of the
two interlocutors is not a native speaker of a particular language in which the communication is being carried out. This may sound like a difficult exercise to perform, but as we will see, there are mechanisms in languages that operate on the
basis of a reliable set of rules, and when we uncover them, we can make predictions about the means that are going to be used in different languages when different situations are described.
When it comes to expressing our situation types, it is important to point out
that all languages provide the option to use manner verbs+directional particles
when expressing boundary-reaching or non-boundary-crossing. Therefore, all the
postulates and restrictions within Talmys typology refer to expressions of

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

boundary-crossing situations in languages. When boundary-crossing is described,


we saw that in Spanish, for example, directional verbs have to be used and most
information about manner is omitted altogether (a claim that was extended to all
Romance languages), whereas English accounts of motion events provide a detailed description of the Manner component in the verb, Path being expressed in
prepositions or adverbs. Serbo-Croatian seems to have patterns in common with
both Spanish and English, while Albanian, for example, behaves similarly to the
Romance languages. As we pointed out, the temporal features we selected depend
on whether the situation referred to is boundary-crossing or not, and thus for a
start, we will focus on the ways in which languages differ on the basis of the way
they render the following spatio-temporal details related to motion events:
a. boundary-crossing, when the change of location has occurred (He ran into
the building)
b. boundary-crossing, at the moment of the change of location (He was running
into the building when I saw him)
c. non-boundary-crossing, when change of location has not yet been completed
(e.g. He ran across the field for ten minutes).2
English and Serbo-Croatian seem to be similar in the way they lexicalize the situation types in (a) (to an extent) and (c), but not in (b). For example:

(3) a. A man limped out of the garden.

b. A man was limping out of the garden when I saw him.


c. A man limped/was limping in the garden.

Serbo-Croatian:
(4) a. ovek je
iepao
iz
bate.
Man be-COP out-limp-PST-PFV-3SG-M out of garden
The man limped out of the garden.
b.



ovek je
izlazio
iz
bate epajui
Man be-COP exit-PST-IPFV-3SG-M out of garden limping
(kada sam
ga ugledao.)
(when be-COP him spot-PST-PFV-3SG-M)
The man was exiting the garden limping.

2. Boundary-reaching/change-occurred can be lexicalized without any restrictions in languages, just like non-boundary-crossing situation types. Thus, both verb-framed and satellite-framed languages have the freedom to express manner in the verb. However, the tendency of speakers of verb-framed languages to habitually omit information on manner detail in general
(regardless of the possibility to express it on certain occasions like boundary-reaching and nonboundary-crossing) is still conspicuous (e.g. Slobin (2004)).

Talking about Motion

c. ovek je
epao
u bati
Man be-COP limp-PST-IPFV-3SG-M in garden
The man was limping in the garden.

The reasons for these differences are discussed and further illustrated in chapter 6
where Serbo-Croatian data are presented in detail. Suffice it to say at the moment
that morphosyntactic restrictions prevent a manner verb from being used in situation types as in b), and thus a directional verb is used (*iepavao, the prefixed
imperfective form that would have been adequate in Serbo-Croatian is not licensed3). Furthermore, situation types like the ones expressed in (a) sometimes
cannot be lexicalized with a manner verb in an expression because an adequately
prefixed manner verb does not exist or it is simply not used because there is another morphologically simpler option, that of using a directional verb:
(4) d. ovek je
uao
u dnevnu sobu ljuljajui se
Man be-COP enter-PST-PFV-3SG-M into living room swaying REFL
The man entered the living room swaying.

It is also possible to use a deictically prefixed manner verb if the required manner
verb cannot be prefixed otherwise (i.e. with a prefix expressing the precise direction of motion), thus providing an additional piece of information, nomally absent
in translations into languages that do not have equally strong deictic lexicalization
(cf. Filipovi (1999)). The use of deictically prefixed manner verbs in SerboCroatian is discussed at length (chapter 6):
(4) e.



ovek se
doljuljao
Man be-COP to-the-speaker/scene-sway-PST-PFV-3SG-M
u dnevnu sobu.
into living room
The man swayed into the living room.

These examples give an idea of the contrast between English and Serbo-Croatian
in the process of lexicalization of the relevant situation types. They illustrate why
all situation types have to be considered when contrasting the means to lexicalize
them across languages. In this way, we can establish more correctly both how similar and how different languages are.
We will now contrast further the expressions of the types (3a) to (3c) in different languages and illustrate how the analysis based on situation types provides a
better picture of lexicalization patterns within a language and across languages. A
quick glance would tell that Serbo-Croatian speakers use unprefixed manner verbs
for no-change and, with constraints, prefixed manner verbs for the change-occurred
3.

Non-existent in either dictionary or corpus data.

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

phase, and directional verbs to express the moment-of-change phase, whereas Albanian uses manner verbs for no-change and directional for moment-of-change
and change-occurred. This in effect involves certain restrictions imposed on speakers by the linguistic system they use and obliges them to typically provide certain
pieces of information in the verb and others out of the verb, the latter causing
some pieces of information to be omitted altogether.
Serbo-Croatian:
(5) a. Upuzio
je
u sklonite.
Into-crawl-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP into shelter-ACC.
He crawled into the shelter.
b.



Ulazio
je
u sklonite puzei.
Enter-crawl-PST-IPFV-3SG-M be-COP into shelter crawling.
(kada sam
ga ugledao.)
(when be-COP him spot-PST-PFV-3SG-M.)
He was entering the shelter crawling when I saw him.

c. Puzio
je
u sklonitu.
Crawl-PST-IPFV-3SG-M be-COP into shelter-LOC
He was crawling/crawled in the shelter.

Albanian:
(6) a. Ai hyri
n park duke vrapuar.
He enter-PST-PFV-3SG in park running.
He entered the park running.
b. Ai po hynte
duke vrapuar n park kur
e pashe.
He enter-PST-IPFV-3SG running
in park when him I saw
He was running into the park when I saw him.
c. Ai po vraponte/vrapoi
n park.
He run-PST-IPFV/run-PST-PFV-3SG in park.
He was running/ran in the park.

A directional verb is necessary in the expressions of situation types that refer to


moment-of-change in Serbo-Croatian (and Romance languages as well). Albanian
seems to follow a pattern comparable to that of Romance languages. The reason
for this preference for directional verbs can be accounted for if we consider the
impossibility of rendering the distinction between boundary-crossing vs. nonboundary-crossing in Albanian (and Romance languages), which is achieved in
English by using directional vs. locational particles. The preposition n(in) is
always locational in Albanian, and therefore, the change of location and crossing

Talking about Motion

of a boundary must be expressed in the verb. In Serbo-Croatian, the preposition


u could mean either in or into and the case marking on the object of the preposition signals that distinction (like in German, cf. examples in section 3.3.).
Mandarin Chinese also deserves a mention here, and it is extremely relevant
in the discussion on the verb-framed vs. satellite-framed distinction drawn within
the typology. In Mandarin Chinese, expressions of motion events are given in the
form of a serial verb, which includes both Manner and Path (Packard (2000: 253)),
something tentatively and loosely comparable to Slavic prefixed manner verbs in
the sense that serial verbs could be seen as elements expressing the same kind of
content as Serbo-Croatian prefixed manner verbs (i.e. Path + Manner): 4
(7) a. Xushng zu-jn le
tshgu n.
Student walk-enter-ASP library.
The student walked into the library.

Obviously, Mandarin Chinese can combine Path and Manner components freely
and in this respect resembles the English pattern. These V-V compounds are
known as resultative verb compounds (cf. Chang (1998: 77)). The important
point to make is that it is neither a verb- nor satellite-framed language; rather it
seems to be both at the same time.
However, if we apply our situation type analysis and see how the situation
types are expressed and distinguished in Mandarin Chinese, we can learn more
about the process of lexicalization patterning in that language. If the change of
location is expressed, we have both Path and Manner lexicalized in the expression.
If the situation type referred to is no-change, we have only a manner verb. If we
tried to explain the difference in the temporal features of events expressed on the
basis of what have been termed aspectual operators, like the particle le for example, we run into difficulty, because expressions for both change-occurred and nochange phase in Chinese can contain this particle (which indicates that the event
is referred to as complete).5 If we recall the traditional distinction within the category of aspect, whereby perfective is defined as complete, and imperfective as incomplete (Comrie (1976: 18)), we would not be able to apply it to Mandarin Chinese. The reason lies in the fact that the distinctions in Chinese are not made on
the basis of the presence or absence of the operator le as is done in, for example,
Slavic languages with perfective (prefixed) and imperfective (unprefixed) verbs.
4. Verb serialization has been treated as a syntactic phenomenon with consequences for morphology and semantics. The subject is followed by two (or more) predicates, and it functions as
such for both predicates (for further discussion see Svorou (1994)).
5. This is the reason why we dispensed with the aspectual notion of complete vs. incomplete
event. Evidently, both change-occurred and no-change situations types can be marked by the
particle le, which indicates completeness.

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

The situation types we propose seem to be better for the analysis of patterns in
Mandarin Chinese. What distinguishes change-occurred from no-change expressions in Mandarin Chinese is the presence or absence of Path expressions. Take
the following example (Egerod (1994: 293)), which is an expression of non-boundary-crossing/no-change situation type:
(7) b. T p o le snsh fn
zhng. 6
He run ASP thirty minute clock.
He ran for thirty minutes.

The event in (7b) can be described as complete in Mandarin Chinese. The equivalent
of this sentence in a Slavic language would have the verb in the imperfective form,
and thus the aspectual distinction complete/incomplete applied as an equivalent of
perfective/imperfective differentiation does not apply universally when it comes to
distinguishing what completeness is and how it is expressed crosslinguistically.
For the moment-of-change in Mandarin Chinese, another specific construction is used:
(7) c. W kn t de sh hu, t zhng p ojn
gngyun
I
see he time when he PROG run-enter park
He was running into the park when I saw him.

When the change has occurred, the following construction is needed (also cf. (7a)):
(7) d. T p ojn le
gngyun.
He run-enter-ASP park.
He ran into the park.

Therefore, it is possible to express Manner in all situation types, just like in English.We can notice one important distinction: in Mandarin Chinese, the distinction between the situation whereby the moving Figure crossed the boundary (examples (7a) and (7d)), and the situation where no boundary was crossed and the
Figure was moving at a location (7b) is marked by the presence (as in (7a) and
(7d)) or absence (7b) of a Path element. This can be compared to the presence or
absence of directional prefixes in Serbo-Croatian, the advantage being that we do
not need to evoke or use tradiational aspectual notions such as complete vs. incomplete to make this comparison. On the other hand, Mandarin Chinese and
Serbo-Croatian differ in the way they lexicalize moment-of-change, because only
Path is lexicalized in the verb in Serbo-Croatian on such occasions. In Mandarin
Chinese, Albanian and the Romance languages expressions of boundary-crossing
6. Le signals the point in time when something occurred or was accomplished, while zhng
in (7c) indicates that the action is a process.

Talking about Motion

and non-boundary-crossing are clearly signaled via verb choices. In contrast, verb
choices and their combinations with Path particles in English do not always make
this distinction clear because of their potential to be used in more than one situation type. In this way, we can detect the common points that Serbo-Croatian, English, Albanian and Mandarin Chinese share, as well as those on which they differ.
We have now illustrated some advantages of the comprehensive insight into
lexicalization of motion events that our analysis has to offer. The distinction between directional/locational is proportional to an extent to our boundary-crossing/non-boundary-crossing. Still, we consider our distinctions more finely grained
(for non-boundary crossing situation types can encompass both directional and
locational meaning of particles, as in He ran towards the park vs. He ran in the
park). We will further demonstrate that the kind of analysis we propose provides
a better understanding of the lexicalization process and enhances the predictive
power of the hypothesis put forward here that a system must be considered as a
whole when analyzing the means of expression of a particular experiential domain. It can also explain variation in expressions in different languages and trace
its roots at different levels where meaning is conveyed (focusing on habitual use
and meaning of prefixes, tenses, verbs and constructions, as well as narrative practices; cf. chapter 5).
There is one remaining catch regarding motion events and their expressions.
The problem arises if a preposition can have both directional and locational meaning and the object of the preposition can denote either a boundary or location, in
which case both boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing interpretations
are possible (e.g. He drove through the town (in 10 minutes or for 10 minutes?)).
This issue is particularly pronounced in English. How is one to know which event
is being described, and whether the moving Figure changed location or not? The
speaker must have been perceptually aware of whether or not the change of location occurred when he witnessed the event (since the presence or absence of
change in the event itself is not dependent on the speakers choice of expression).
These kinds of expressions in English that could refer to either of the two situation
types seem to cause indecisiveness in interpretation. Why would this happen? If
we claim that we can distinguish situation types perceptually, should we not be
able to have linguistic means to express these relevant distinctions? We have to
emphasize that it is the case of English we are singling out as problematic here, and
this problem does not arise in languages that have a clearly marked category of
verbal aspect (e.g. Slavic), or those that express the distinction via cases (e.g. German; cf. examples section 3.2) or through choice of verbs (e.g. Mandarin Chinese
or Spanish). We try briefly to account for this difficulty in chapter 4, and in more
detail in chapter 5. A problem may arise, as it does in English, due to the possibility
to construe boundaries as locations and vice versa, when the VPs containing cer-

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

tain prepositions could make an expression interpretable as either telic or atelic in


traditional terminology (e.g He ran across the field: locational or directional?).
However, as we indicated and will confirm further in chapter 5, we cannot base all
our claims regarding lexicalization of domains on verbs or VPs, because in English, other strategies are available in order to determine the correct (intended) interpretation of a verbalized event. This potential problem is reduced when we see
that its instantiations are actually most infrequent in the corpus because sentential
context tends to provide resolution. Using attested corpus data makes it possible
for us to establish whether some lexical items and their combinations traditionally
accused of being potentially ambiguous in some contrived instantiations (such as
He ran across the field) are truly problematic in real language use; it also allows
us to assess the degree of difficulty that their occurrence causes in interpretation.
3.2 Events in reality vs. events in language
Event lexicalization is the central domain in our study, and this obliges us to touch
upon some general issues regarding the treatment of events in linguistics and related fields. One of the main disagreements in contemporary linguistics and philosophy is whether certain features on the basis of which events are described and
classified pertain to events themselves or rather to expressions of events. The distinction is important because if events cannot be distinguished other than as described, immense pressure will be placed on linguistic expression and verbalization in general.How can one talk of lexicalization of a motion event if that event
cannot be individuated from a chain of events? Can an event be individuated independently of language? We claim that individuation of events is possible, even if
not always straightforward, and events are available as such for lexicalization,
which is done on the basis of a number of event-defining perceptual features, such
as the ones we outlined for our situation types. Some event features may be problematic themselves, because they can seem to pertain to events as well as their
linguistic expressions, depending on the way one looks at them. This shows how
intricately intertwined experience and language really are. We shall discuss some
proposals on this front. For example, telicity (like boundedness, or goal-directedness) is one candidate for an event-defining feature, and the different views of it by
Higginbotham (2000) and Krifka (1992), which best describe the problem, are
critically presented here in brief.
Higginbotham (2000) defines the telic/atelic dichotomy as a distinction in
event structure, unlike Krifka (1992), who contends that the telic/atelic distinction

Talking about Motion

belongs to descriptions of events rather than to events themselves. Higginbotham


(2000: 69) explains it in the following way:
My eating of a pint of ice cream is an event e= (e1, e2) with the properties stated.
But the events of my eating ice cream (of which there will be many when I eat a
pint of ice cream7) are none of them identical to e; in particular, e1 is only the first
coordinate of e= (e1, e2), and not e itself.

Thus, according to Higginbotham, telicity is a matter of event structure, and telic


events will have both co-ordinates, i.e. the process (e1) and the telos (e2), whereas
atelic events will have just one (the process) co-ordinate. However, if one ate two
apples for lunch, one can say either I ate apples for lunch or I ate two apples for
lunch. The choice of referring to the same event as either telic or atelic still remains. It appears that Krifkas argument, namely that telicity is a matter of description, is actually correct.
Obviously, this line of argument leads us further into discussing how to define
events and subevents, and how to distinguish between simple and complex events.8
We cannot easily judge what constitutes one event solely on the basis of linguistic
description.9 The simple truth, however, is that we do not have direct access to all
of the events we hear and talk about. Our access to most events is mainly via linguistic description. Thus, although the event of eating two apples may be defined as
telic, if described as eating apples (which is still a correct although not an equally
precise description), it will be understood as atelic. Therefore, it is necessary to
provide a definition of telicity that is operational within the context of the linguistic rendering of events. If we want a general rule for all kinds of events in all domains, we will assume that events are linguistically rendered as telic if the quantity
consumed is definite or specified in the direct object (DO) of the linguistic expression, whereas atelic rendering would involve a direct object referring to non-definite or unspecified quantity (even though the quantity in the atelic expression can
be implicitly understood or inferred). In this way, we analyze the information that

7. Note that the reverse is also possible, i.e. when eating ice cream there will be many instances
of eating a number of units of ice cream (e.g. pints/scoops/teaspoons), so an atelic event can
consist of a number of telic instances, which we can put in Higginbothams terms by saying that
(e1,e2) are multiplied.
8. For some recent discussion see Pianesi and Varzi (2000).
9. Causational chain (Croft (1990)) or the uniqueness of time and place (cf. Higginbotham, Pianesi and Varzi (2000)) are some of the possible criteria for event identification.

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

is present in linguistic accounts of events and talk of representation of events as


telic or atelic.10
In other words, it seems that VPs, rather than events, are differentiated as telic
or atelic (cf. Dowty (1979), Verkuyl (1993), (1999), Rothstein (2004)), although
the philosophical argument as to whether events or their expressions are classified
as telic or atelic still continues. The individuation of events only under a particular
description is contended in the literature (e.g. Parsons (1990), and Landman
(2000)), and this would mean that events do not have any inherent atomic structure themselves. One of the reasons to continue this debate is precisely the domain
of motion events, where classification criteria seem to operate differently from
those where quantification is involved.
The notions of change and boundary are crucially important for our network
of spatial and temporal features, which physically pertain to events, not to their
descriptions. Here we argue that motion events are distinguishable precisely because they have spatio-temporal properties that make it possible to distinguish
them. Kamp ((1979), (1980)) views change as a primitive concept, on the basis of
which events that contain change and those that do not is the essential distinction for any theory. The notion of change is crucial for our characterization of situation types as well. It seems that, although one event in the world can be referred
to as both telic and atelic in some domains (e.g. quantification), this does not have
to hold for all of the domains of experience.
The issue that arises immediately is that of events in reality allowing for different construals on the part of the speaker. Namely, in the domain of motion events,
speakers can refer differently to a single event (e.g. a boy running towards and into
a room) by assuming different temporal perspectives (e.g. The boy was running to
the room, The boy was running into the room, The boy ran into the room).11
However, at one point in time a speaker can only choose one temporal perspective,
or decide to gap portions of events. This is precisely the reason why we talk about
situation types here, not event types. In the case of the domain of consumption, it
is up to the speaker to decide on the relevance of information and choose I ate
apples for breakfast over I ate two apples for breakfast, or vice versa, depending
on the occasion (e.g. specifying the quantity might or might not be relevant depending on the context, or the speaker may or may not know the exact quantity).
Eating apples vs. eating two apples could be spatio-temporally one event. A boy
who was running towards and then into a room is a different kind of spatio-temporal
10. Exactly how linguistic representation is related to representation in other systems (e.g. perception or cognition) is a matter of relentless and heated debate, which is beyond the scope of
the present study (but see Gentner and Goldin-Meadow (2003) for some recent discussions).
11. We would like to thank an anonymuous reviewer who promted us to expatiate on this issue.

Talking about Motion

combination, a sequence of temporal phases during which the relation of the Figure
and Grounds changed. He ate apples logically leads to the conclusion that a certain quantity of apples (more than 1) was eaten. The construal choice is not quite
the same in the domain of motion events, or at least, does not seem to have the
same consequences and implications. Running towards the room and running
into the room do not entail each other in either direction. If the speaker states that
he saw a boy running towards the room, we understand (assuming maximum informativeness) that the speaker witnessed non-boundary-crossing/no-change.
The speaker could have decided to gap the information that the boy actually ran
into the room for some reason even though it was witnessed, but even then we
would not be speaking of different construal of events but rather of gapping the
information.12 If the speaker witnesses the whole event (running towards and into
the room), we presume that his construal of the event was boundary-crossing/
change-occurred, even though his choice of expression could be non-boundarycrossing/no-change. That is why we cannot talk of construals of events and event
types (we do not have accesss to speakers minds), but we can make our judgments
about events based on situation types that are expressed instead. The choice of expression can, but need not, tell us everything about the construal of an event in the
mind of the speaker.13
Communicating information regarding change from a previous state of affairs
is the driving force of information exchange. The economy of language encourages
gapping and it frequently occurs in language in general (cf. Talmy (1996)). As a
result, only one temporal perspective (e.g. the most contextually relevant/informative) is typically assumed by the speaker and if the change is known, it is the most
likely one to be reported. Change is the bearer of information focus. Therefore, if
the speaker only states that the boy was running towards the room, the hearer
understands that the speaker probably did not see the boy actually run into the
room. The hearer can then probe for further information, if relevant (e.g. Did the
boy end up in the room?). Similarly, if the speaker just stated that the boy had run
into the room even though he witnessed both running towards and into the room,
he must have thought that the information about running before entering the
room is irrelevant. The hearer, again if relevant to him/her, can ask further whether the boy was running previously, i.e. before he entered the room. Consequently,
12. For example, if contextually irrelevant. Imagine that the hearer already knows that the boy
ran into the room but wanted to know if he had been running before entering the room.
13. By the same token, the fact that Spanish speakers habitually gap information on the manner
of motion because of their lexicalization pattern restrictions does not necessarily mean that they
do not construe Manner as a part of a motion event. Current research testing language effects on
memory of motion events is trying to tap into the interplay between construals in memory and
verbalization of motion events (Filipovi (in progress)).

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

basing our analysis on situation types makes it possible to talk of the (parts of)
events as expressed, or in other words, the linguistically/perceptually/contextually
(and perhaps conceptually) relevant (or defining) spatio-temporal features of
events. We therefore underline that we are dealing with the expression of spatiotemporal features of events in language (verbalized events) rather than event construals in speakers minds.
Is language the perfect means to express experiences? Perhaps not, but it is the
most sophisticated system of communicating experience available in any species.
There are situations where no words can describe what one is experiencing, but
such occasions are not common, everyday ones. There are people who apparently
think and process information in terms of images, but those are not typical cases
either. Language is not to be understood as the perfect system that would map
perfectly onto all domains of experience, but should be thought of in terms of
close, yet non-absolute, correspondence with reality. Verbalized experience of
events need not equal cognitive experience of events, but many aspects of the two
do correspond and overlap, with the remaining parts within each domain (the
cognitive and the linguistic) that stay unavailable for the other. In line with Levinsons position, we may argue that languages are good to think with. Linguistic representations cannot be identical to the ones in which we do our central thinking,
but nevertheless they have to be in some respects similar, since the languages of
thought must, directly or indirectly, support linguistic distinctions (Levinson
(2003a: 292)). Our knowledge of events in the world is to a large extent gained via
verbalization (with the exception of our own non-verbal experiences), and this
study will show that verbalized events are indeed the closest one can get to a perfect source of information. Language leaves a choice to speakers, and speakers can
choose to express (or conceal) certain aspects of events when they do not matter
for the relevance of the message in a certain context. Perhaps the fact that somebody ate 3 or 4 apples for breakfast is less important in a certain situation than the
fact that the same person ate apples and not pears for breakfast. In the case of motion events, the choice is of a different nature. The differences based on whether
boundaries are crossed or not and whether change has occurred or not pertain to
events themselves. They are the basis for distinguishing our situation types, which
may correspond to whole events or portions of events. They represent what we
know about events via language.
To sum up briefly, events and expression of events are intertwined when it
comes to classification of both. Our proposal is that, in certain domains all events
may be understood as inherently telic (e.g. the domain of consumption, since all
consumable entities are potentially measureable and quantifiable), but that they
can be expressed as either telic or atelic. Thus, it is not the case that events cannot
be distinguished inherently, but rather that individual domains embrace

Talking about Motion

classification differently and there is no reason why a single criterion for event
classification should hold in all cognitive domains. Different perceptual and cognitive factors may operate in different domains. One can say He ate apples entailing He ate a certain quantity of apples, whereas one cannot say He ran towards
the room and mean He ran into the room. Expressions of these differences in motion events are not mutually interchangeable in the way different expressions containing information about quantification are.
Apart from the possibility of referring to the same events with different expressions (eat apples vs. eat two apples), there is also the possibility to refer to two
very different situation types (i.e. boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing)
by using the same verb+particle combinations. We mentioned a potential difficulty for our system that arises in these circumstances in the previous section
(3.1.). It appears that the difference between boundary and location is not drawn
on all occasions in English, as in He ran across the field or He ran through the
house. In our corpus, this kind of bare, underspecified expression is almost nonexistent. Speakers simply do not communicate about motion events in such a way.
In spontaneous communication some kind of further specification is always given
that helps us decide what situation type an expression refers to (discussed in detail
in chapter 5). We can see, based on corpus data, that verb+particle combinations
that can refer to both boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing are inserted
in broader syntactic environments in a sentence so that the interpretation in terms
of situation types becomes available. Our knowledge of the world plays an important role in this process of interpretation. For example, the likelihood of construing a door as a location rather than a boundary in motion expressions is almost
impossible, and it occurs only in special circumstances, for example when space is
construed as extended (cf. chapter 5) or when multiple moving Figures are referred to in the external argument (The soldiers marched through the door for
half an hour.). This occurrence is not attested in the corpus data though, which
leads us to believe that it is imaginable but does not represent a habitual construal.Another principle that can be adopted is to understand a situation type in
relation to its preceding or following context. If a speaker says that he stumbled
across the uneven ground and reached the back door, the uneven ground could
have been experienced as either a boundary or a location. However, the fact that
the speaker ended at a different location (reached the back door) indicates that
the location has been changed; the boundary has been overcome (because he
reached the back door after he crossed the uneven ground) according to the linguistic information we have. The speaker is free to think of the uneven ground as
either boundary or location, but in his linguistic construal it is understood as a
boundary and therefore we treat these kinds of expressions as boundary-crossing/
change-occurred. Speakers normally elaborate if they want to focus on the process

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

side of such a motion event, as in the following sentence: I struggled with my


thoughts as I stumbled over the uneven ground. Thus, even though on some occasions there is no way of knowing with certainty whether speakers thought of certain spatial configurations in terms of boundaries or locations, linguistically we
have the tools to achieve the most likely interpretation, the one we believe reflects
speakers intentions. And if we need to translate these expressions into a language
that formalizes these distinctions, we need to know where to look for clues. The
analysis in terms of situation types is the tool we propose for this purpose.
It appears that the only source of information we can access with certainty is
linguistic behaviour, and the fact that speakers of different languages, because of
different constraints and patterning, focus on different aspects of events when expressing them, does not have to mean that they conceptualize them in ways so
different that this would impede understanding and communication. Whether we
choose to say that in English, some features are specified covertly on some occasions, instead of saying that they are not specified at all and that such expressions
are underdetermined, amounts to the same thing for language users, especially
learners of English as a foreign language, teachers and translators. What we show
is that such complete indeterminacy does not prevail in communication. And in
cases where no clues were offered on the level we studied here (sentence level), we
can turn to frequency of use of particular verb+particle combinations. This may
give us an indication of how often particular combinations are used in their location vs. their directional sense and what kind of specification is offered in attested
conversational situations. Conventional scenarios may provide some clues as well.
For example, in interpreting Five Norwegians skied over the beautiful white snow
as non-boundary-crossing/no-change, we choose to evoke a more likely scenario
whereby a speaker would be referring to the location where the activity of the Figures occurred rather than giving information that the Figures crossed the boundary, because skiing is an activity less likely to be described in the context of boundaries (cf. chapter 5).
Speakers can also be influenced when they describe events they witnessed by
the ways questions are formulated (cf. Slobin (2000b)), whereby the use of a suggestive lexical item or an unexpected (atypical, and therefore surprising) structure
can have certain effects on the accounts of events they give. The differences in accounts of a single event may be due to individual psychological factors, as well as
suggestive questioning. But do individual languages influence which aspects of
events witnesses would focus on in their accounts? Speakers might not lexicalize
some event details if there is no structural requirement to provide them (e.g. morphosyntactic or constructional restrictions). On the other hand, the hearer might
be expecting to have some distinctions clearly expressed because his/her language
requires an explicit differentiation to be made. Patterns in languages are being

Talking about Motion

established and strengthened through habitual use. Therefore, it is not impossible


to expect that different pieces of information would have salient presence in or
absence from accounts of the same events in different languages.
3.3 Contra aspect?
When proposing an analysis based on the interface of spatial and temporal features
of expressions, it is important to explain why we came up with a new proposal to
resolve a number of issues that previous studies have tried to deal with in various
ways. For example, we prefer to talk about temporal phases of events rather than
aspect, the latter frequently being viewed as the inner temporal structure of events
(or their expressions, depending on the understanding of aspect, which varies with
different authors). It is essential to point out the reasons why the notion of aspect is
not introduced when temporality of events is discussed, which is almost always
done in studies of events, and to assess proposals of some recent studies (e.g.
Verkuyl (1999)). We tackle issues traditionally analyzed under the umbrella of aspectual studies, but those studies have been a mix of quite a few different concepts,
often more confusing than explanatory. As Thelin (1990: 56) points out:
Although empirical evidence for distinguishing between the aspectual meanings of
temporal perspective, on the one hand, and the meaning of certain classes of verbs or
corresponding types of situations (), on the other, was available a long time ago,
aspectology has until this day suffered seriously from the lasting confusion of these
two, interrelated, but basically distinct phenomena. (original emphasis)

The introduction of an all-encompassing term like aspectuality (e.g. Verkuyl


(1999)) did not contribute to the understanding of these types of phenomena
crosslinguistically and in our opinion it has just created more confusion. We will
start with a brief analysis of some relevant studies in the field and explain why
none of them is adequate to explain the issues relevant at present.
If we can be reminded of a traditional definition of aspect just for a moment,
we can say that it represents different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of an action or state (Comrie (1976: 3)). Since a verb stem describes an
action or state, aspect is highly relevant for verbs. Subject agreement is somehow
less relevant to the verb, since it refers to an argument of the verb, and not to the
action or state described by the verb itself. However, there are languages that do not
necessarily mark aspect on the verb, either inflectionally or derivationally, and this
insistence on the universality of the category has obscured the more relevant point,
which is that the meanings that usually go under the category of aspect are actually
based on important perceptual information that is lexicalized, such as whether a

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

speaker describing an event (s)he had witnessed is referring to a phase of the action
where some kind of change had already occurred, or was occurring, or when no
change was registered. These are the relevant distinctions one should take as a starting point and then see how languages deal with those distinctions, regardless of
whether they do or do not have a specific category to mark them.
Vendlers (1957) four classes of situations (states, activities, accomplishments
and achievements), which are actually seen as aspectual classes of verbs by Dowty (1979: 52), have been the basis for aspectual research for many years.14 Accomplishments (draw a circle) and achievements (recognize, reach) differ from activities (push a cart, swim) exclusively in the presence and absence, respectively, of the
feature goal-oriented, or in other words the presence or absence of a natural (inherent) terminus. The difference between accomplishments and achievements appears to be a question of whether goal-oriented (or inherently terminus-bound)
actions/events are understood as simply goal-oriented (other terms used are: terminative/telic/bounded), having conclusivity or instantaneity in addition (cf. Thelin (1990)). Many studies dealt with these distinctions, the criteria for them and
exceptions to some general rules, which led to a further clarification of these notions (cf. Rothstein (2004)).15 The non-terminative (atelic/non-bounded) meaning
of activities (e.g. swim) is canceled by complements introducing goal-orientation
or the intentional spatial delimitation of these activities (e.g. swim to the other
beach, swim a mile, etc.; Thelin (1990: 7)). Thelin notes further that the examples
of the above classes are usually adduced in English simple forms, which in no way
represent aspectual zero as would often be assumed. He argues for (ibid.) the
obvious polysemic aspectual nature of simple forms (original emphasis).
We would rather say that, in English, simple forms of verbs themselves are not
marked for aspect, and certain relevant distinctions which are aspectual in nature
can be made at levels above the verb form level, e.g. verb phrase or sentence level.
In some cases, as we show in the next chapter, some lexical features of verbs can be
decisive for understanding what kind of a situation an expression refers to, but this
is not very common in the English verbal system. The greatest (and very common)
problem in aspectual studies is the definition of terms. This does sound strange,
but considering that the relationship between events and their expression is rather
complex, it need not be surprising. Vendler proposed his four aspectual categories
14. An insightful comment by Verkuyl (1999: 38), who sees Dowtys interpretation of Vendlers
classification as the main source of trouble.
15. For example, the distinction between the notions of (a)telicity and (un)boundedness is
drawn with clarity in Depraetere (1995). The same account also offers an overview of other
studies dealing with these notions. I hereby thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this
source.

Talking about Motion

based on their applicability to event classification and understanding of verb capacity to be used when expressing certain event types. Dowty used the four Vendlerian categories to classify verb phrases, and on many occasions other authors opt
for either Vendlers or Dowtys approach, or both, thus making it harder to understand whether event distinction is independent of its linguistic expression or not.
A similar thing happens to telicity, as we saw in section 3.2. It is enough to leaf
through the volume edited by Erteschik-Shir and Rapoport (2005), entitled The
Syntax of Aspect, in order to get an idea of the number of different definitions associated with aspect. For example, Doron (2005: 154173) talks of aspect as an
internal structure, either temporal or thematic, imposed by verbs on eventualities. Harley (2005: 4264) discusses Aktionsart as pertaining to verbs, and Smith
(2005:190210), more traditionally, and consistently with her earlier work, distinguishes two components of an aspectual system: viewpoint (perfective, imperfective, neutral) and situation types (states and events of different kinds). Different researchers have different associations and thoughts about what constitutes
aspect and how it relates to event structure outside linguistic expression (if they
acknowledge and mention event structure outside linguistic expression to start
with!). Rothstein (2004), for example, says that events are countable entities which
are individuable, relative to a particular description (ibid.: 4). Furthermore, verbs
denote sets of events and are classified into lexical classes depending on the properties of events in their denotations relative to that particular description (ibid.).
Then again, states, events, achievements and accomplishments are properties of
verbs, and the telic/atelic distinction belongs to the VPs domain for Rothstein
(2004: 33). Later on, and notably in the conclusion, she defines accomplishments
and achievements in terms of events of change (ibid.: 196). Her claim is that the
theory of lexical aspect she presents doesnt only constrain which events are individuated, but also constrains how predicates can shift from one class to another
(ibid.). Thus one can conclude that, assuming this theory of lexical aspect is correct and that it really constrains the individuation of events, the event continuum
will be carved as lexical aspect dictates and not based on language-independent
criteria, such as causational chain for example (see Higginbotham, Pianesi and
Varzi (2005) for thorough discussions). Event individuation would be heavily language-specific then, which we believe is not the case.
What is to be done with languages that do not have lexical or grammatical
aspect? The decoupling of events and their expression is not an easy task, but surely it is not viable to talk about some kind of verb-onto-event type match. There
is more to both events and their expression than a simple one-to-one relationship.
And moreover, as we discussed in 3.2, perhaps not all experiential domains should
be subjected to the same type of analysis. A clearer distinction is offered in Hale
and Keyser (2005), who argue that aspect is orthogonal to argument structure,

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

the latter being autonomous, i.e. a separate and distinct component of grammar.
For example, stativity for them is not a feature of lexical heads but rather a property of construction and arises in the semantic composition of meaningful elements (ibid.: 38). Much depends on the definition of terms. They define argument
structure as the system of structural relations holding between lexical heads (nuclei) and their arguments within the syntactic structures projected by nuclear
items (ibid.). They add, however, that any argument structure configurations associated with an actual predicate in sentential syntax will be interpreted in terms
of one or another aspectual type (achievement, accomplishment, etc.) (ibid.).
Thus, even though the argument structure may be independent, it is still interpreted in terms of constructional aspectuality.
A crosslinguistic perspective can provide some crucial insights on this topic,
and thus a neutral set of tools, which comes in the form of our spatio-temporal network, proves its pivotal role. We are not limited by notions of lexical or any other
kind of aspect or aspectuality, simply because languages differ importantly along
this line. Rather, we choose to start from potential universal and perceptual, physical distinctions in the domain of motion events, a choice that proved to be fruitful.
Since the telic/atelic distinction is not enough to encompass all the subtle distinctions in event types we are discussing, we are not using it. We preserve the
perfective/imperfective distinction only as a morphological distinction marked on
verbs in Slavic languages, without any generalizations related to the notion of aspect as it is sometimes used for describing related phenomena in languages that do
not have it as a distinct morphological category. Thus we are free to talk of verb
forms in various languages with different morphological structures without committing ourselves to imposing categories from one language onto another or generalizing certain notions to the point where we can even say that, for example, an
aspectual distinction is expressed via cases of the object of prepositions. German
is the case in point here, as illustrated in the examples from Serra-Borneto (1997:
189), where (8a) has locational meaning (the plane remaining above the town,
inside its airspace), and (8b) directional (the plane crossing the airspace above the
town), which can be viewed as difference in aspectuality:
(8) a. Das Flugzeug flog ber der Stadt.
The airplane flew over the-DAT town
b. Das Fleugzeug flog ber die Stadt.
The airplane flew over the-ACC town.

We will explain now why we dismiss the notion of aspectuality. Verkuyl (1999)
insists on a compositional approach to aspect, for both Germanic and Slavic languages. His approach thrives on the idea that the so-called Slavic aspect is neither

Talking about Motion

exclusively a matter of verbal morphology, nor a matter of Slavic languages only. It


turns out, according to him, for instance, that the presence of quantificational information (as in Mary walked a mile) is one of the ways to obtain what he calls
terminativity in English, among other languages.16 A second way is to let a verb
like begin operate as a tool for slicing out a part of the Path function, which results in terminativity, but on the reverse side (i.e. the beginning of the action; e.g.
Mary began to walk) (Verkuyl (1999: 85)). Verkuyl tries to go further and erase
the differences in the treatment of aspectuality between the Slavicists and the rest.
His aim is to show that a compositional approach that yields aspectual classes on
the basis of linguistic encoding should be preferred. The second goal he announced
was to show that a perfective prefix in Slavic languages has a VP or even S level in
its domain rather than a V. According to this view, aspectuality is generally a matter of structure (to be applicable to both Slavic and non-Slavic languages).
For example, Verkuyl tries to support his argument by claiming that some elements in the structure of the VP (e.g. a quantified direct object (specQDO)) have
the same effect in English and Slavic languages, and by drawing a parallel between
the Slavic perfective verb+specQ DO, and the English verb in past simple+specQ
DO. This claim is not particularly intriguing since it is easily refutable.17 Lexically,
used as it is, bare, without any accompaniment, the verb walk is considered an
activity (durative, atelic in Verkuyls terms). On this analysis, three miles in (9b)
causes perfective understanding in English, overruling what Verkuyl calls the
original verb meaning (i.e. the meaning that the verb had when not followed by
any other element) (Verkuyl 1999: 100):
(9) a. Mary walked.
b. Mary walked three miles.

But the presence of specQ direct object need not cause perfective interpretation
(and consequently the use of a perfective verb) in Serbo-Croatian. The example
(9b) need not necessarily receive perfective interpretation in this language. We
could easily imagine a context where a translation of this sentence into SerboCroatian could have an imperfective verb (e.g. (9d)) as an equivalent, as well as a
perfective one (9c)), as in:
(9) c. Meri je
prehodala
tri milje.
Mary be-COP over-walk-PST-PFV-3SG-F three miles-ACC
Mary walked three miles.
16. Actually, what Verkuyl seems to be referring to here is obtaining the equivalent of the Slavic
perfective.
17. Related views to Verkuyls appear in Smith (1991) and Tenny (1992).

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

d. Meri je
tri milje
hodala,
Mary be-COP three miles walk-PST-IPFV-3SG-F,
a onda je
poela da tri.
and then be-cop began to run.
Mary walked three miles, and then she started to run.

The expression in (9d) could be used in a context in which Mary covered ten miles,
of which she walked three miles, and ran the rest. However, the clause with the
verb in the imperfective seems to need additional specification, as it cannot stand
on its own. There seems to be a requirement for a larger template with a fixed
meaning, which we could refer to as construction meaning. We will try to define a
contrastive construction, which is used to express two activities the agent was involved in, one after another, conditioning the use of the imperfective form of the
verb and requiring a quantified modifier (spatial, as in three miles, or temporal
for time expression, cf. examples in (11)). In Serbo-Croatian, the difference in the
interpretation between (9c) and (9d) is easily established by looking at the verb
form (perfective vs. imperfective). However, the interpretation and the use of
forms in (9d) in the English translation as it stands could still be either terminative
or non-terminative (and consequently parallel to either perfective or imperfective
use in Serbo-Croatian). Even though the relevant contrast between the two competing interpretations of the VPs in (9d) is morphologically marked only in SerboCroatian, it could be argued that in English it is modified intonationally (with
tonic stress on walk; e.g. Mary WALKED three miles, and the rest she ran). It is
probably easier to postulate this construction meaning in Serbo-Croatian than in
English because it is clearly marked by structural features such as tense and adverbial presence requirement, although positing it in English may just require another level of analysis (conveying meaning via intonation). Frequency and use
could be further criteria to which a candidate for a construction status should be
subjected, so this is an example of a way forward within and across languages in
search for units of meaning of various sizes in domain lexicalization.
Verkuyl tries to prove further that the presence or absence of certain prefixes
reveals dependencies that should be accounted for syntactically rather than morphologically in Slavic languages, which is related to his promise to show that a
perfective prefix has a VP as its domain rather than just a V. He claims that some
processes might affect the verb only, and some others, the whole VP. Russian uses
verbal morphology to distinguish between perfectivity and imperfectivity, and the
presence of a perfective prefix requires a specific interpretation of the internal argument (Verkuyl 1993: 27). Compare the translations of the Russian sentences
Ivan ital (IPFV) stihotvorenija (Ivan has read poems) and Ivan proital (PFV)
stihotvorenija (Ivan has read the poems). We may conclude that in Russian, even

Talking about Motion

though there are no articles, Ivan has read an unspecified quantity of poems if an
unprefixed verb is used, whereas the prefixed verb restricts the quantity of poems.
However, Verkuyl admitted that he faced some serious and insurmountable difficulties in mapping all of the postulates of his theory onto a more general Slavic
platform. Firstly, different Slavic languages have developed different options on a
common aspectual ground (ibid.: 117). What seems to be a more striking problem
is obvious in the following examples (from Verkuyl (1999: 127):
(10) a. Ivan pil
dva piva.
Ivan drink-PST-PFV two beers.
Ivan drank two beers.
b. Ivan pil
pivo.
Ivan drink-PST-IPFV beer.
Ivan drank beer

Neither (10a) nor (10b) are perfective in Russian, so experimenting with the idea
of the compositional approach in Slavic and quantification expressed in the internal argument of the verb does not seem to provide a satisfactory explanation and
the same ground for the Germanic and Slavic aspectuality.18 Obviously, in Slavic
languages internal argument is not crucial for the quality of the VP. It is the verb
that is a decisive factor in Slavic languages, although Verkuyl would not concede
that point so easily. (He chose to remain indeterminate on this matter; ibid.: 150).
A different view on aspectual matters comes from Janda (2004), who proposes that Slavic aspect should be understood in terms of Lakoff s ICM (i.e. Idealized Cognitive Model) of matter, whereby SITUATIONS ARE MATERIAL ENTITIES,
and more specifically PERFECTIVE IS A DISCRETE SOLID OBJECT and IMPERFECTIVE
IS A LIQUID SUBSTANCE (ibid.: 471). This view is intriguing, especially because it
apparently overcomes the hurdles that a featural characterization of aspect cannot.
However, the cognitive reality of this view must be tested. Do speakers of Slavic
languages really conceive of aspectual meanings as solid vs. liquid, and more importantly how and why are those affinities with embodied knowledge triggered?
In other words, are the ICMs really the key to the conceptualization of aspectual
distinctions in terms of substances? This is not so important to us at present, at
least not for our central argument regarding aspect. One other issue that Janda
discusses and aptly explains is that the ICM is more specific than the count/mass
distinction and presents a rich domain of oppositions, only a subset of which can
be motivated by count vs. mass alone (ibid.: 486). This should interest us because
most of the previous studies, including the one we critically discuss here in more
detail (Verkuyl (1999)) try to present Slavic aspect as having the count/mass
18. Verkuyls term.

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

distinction as its focus. Janda dispells such a view by showing that such claims
simplify the matter to a great extent and do not reflect the reality of the interplay
among different properties that underlie aspect meaning and use, count vs. mass
being just one of them (Janda 2004:486).
Although perfective verbs are most often used in telic VPs and imperfective in
atelic, perfective atelic and imperfective telic VPs also exist.19 The biggest problem
for Verkuyls account was the imperfective telic VP, which he openly admitted to be
a difficulty in applying his theory onto Slavic data (Verkuyl (1999: 119127)). Since
in time adverbials follow perfective verbs and for time imperfective, and telic
VPs can be either perfective or imperfective, it turns out that telic VPs can be followed by either in time or for time adverbials. Thus, in time/for time is of no use
as a telicity test. Furthermore, imperfective telic VPs in Serbo-Croatian illustrate
that the perfective prefix does not have a VP domain, i.e. that aspectuality does
not spread onto the whole VP. This is illustrated by using the Serbo-Croatian version of Verkuyls (1999: 119) example in Russian (cf. (10)):
(11) a. Ivan je popio
dva piva (za dva sata).
Ivan COP drink-PST-PFV-PTCP-SG-M two beers (in two hours)
Ivan drank two beers in two hours.
b. Ivan je pio
dva piva
dva sata.
Ivan COP drink-PST-IPFV-PTCP-SG-M two beers for two hours
Ivan drank two beers for two hours.

There is a difference in the interpretation between (11a) and (11b). The example
(11a) refers to the situation where the two beers are fully consumed, whereas according to (11b) it is not clear whether they were consumed. The representation of
the events in both cases is telic (they contain a specQ DO). However, it is not the
perfective verb (or a perfective prefix), whose presence requires the specific quantity interpretation, or vice versa the specified quantity expression in the DO
does not require to be governed by the perfective prefix. If the DO was conditioning the use of the perfective, then the imperfective would not be used with the
specified quantity DO. However, the imperfective form is used as in (11b), and
Verkuyls difficulty stems from this. Note that in the case of (11b) above, the meaning expressed is that the speaker does not know or does not want to say if the telos
was reached, but the point is also that the action took longer than normal/natural/
expected. With the perfective verb in (11a) in two hours is optional, whereas with
the imperfective verb in (11b) some additional piece of information, e.g. for two
hours, is required. If the for time adverbial expresses unusually long time for the
19. For example, Thelin (1990) cites Russian pospat meaning sleep a little (otspavati in Serbo-Croatian).

Talking about Motion

consumption of this quantity to take place, the meaning of the whole expression in
(11b) becomes more than the sum of the meanings of its constituent parts, indicating that we are faced with construction meaning. If the adverbial does not express
unusually long duration, we seem to have a different construction meaning, that of
contrasting activities (see example (13) and also (9d)).
The meaning that emerges when an imperfective verb, a quantified DO and a
semantically adequate for time expression are used is that of the action in question took longer than usual/normal/expected to perform, which none of the constructional elements express singularly. Attested examples from Serbo-Croatian
support the definition of the unusual duration construction, which has a form of:

Subj + IPFV + spec Q DO + for time. 20

For example:
(12) Jeo
je dve jabuke dva sata.
Eat-PST-IPFV-PTCP-SG-M COP two apples for two hours
He spent two hours eating two apples.

It is interesting to note that if there is more than one entity being consumed, the
interpretation is that the entities were consumed in sequence. If another in time
adverbial instead, which does not express an extraordinarily long period of time
for this kind of action, the expression would be used in different circumstances:
(13)



Jeo
je dve jabuke dva minuta,
Eat-PST-IPFV-PTCP-SG-M COP two apples two minutes
a onda je poeo da jede kruke.
and then COP began to eat pears.
He ate two apples for two minutes, and then he began to eat pears.

Why is it absolutely necessary that the for time belongs to the construction as in
(12) and is not an ordinary VP modifier, as it is in (13)? This is because if the for
time expression does not express an unusually long time interval, the construction meaning is not there and the consumption of entities (e.g. beers or apples) will
not be understood as consecutive but simultaneous as in (13). The use of the imperfective form in (13) also requires the presence of another element (a clause)
that expresses a contrasting activity of the same subject which follows the activity
expressed by the imperfective verb in the first part of the construction. We argue
that (13) is an example of contrastive construction, comparable to (9d), the only
difference being the measuring out of the event, whereby in (9d) it is done in
spatial terms (three miles), and in (13) in temporal terms (two minutes). There20. This construction works with imperfective verbs in all tenses (present, past and future).

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

fore, our background experiential knowledge regarding the normal length of times
for carrying out a certain action (e.g. drinking a beer or eating an apple) is essential in understanding the meaning and use of the construction. Language-specific
construction patterns and their frequencies of use should be further studied in
order to confirm constructional presence and entrenchment (cf. chapter 7 for further discussion on construction meaning).
One important detail to mention is pragmatic input, because the constructions
we propose might turn out to have culture-specific facets on occasion. What is
considered to be an unusual length of time can vary cross-culturally (e.g. the context of Italian vs. Serbian coffee-drinking habits; cf. Filipovi Kleiner (2006c)).
Thus, Verkuyls problem with certain cases related to Slavic aspectuality
could be resolved by positing construction meaning. There is an emerging and
growing interest in construction meaning within and across languages. For example, argument-structure constructions, aspectual constructions and sentence types
from English, French and German are discussed in Michaelis (2003). She says that
frame and frequency adjuncts in English represent aspectual concord constructions (where the verb projection unifies with the construction), and, similarly,
French morphological constructions that license perfective and imperfective pasttense inflections are seen as aspectual concord constructions as well (ibid.: 190).
There are possible grounds for comparison here with Serbo-Croatian, because adjuncts seem to play a pivotal role in the constructions we put forward.
We discussed the domain of quantity, with special attention being paid to temporal quantity, because that has been the battleground of numerous different ideas
of aspect and aspectuality. When it comes to spatio-temporal quantification of
motion (e.g. run three miles), it is important to understand that quantification
does not automatically trigger perfectivization of the VP, and this is why Verkuyls
aspectuality does not hold. Moreover, we emphasize again that temporal adjuncts such as in an hour/for an hour should not be seen merely as a test for telicity, even though this does seem to work well in some languages, and less well (or
not at all) in some others. Rather, these phrases carry temporal (in the aspectual
sense) information themselves, and are best accommodated as ingredients of construction meaning.
In support for this treatment of in/for time adverbials, we quote Higginbotham (1995: 15), who states that the expressions like The boat floated under the
bridge in an hour are actually a conjunction of three elements, namely: float (the
boat, e1) & under (the bridge, e1, e2) & in an hour (e1, e2). What distinguishes English from French or Korean, for example, is that in English, but not in the latter two
languages, locative prepositions can function as main predicates. It is a lexical distinction since it concerns the vocabularies of the language types (ibid.: 17).

Talking about Motion

Obviously, using a category from one language or group of languages and applying it to others does not work. And there is an additional potential difficulty when it
comes to Slavic aspect in particular, pointed out by Dickey (2000). He divides Slavic
languages into Western (Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian) and Eastern (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian), with Serbo-Croatian as a transitional zone. The criterion is the use
of perfective verbs in the denotation of habitual events in the Western group, and
imperfective verbs in the Eastern (ibid.: 5). We will not dwell on that distinction,
since we decided to account for the system of only one Slavic language, but we have
to emphasize that the category of aspect is not unified within this branch of the Indo-European family and should be handled with care. What is important, however,
is that the kind of argumentation illustrated in the examples from Verkuyl (1993)
and Verkuyl (1999) is not the right tool for comparison and analysis on this occasion. Therefore, the key to understanding lexicalization patterns in the two languages we are focusing on should be sought in another direction.
Our perspective offers a different view. The meaning of verbs, verb forms (simple and progressive), PPs, VPs, external/internal arguments and specific constructions are equally important in the process of event expression, and they operate
with different responsibilites at different levels in different languages, illustrated in
chapter 5 for English and chapter 6 for Serbo-Croatian. In Serbo-Croatian, morphology plays an important role, while in English, the larger syntactic (and even
narrative) context contributes significantly to the overall aspectual meaning.
Nevertheless, it is not just the case of the same meanings being conveyed morphologically in Serbo-Croatian and syntactically in English. We argue that the results
of the differences between the two linguistic systems condition their respective
lexicalization patterns overall and affect the habitual presence or absence of content-relevant information in motion expressions. Neutral terms on the basis of
which we carried out our language contrasts were absolutely indispensable because the terms and concepts evoked in numerous previous studies have been so
overused (and misused, or even abused) that they blurred the distinctions they
were aimed at clarifying.
Summary
Some previously neglected aspects of lexicalization (cf. moment-of-change phase)
are given the importance they deserve in our study of lexicalization patterns. Our
examples from different languages show how differences in lexicalization of motion crosslinguistically become more finely grained than those given in generalized typological sketches. It is clear that the meanings within the category of aspect
are extremely important for the expression of any event, because they are relevant

Chapter 3. The proposed approach and central assumptions

in establishing whether or not a speaker witnessed the phase when the change of
location has occurred. Thus, we wish to dispense with the frequent practice of calling a variety of different phenomena in different languages aspectual. One has to
be reminded again of the view expressed earlier (cf. Hudson (1996)) that it is more
appropriate to think that languages are not just different means for expressing the
same meanings, but to assume that they can express different meanings, maybe
closely related, but not necessarily identical, and then to look for variation. Moreover, if we establish that languages express certain similar meanings, they do not
necessarily do it by using the same means or the same categories. It is not obligatory in every language to make the same distinctions even within the same category, let alone between different categories. It is therefore best to start by looking for
components in lexicalized domains that are most likely to find their expressions in
most, if not all languages (e.g. physical boundary or obstacle, change of location or
spatial configuration, or any kind of change over time). In this way, we can discover shared features among languages as well as language-specific approaches to
lexicalization of universal domains of experience.

chapter 4

The heart of the matter


Main argument

When we submit the data from both English and Serbo-Croatian to our analysis
based on situation types as posited in Table 1, we get as a result two different algorithms for the processing of sentences that are expressions of motion events.1 Although we admit that there are some similarities between the two languages (i.e. both
have manner verbs+directional particles available on a number of occasions when
Romance languages typically do not), based on our overall comparison, we came up
with different instructions for processing motion expressions in the two languages.
It should be emphasized that these algorithms illustrate how to achieve understanding of what is being said in a particular language, and it is especially relevant
for situations when the expressions to be understood are not in ones mother
tongue. The outcome of our research contributes not only to typological studies,
but has consequences for understanding second language acquisition and could
have applications in foreign language teaching and translation. These algorithms
should be seen as step-by-step guidelines for the understanding of systems rather
than production/comprehension processes in languages.2 We already mentioned
that the latter is beyond the scope of our research at present. The algorithms refer
to systemic constraints, as defined in chapter 1. We will contrast examples from
English and Serbo-Croatian in order to look for constraints in both languages and
establish how all levels where meaning is conveyed, namely lexical semantics, syntax and morphology, contribute to the process of rendering the relevant spatio-

1. The word algorithm is used here without any psycholinguistic implications regarding natural language processing. It just refers to the working principles of (morpho)syntax and lexical
semantics in creating complex meaning structures in the two languages respectively and provides instructions about where to look for cues for understanding for non-native speakers.
2. We are grateful to Pieter Seuren and an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that this
should be stated explicitly.

Talking about Motion

temporal features of motion events into different languages. The English examples
of the three central situation types are followed by those in Serbo-Croatian:

(1) a. He crawled into the shelter. (change-occurred)

b. He was crawling into the shelter (when I saw him). (moment-of-change)


c. He was crawling/crawled towards the shelter. (no-change)
(2) a. Upuzio
je
u sklonite.
Into-crawl-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP into shelter-ACC
He crawled into the shelter.
b.



Ulazio
je
u sklonite puzei
Enter-PST-IPFV-3SG-M be-COP into shelter crawling
(kada sam ga ugledao).
(when be-COP him saw).
He was entering the shelter crawling when I saw him.

c. Puzio
je
u sklonitu.
Crawl-PST-IPFV-3SG-M be-COP in shelter-LOC
He was crawling/crawled in the shelter.

The algorithms show similarity in expression a) and c), but not in b). This is due to
the fact that moment-of-change situation types need to be expressed by imperfective verbs.3 An imperfective unprefixed manner verb in (2b) would not convey the
idea of boundary-crossing, as seen in (2d):
(2) d. Puzio
je
u sklonite.
Crawl-PST-IPFV-3SG-M be-COP into shelter-ACC
He was crawling/crawled in the shelter.

Prefixed manner verbs are not licenced in moment-of-change expressions and further imperfectivization is not carried out.4 It has been registered on a very few
verbs (e.g. plivati swim, IPFV; u-plivati, swim into PFV; u-plivav-ati, swim into
IPFV), but then those verbs are principally used in habitual and iterative expressions,

3. The perfective/imperfective distinction in our analysis refers to the morphological marking; perfective manner verbs are normally derived from the imperfective ones by prefixation.
4. Grickat (1966/67: 189) confirms that Macedonian and Bulgarian have almost limitless possibility of furthering imperfectivization. In Bulgarian, though, such verbs are used only iteratively. Czech had a lot of examples of this process as well at one point in its history, but the number
of such verbs was later reduced (ibid.). Cf. Gasparov (1990) for similar observations on the iterative use in Russian.

Chapter 4. The heart of the matter

and seldom for moment of change.5 The same phenomenon is noted in Russian
(cf. Gasparov (1990)). Therefore, in situations like the one in (2b) a directional
verb is used.
The algorithm for English goes as follows:
i. The simple past can be used to express all the phases: no-change, change-occurred and moment-of-change phase. There is a restriction related to the use
of the simple past to express the moment-of-change phase, and it is a syntactic
one, because a time adverbial or a time clause is necessary in order to convey
this meaning (compare: The soldiers marched into the hall change-occurred
vs. The people staggered out of the building while the soldiers marched into
the hall moment-of-change). Past progressive can be used to express moment-of-change and no-change. The simple guidance is to look at the form
first and try to eliminate the unlikely interpretations.
ii. Since we do not eliminate enough possible interpretations by looking only at
what tense is used, we then look at the verbs lexical meaning. For example,
hasten expresses something that run does not. The activity described as running over the hill or across the field for hours is possible, whereas hasten expresses motion that is very unlikely to last that long or to be used to refer to as
many situation types as run does. It is semantically much more narrowly
specified (and defined as a 2nd tier verb, while run is a 1st tier verb; cf. Slobin
(1997a) and also chapter 7):
(3) They hastened into the shelter of rock and wood.
(boundary-crossing/change-occurred)

Similarly, hover has a component of meaning that includes certain duration of an


activity at a certain location (but in contrast to hasten, the duration is long rather
than brief):

(4) The hawk hovered over the hill. (non-boundary-crossing/no-change)

iii. If the verb does not reveal which phase of a motion event is being expressed,
look at the particles (prepositions or adverbs) that follow the verb. For example into, being purely directional, typically expresses change-occurred when
used with simple forms and moment-of-change with progressive forms. The
relevant prepositions to be analyzed here are into, onto, out of (in boundary-crossing); to, from (in boundary-reaching); in, on, and out (in non-

5. e.g. Stalno je uletala kroz isti prozor. (She would always fly intoIPFV through the same
window).

Talking about Motion

boundary-crossing6); across, over, through and under (both in boundarycrossing and non-boundary-crossing). Certain particles, when used without a
following direct object, are traditionally recognized as adverbs (or intransitive
prepositions/prepositions used intransitively), like in, out through, over,
etc. and are used in combinations with verbs to refer always to boundarycrossing/change-occurred situation type (e.g. He ran in, or He ran out, etc.).
iv. If the interpretation is not obvious after looking at the preposition, then look
at one or more of the following elements in the structure: a direct object, a
temporal adverbial, another clause within the same sentence, or another prepositional phrase following the verb+preposition combination that is analyzed
(cf. chapter 5 for a thorough discussion)
The distinctions are illustrated in the following examples, and more examples are
analyzed in chapter 5:

(5) He ran into the room. (boundary-crossing/change-occurred)

(6) a. She ran through the house all day, looking for her passport.
(non-boundary-crossing/no-change)
b. She danced through the house and ended up in the back garden.
(boundary-crossing/change-occurred)

(7) a. We stumbled over the rough ground in the back garden for some time.
(non-boundary-crossing/no-change)

b. The door flung open and Sara stumbled over the threshold.
(boundary-crossing/change-occurred).

We are not implying that English speakers employ this algorithm every time they
speak or write, at least not consciously. Once the system has been acquired, speakers do not tend to perform an analysis of what happens, and why, when certain
expressions are used (unless they happen to be linguists!). On the other hand, nonnative speakers will have to go through the process of learning which expressions
6. There is ongoing research into the reasons why particles that normally have locational meaning can sometimes have directional meaning, as in: Trevor has jumped in the river. Some tend
to think this use is possible because of combinations with certain motion verbs, very limited in
number and type (even then, there is no absolutely decisive argument in favor of this use (cf.
Rooryck (1996), Jarvis and Odlin (2000)). Some authors (Thomas 2002) quote verb meaning as
a potentially important factor (e.g. Are all the combinations with prepositions in the following
examples interpretable as directional: He fell in/into the pool and He ran into/?in the room?).
However, in some cases, it is the verb rather than the particle that signals direction of motion (as
in the verb fall). We still treat them as locational particles as we stated in the description for the
algorithm for English under iii.

Chapter 4. The heart of the matter

should be used in different situations, and the best way to do it is to base the learning process on a language-specific algorithm, and not translation equivalents.
The algorithm for Serbo-Croatian goes as follows:
i. Use a perfective manner (if available) or a perfective directional verb in the
change-occurred situations, imperfective directional verb for moment-ofchange situations and imperfective manner verb for no-change situations.7
ii. Note that all prefixes are to be used in expressions of either boundary-crossing:
U- (in/ into), IZ- (out of ), PRE- (across/ over), PRO- (through/ past),
NA- (onto), POD- (under), or boundary-reaching: OD- (from the speaker/
scene or location), DO- (to the speaker/scene or location), with the exception
of PRO- which can be both locational (indicating that some time has been
spent at a certain location) and directional and be used in expressions of both
boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing.8 Before we concentrate on
concrete examples, it is essential to notice that there is an important and welldefined cline in prefix use (i.e. the number of verbs that combine with individual prefixes), based on frequencies in both dictionary and corpus data: 9
OD-/DOIZ-/UPROPRENA-/POD-

Figure 1. Prefix cline in Serbo-Croatian

The cline should be seen as an implicational scale. If a verb can be prefixed by a


prefix that is lower on the cline, it can also be prefixed by a prefix higher on the
7. In these situations using a manner verb is said to be the typical pattern in Serbo-Croatian
within the discussed typology (cf. chapter 2). However, we will see that on the basis of some
corpus data in 6.5 it may not be the statistically dominant one. Cf. also Vidakovi (2006) for an
independent experimental confirmation that the habitual (most common, frequent) lexicalization pattern in Serbo-Croatian is directional verb+preposition.
8. Probauljala je kuom jedno pola sata (She spent about a half an hour roaming around the
house aimlessly).
9. The cline is based on the number of verbs found prefixed with those prefixes in the dictionary and corpus data.

Talking about Motion

cline, whereas the reverse is not the case. Most of the verbs in the dictionary and
corpus data are prefixed with OD-/DO- prefixes, used to describe movements in
all sorts of directions. There are fewer prefixed verbs in both the dictionary and
corpus data as one moves towards the lower end of the cline. The cline is based on
the fact that the number of expressions the prefixed verbs can be used in diminishes downwards. Another factor is the combinability of prefixed verbs with prepositions that can follow them, which also decreases down the cline. We termed this
phenomenon combinatory potential. The verbs prefixed by OD-/DO- have the
highest combinatory potential.They can be used on all occasions, in expressions
that refer to all sorts of directional motion events and they combine with all prepositions. IZ-/U- verbs, as well as PRO-verbs, combine with a smaller number of
prepositions than OD-/DO-verbs, and PRE- combines with an even more restricted number of prepositions than IZ-/U-, or PRO- verbs. Prefixes NA- and PODcombine only with prepositions na (on) and pod (under), and thus they are at
the lower end of the cline. Numerous examples and a detailed discussion are offered in chapter 6.
Another original proposal came from our data analysis of Serbo-Croatian,
which we termed morphological blocking. As a Manner-salient language (or Slanguage in the typology), Serbo-Croatian is expected to have the Manner of motion expressed in the verb and Path of motion expressed elsewhere (in this case a
prefix and a preposition). The first hurdle is the fact that both manner and directional verbs are used in lexicalization in Serbo-Croatian, but the restrictions are
different from those specified for Spanish (i.e. the issues related to telicity and
boundary-crossing; cf. Aske (1989), Slobin (1996)). In Spanish, manner verbs are
freely used in non-boundary-crossing and boundary-reaching situations, but for
boundary-crossing, a directional verb is needed instead. In Serbo-Croatian, unprefixed manner verbs are used in expressions of the non-boundary-crossing/nochange phase, prefixed manner verbs, with constraints, in the boundary-crossing/
change-occurred expressions and directional verbs to express the boundary-crossing/moment-of-change phase.10 The examples in (2) show the restriction in the
use of manner verbs. The situations in (2a) and (2c) are described with manner
verbs, whereas in (2b) we have a directional verb. Manner verbs are not used in
cases like (2b), which expresses the moment-of-change phase, due to the process
of morphological blocking.
Morphological blocking occurs because of the impossibility of further imperfectivizing a perfective manner verb which would have been necessary in order to
express the required Manner of motion and Path. If an unprefixed imperfective
10. Manner verbs in Serbo-Croatian can be prefixed or unprefixed. Prefixed manner verbs are
also perfective at the same time, and the unprefixed ones are imperfective.

Chapter 4. The heart of the matter

manner verb is used instead, the situation type is no longer boundary-crossing/


moment-of-change, but rather changes to non-boundary-crossing/no-change, as
in (2d). That is why when the imperfective form is needed in an expression of motion of the type (2b), a directional imperfective verb is used instead. The frequency
of directional verbs and their role in the lexicalization of motion events in SerboCroatian is further discussed in chapter 6.
It would be worthwhile to check whether these or similar constraints operate
in other Slavic languages. In Shull (2003) we find that, although further imperfectivization exists as a tendency (which she deemed an unusual one) in some domains, in motion verbs, Czech prefixed imperfectives have different stems from
the unprefixed imperfectives. She also mentions only three of them in her analysis
(chodit-walk, ltat- fly and bhat-run). We are not told how productive this
process is and whether all manner of motion verbs are affected. Moreover, this
makes us wonder how frequently we actually find the prefixed imperfectives in
Czech in moment-of-change expressions (especially in past tense reports) and
whether they are more common in habitual/iterative use, showing restrictions
similar to the use in Serbo-Croatian. The same study also claims that Russian, unlike Czech, tolerates further imperfectivization in manner of motion verbs (the
stem remaining the same) (ibid.: 231). It could be the case that their use is limited
to habitual or iterative meaning and that they are not used in expressions of the
moment-of-change phase (cf. Gasparov (1990), Grickat (1966/67)). The extent to
which this is so and the productivity and frequency of such forms await more indepth investigation. Further study is therefore necessary in order to establish how
similar or different Slavic languages are when it comes to prefixation and further
imperfectivization with regard to lexicalization patterns.
We have to mention an important distinction that bears relevance to the comparison between the two languages, made between first and second tier verbs (cf.
Slobin (1997a)). This distinction can be made within any semantic field between
semantically simpler and more complex items (e.g. walk is semantically simpler
than limp, because the latter involves additional semantic components and refers
to a special kind of walking). Serbo-Croatian and English are similar in their employment of the first-tier verbs (i.e. semantically simplest and most frequent; cf.
example (2a)), but there are more constraints when it comes to doing the same
thing with the second tier (cf. example (8) below). We have already remarked that
if an adequately prefixed complex manner verb does not exist in Serbo-Croatian,
Serbo-Croatian speakers may use a deictic manner verb, a simpler manner verb or
a directional verb in translation from English (cf. chapter 2). The most frequent
and semantically simplest verbs are more likely to occur with a greater variety of
prefixes in Serbo-Croatian (e.g. trati run can be prefixed by all prefixes, which
is not the case with semantically more complex verbs like ljuljati (se) sway

Talking about Motion

(REFL); cf. examples in (4) in 3.1. see also appendix 2). There is a substantial
number of second-tier prefixed verbs in Serbo-Croatian, most of which are prefixed only by deictic prefixes, and when used in translation from English, an additional piece of information is included (normally not present in the original)
about whether the movement was from or to the speaker/scene-setting (cf.
Filipovi (1999)). The verbs prefixed by other prefixes are less numerous, and thus
confirm the cline in prefix use.
If a deictically prefixed verb is used, the Path does not need to be dissected,
because deictically prefixed manner verbs can accumulate all kinds of prepositional phrases that refer to different Ground elements. Using a manner verb prefixed by
different prefixes for each segment of the Path would unnecessarily overburden the
expression, thus also making it stylistically unacceptable. In Serbo-Croatian, we
also noticed that many 2nd tier manner of motion verbs (both OD-/DO- verbs and
those prefixed otherwise) are out of use: non-existent in the corpus data and only
present in the dictionaries. Their entries in the dictionaries are based on sources
dating from many years ago, even centuries ago in some cases, and such verbs are
absent from modern language use. This could be explained by the fact that the
needs of communication have changed and evolved in line with lifestyle differences
of the modern age, the information exchange caused by new means of communication being rapid, compact and not more detailed than necessary. Thus elaborate,
morphologically heavy structures are out of fashion, and unfortunately so are many
complex, lexically rich verbs in Serbo-Croatian, the meanings of which are unknown to todays speakers.
When both Manner and Path have to be rendered into Serbo-Croatian, and
the Manner is rather complex in itself, i.e. very rich in informational content (e.g.
rustled out, skateboarded across; cf. examples in 6.5.), Serbo-Croatian prefers
the other pattern, which is to use a verb which conflates Motion and Path, and then
to add the pieces of information about Manner separately (cf. example in (8) from
Slobin (1997a: 213), where it was used in contrasting English and Spanish):
(8)


She rustled into the room.


Ula
je
u sobu uz utanje svoje svilene haljine.
Enter-PST-PFV-3SG-F be-COP into the room with rustling of her silk dress.
She entered the room accompanied by the rustling of her silk dress.

English combines manner verbs and prepositions easily as a consequence of having very few morphological constraints, whereas Serbo-Croatian has many, so
expressions like She rustled into the room need to be rendered into Serbo-

Chapter 4. The heart of the matter

Croatian by using a directional verb, just like in Spanish.11 Verbs of sound emission, which are used frequently in motion expressions in English, are extremely
rare in Serbo-Croatian.12
Another option is using an OD-/DO- verb, if an adequate one exists, with the
same or nearly the same meaning. Deictic information is thus added, which is
normally not given in the original (cf. Filipovi (1999)). For example:
(9) a. She rushed up the stairs.

b. Odjurila
je
uz stepenice.
From-the-speaker/scene-rush-PST-PFV-3SG-F be-COP up the stairs.13

This option is exercised because many more verbs can be prefixed by OD-/DOthan any other prefix (cf. the cline in prefixes use above.). We expand on this point
in chapter 6.
Unlike manner verbs, directional verbs show no constraints in use. Their perfective and imperfective forms are not related by derivation. For example, the perfective directional verb ui (go in) is derived from the neutral verb ii (to
go- IPFV) + the prefix U- (into), which then gives ui (go in- PFV). The prefixes
in perfective directional verbs are detectable, although the verbs themselves seem
to be monomorphemic. Their morphological simplicity makes them favourites for
the lexicalization of boundary-crossing/change-occurred situation types even
when prefixed manner verbs are available (cf. chapter 6.6; see also Vidakovi
(2006)). Imperfective directional verbs do not have prefixes, although it might
seem so at first glance, e.g. ulaziti (go in or enter-IPFV) is not a prefixed form
because U- is not a prefix here (*laziti being unlicenced). Their formation appears
to originate from the combination of ulaz(entrance)+-iti(INF ending). This
morphologically unconstrained use puts them in a favourable position in motion
lexicalization.

11. Cf. also Slobins example (1997a: 213) in Spanish, where a directional verb is used in this
motion expression: Sali del cuarto, acompaada del susurro siseante de sus ropas. (She exited
from the room, accompanied by the swishing rustle of her clothing).
12. Although Ivi (1982) does not either explicitly make this point or discuss language contact,
we noticed this detail in her account of different Slavic languages; some Slavic languages (e.g.
Slovene, possibly in contact with German) show a tendency to use verbs of sound emission with
directional prefixes in motion expressions, whereas some others do not exercise this option, or
do it extremely modestly (e.g. Serbo-Croatian). The extensive corpus data used for this study
offer no proof of this use. Slobin (p.c.) confirms that some northern Italian dialects may show
certain tendencies in lexicalization patterning under the influence of German, as Yiddish does
under the influence of Slavic languages (Talmy 2000: 297).
13. A verb prefixed by a prefix indicating only upward motion does not exist (*uzjuriti up-rush).

Talking about Motion

We can conclude that the notions of boundary and change that constitute the
essence of our spatial and temporal parameters respectively are helpful in determining what situation type a speaker has referred to, more so than knowing just
the meaning of verbs or tenses, for example. We find a reminder of that in Langacker (1987: 258), where the distinction between events and states has a primal
character, because it is linked to a basic cognitive capacity: the ability to perceive
change. The flexibility of the human mind to construe the same spaces as both
locations and boundaries plays an immense role in the lexicalization of spatial
domains. And here we are delving into the level between the perceptual and the
linguistic, namely that of conceptualization. We have mostly steered clear of conceptualization, because this is a separate level of investigation, requiring different
methodology and experimental data. We do not make claims relevant to this level
in the present study, but we can suggest that crosslinguistic typological studies of
domain lexicalization might be the way to probe for the ways in which perceptual
knowledge is organized in language(s) and cognition. We want to be able to look
into the consequences of typological constraints and liberties that go beyond language, such as habitual presence/absence of information in specific, language-pervaded contexts (such as eyewitness testimony, cf. Filipovi (in press)) as well as
non-linguistic understanding of space and other domains (cf. chapter 7 for some
ideas, current and future research in this area).
Summary
This chapter introduces our central claims regarding similarities and differences in
the lexicalization of motion events in English and Serbo-Croatian. We touched
upon a number of features relevant to the lexicalization process of the two languages that we intend to explore further in the following two chapters (chapter 5
for English and chapter 6 for Serbo-Croatian). The two algorithms we proposed
should be understood as instructions for analyzing lexicalization patterns in the
two languages so as to be able to explain (particularly to non-native speakers) the
major mechanisms of conveying meaning when it comes to lexicalized motion
events in the two respective linguistic systems. By taking into consideration all
levels where meaning is conveyed, we are able to pin down the individual contributions and roles that lexical items, categories, constructions and processes (such
as morphological blocking and combinatory potential in Serbo-Croatian) have in
the process of lexicalization. This holistic take on domain lexicalization will prove
to be indispensable in teasing apart the components that are language-specific
from those that are shared and (potentially) universal.

chapter 5

Data analysis for English


After establishing the basic distinction in lexicalization patterns between the two
languages and showing how the analysis based on situation types provides a better
insight into domain lexialization crosslinguistically, we now turn to the analysis of
the corpus data for English (this chapter) and Serbo-Croatian (chapter 6). We aim
to establish how interlocutors can infer what situation type an expression refers to
by using the situation type classification and the algorithms we proposed.
5.1 What the tenses (do not) tell us
Describing past events is habitually done in the simple past tense in English and
this is why we are focusing on it in our study. We will discuss the use of this tense
in more detail shortly, but first we briefly mention the use of the past progressive
and explain why it does not create the same difficulty in interpretation of motion
expressions as the simple past tense. Past progressive can be used in expressions of
moment-of-change (He was running into the house) and no-change situations
(He was running across the field), depending on whether the Path particle has
directional or locational meaning, whether it is followed by a noun or not, and
what kind of space the following noun refers to. In the cases where verbs in past
progressive are used with prepositions that can be used in both boundary-crossing
and non-boundary-crossing situations (e.g. across, over, through, or under), we
encounter a potential impediment to straightforward interpretation. On many occasions, what follows the preposition will be decisive in achieving the right understanding. If the noun that is the object of the preposition refers to a very small
space (e.g. a portal, as in: He was running through the door), then the situation
type referred to is undoubtedly boundary-crossing/moment-of-change. If the
noun following the preposition refers to a larger space or area, we would assume
that the expression containing a verb in past progressive refers to non-boundarycrossing/no-change situation type (He was running through the park). However,
we might encounter examples like The baby was crawling under the table. Does it
express moment-of-change or no-change phase? Numerous studies emphasize
that simple past forms are indeterminate and problematic to interpret one way or

Talking about Motion

the other, but interpreting expressions with past progressive can be equally challenging at times. However, the extent to which they pose a difficulty is not as sizeable as the one posed by expressions in the simple past. Rather, we can say that
particular instantiations of some prepositions like under could be problematic.
We elaborate on this in section 5.4.3. Other particles that cause difficulty if combined with verbs in the simple past do not seem to have the same effect if past
progressive verb forms are used. Such expressions are more readily interpretable,
as in He was running over the bridge or He was running across the street, which
are both taken to be expressions of boundary-crossing/moment-of-change. It is
true that they can also be interpreted as expressions of non-boundary-crossing if
we take over the bridge and across the street to refer to locations where the Figure did some running. We would argue that such scenarios are imaginable but very
unlikely to be referred to in this way. We further discuss conventionalized scenarios
in 5.4.3. Finally, unlike simple past forms, past progressive forms cannot refer to
the boundary-crossing/change-occurred situation type.
With the simple past tense, on the other hand, the situation is more complex,
because it can refer to all three phases in situation types (change-occurred, moment-of-change and no-change) and thus the examples with prepositions that can
be used both in expressions of boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing
make it more difficult to account for and establish what the whole expression referred to. The object of the preposition, even though it denotes a larger space and
not precisely a boundary in the strictest sense, can be seen as non-problematic in
(1a) but potentially making two interpretations available in (1b):
(1) a. He was running across the field.
(non-boundary-crossing/no-change)
b. He ran across the field.
(either boundary-crossing/change-occurred or non-boundary-crossing/
no-change).

We will now look in some detail at corpus examples of verbs in motion expressions
in the simple past tense. When verbs in the simple past are combined with prepositions that refer to boundary-crossing, the expressions themselves refer to boundary-crossing/change-occurred (e.g. He ran into the building.). If the prepositions
can be used to refer to both boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing, the
entire expressions with verbs in the simple past can refer to either type, and these
are the most problematic combinations (cf. (1b)).
We have to point out here that verbs in the simple past, when combined
with prepositions that are used in boundary-crossing expressions and when appearing in a particular syntactic environment, can be used to refer to boundary-

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

crossing/moment-of-change situation type as well. The simple past tense in English can be used to express moment-of-change in situations where two
simultaneous events are being described, as in:

(2) People staggered through the back door while the soldiers marched into the
hall.

When the simple past is used in expressions of motion events where the subject is
in the plural and the spatial feature described is that of boundary-crossing, the
temporal phase can be either change-occurred or moment-of-change type.1 English speakers are not obliged to specify whether they are referring to a series of
events whereby a multitude of moving Figures are observed as individuals in the
process of changing location, or to a single event where the moving Figure is viewed
as a group of people that changed location. More problems are caused if the conjunction in an expression is one that can be used with various meanings (the case
in point being the conjunction as). In translation into Serbo-Croatian, this distinction will have to be drawn explicitly on the verb level, because the decision will have
to be made on whether to use an imperfective manner verb, a perfective manner
verb or a directional verb. Effectively, in reality, the event itself may essentially be
one and the same, but different chunks of it could be reported from a different temporal perspective and thus the situation type is not the same (cf. our discussion on
construals in 3.2). The following two examples illustrate our point:

(3) They staggered into the temple, a stream of garish colour and silly hats and
bare white flesh.

(4) Solemn and clamorous, a choir of young people filed across the hall to the
staircase.

Note that a manner of motion verb in the simple past and a preposition normally
used to refer to boundary-crossing (like into or onto) would be used in expressions of motion that refer to boundary-crossing/change-occurred situation type.
In example (2) we saw that there is a possibility that this typical use can be overridden. In the case of example (2), it is the sentence structure expressing two parallel actions that is responsible for the possibility of having the interpretation:
boundary-crossing/moment-of-change. We would interpret (3) as boundarycrossing/moment-of-change because of the description of the moving Figures as a
stream, which indicates continuous motion rather than a single instant. The elaboration in the description of the moving Figures also indicates the focus on the
process. In example (4) we have the possibility of interpreting the expression of the
1. Talmy (1988: 176) refers to this as plexity, whereby [] an original solo referent is, in
effect, copied onto various points of space or time; e.g. A bird flew in vs. Birds flew in (ibid.).

Talking about Motion

motion event as boundary-crossing/change-occurred or non-boundary-crossing/


no-change. The prepositional phrase to the staircase can contribute to the meaning of the whole expression in two ways:
a) the choir of young people filed across the hall (for quite a while) in the direction of the staircase.
b) the choir of young people filed across the hall and reached the staircase.
The tense and the verb meaning do not tell us much about the nature of the situation types, especially in expressions of motion that contain particles that can be
used with either directional or locational meaning (like across). Examples like
this are further discussed in 5.4. It is important to note here that the use of tense
does not provide enough information.
We saw some of the problems we could encounter in expressions with manner
verbs in the simple past, especially in certain syntactic environments with plural
external arguments (subjects). In cases with plural subjects, a further specification
is needed for interpretation, because with the subject in the plural the expression
can refer to all three temporal phases in the situation types (i.e. change-occurred,
moment-of-change and no-change). Obviously, there are ways in English to express this distinction accurately by using the past progressive in cases when a process is described: They were staggering into the temple (boundary-crossing/moment-of-change). However, the use of tenses is conditioned by other factors (e.g.
narrative flow), and their respective function in discourse and narrative would be
the topic of a separate study. The point we are making here is that it is not the case
that, in narrative context, one can just keep inserting the past progressive whenever the distinction is to be made in the middle of a narrative that is carried out in
the simple past tense. Moreover, the past simple tense seems to be taking over
certain construction environments from the past progressive. One of the typical
examples that learners of English as a foreign language inevitably come across is
the use of the past progressive in expressions referring to two temporally parallel
actions (e.g. While I was watching TV, he was cooking). We saw that the simple
past can be used on such occasions as well (cf. example (2)). If the syntactic environment offers the necessary clues to the felicitous interpretation, there is no need
to insert a marked tense like the past progressive and disrupt the flow of the narrative. Furthermore, we shall see that if a language does not have strict morphosyntactic restrictions to express certain distinctions, those distinctions will not be
habitually explicitly rendered, especially if they require additional processing effort (e.g. inserting deictic information in motion expressions in English; cf. 6.2).
The relevance of our situation types is not undermined. They are not dependent on
their surface lexicalization in languages and they still serve as common ground for
comparing the means used in the lexicalization of motion cross-lingustically.

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

There is an obvious overlap in English with regard to the use of verb forms and
verb+particle combinations and their mappings onto different situation types,
which needs to be accounted for within our framework.
5.2 What verbs (do not) tell us
Since the simple vs. progressive marking is not enough in itself to express the relevant distinctions, we look into verb meaning to see whether we can detect the
way in which one can differentiate among the different situation types. Manner
verbs themselves do not contain any information regarding the direction of motion and thus cannot provide us with any crucial information regarding the distinctions within the spatial frame.
The occasions when the relevant piece of information regarding situation
types is located in verbs in English are very rare. There are some verbs, though,
which, because of their meaning, are normally used in situations which are either
boundary-crossing or non-boundary-crossing, but not both. Verbs like bolt (referring to a sudden movement) express an activity that takes place during a very
short span of time. On the other hand, the verb hover is used in expressions of a
situation type where a moving entity spends some time at a certain location moving in the way designated by the verb. Therefore, bolt is more likely to be used in
change-occurred/boundary-crossing expressions:

(5) She bolted across the corridor.

On the other hand, the example in (6) is most likely to have the interpretation
non-boundary-crossing and no-change:

(6) The hawk hovered over the field.

This way of conveying the relevant distinction and deducing the meaning is limited in English, because most verbs do not contain either lexical features or morphological markers that help us decide what kind of expressions a verb is normally
used in. In fact, we can say that when we compare English with Serbo-Croatian,
we notice that a great many verbs in English seem quite neutral in relation to the
relevant temporal and spatial features crucial for motion expressions, and can be
used in all of the situation types. In Serbo-Croatian, we know exactly whether a
perfective or imperfective verb would be needed in an expression depending on
what spatio-temporal features are required by an expression. It is the verbs morphological marking rather than lexical meaning that immediately signals the intended interpretation of the situation type that is lexicalized. In most cases, English verbs are not lexically or morphologically marked in such a way that one can

Talking about Motion

determine the situation type expressed on the basis of a verb or a verb form. We
will see in more detail in chapter 7 that verb meaning can be relevant and even
decisive for some other aspects of the expressions in which it occurs, but when it
comes to rendering the relevant spatio-temporal detail in an expression of a motion event, knowing the lexical meaning of verbs and their projections (i.e. parts of
meaning relevant for syntax) is simply not the whole story in English.
5.3 Particles that appear only in boundary-crossing expressions
Many distinctions relevant for us are conveyed via directional particles, which by
virtue of expressing spatial detail related to the spatial features of situation types
(boundary-crossing, boundary-reaching and non-boundary-crossing) also make
temporal information inferrable. Verbs in the simple past tense with particles that
refer exclusively to boundary-crossing, like into, out of and onto, are used to
refer to change-occurred phase of motion. This can, but need not, be overridden
in a particular syntactic context, which gives the possibility to refer to moment-ofchange if the simple past tense is used in a construction expressing parallel actions,
or if a particular time adverbial is present in the construction. For example, the
expression in (7) can potentially refer to either change-occurred or moment-ofchange situation type, boundary-crossing though in either case.

(7) The enemy soldiers marched into town, while the defenders, disappointed
and exhausted, staggered out of the shelters, ready to surrender.2

Our assumption is that the speaker always assumes one temporal perspective, even
though the expression used could refer to more than one phase in event development. In this case, the situation type is that of moment-of-change and boundarycrossing. Two parallel processes are expressed here, and the fact that while is used
seems to indicate that. It can sometimes seem futile to try and establish what
2. See examples in chapter 3 and the discussion on the difference between describing an event
in which a group of entities is seen as a single moving Figure, or as a number of individuals,
whereby the number of moving Figures is more than one in a particular expression, which then
makes it possible to interpret an expression as either change-occurred or moment-of-change
type. The use of while here clearly indicates two simultaneous processes and therefore the situation type is boundary-crossing/moment-of-change. This would be a typical syntactic environment of the past progressive, but the simple past in this sentence has the same effect. In effect,
the simple past is the narrative tense, unmarked, most frequent and most versatile. It habitually
usurps the positions of other tenses, such as past progressive or present perfect, the latter especially in American English. As a result, the distinctions in meaning are made elsewhere, e.g.
constructionally.

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

situation type was expressed on the basis of one isolated expression (e.g. only the
first part of the sentence The soldiers marched into town), simply because English
does not always mark for this distinction for each part of a motion event, but we
claim that, on the whole, these distinctions must be inferrable from lexicalized
motion expressions. In other words, a Serbo-Croatian translator would have to
infer which situation type is being described because that would condition the
choice between manner and directional verbs, perfective or imperfective. Therefore, situation types help us ask the right questions when translating or learning a
foreign language: how a particular situation is lexicalized in this target language,
rather than what the closest translational equivalent of a lexical or syntactic structure
in the target language is.
It is important at this point to notice the two phenomena that we will term
extended space notion and extended time notion. We say in (7) that if the external
argument is a plural noun (e.g. soldiers), and it can refer to a selection of individuals rather than a unified group of entities seen as a whole, we can have the
extended moment-of-change/boundary-crossing situation when the verb+particle
combinations are used to express two parallel actions. The same occurs when an
expression contains a time adverbial, as in:

(8) The soldiers marched into the building for half an hour.

With a noun in the singular, as in (9), this meaning seems forced, unless we accept
the notion of extended space, whereby the expression would refer to a soldier going further into the interior of the building for some time:

(9) ?The soldier marched into the building for half an hour.

The notions of extended space and time become clearer when we see that they
prevent the acceptability of the following expression:
(10) *The soldier marched through the door for half an hour.

The point is that through the door could not refer to an extended space the way
into the building potentially could. We have to draw a distinction here between
unnatural and unacceptable. The example in (9) sounds unnatural, and although
it is possible to infer what kind of event it is used to refer to, it seems extremely
unlikely that speakers would phrase it in this way. In fact, this is just a possibility
to explore here, since such expressions are unconfirmed in our corpus data. Perhaps it is easier to come up with this expression in a situation where the internal
argument refers to a different kind of space (forest) and the whole scenario is
more transparent and straightforward to interpret, as in:
(11) The soldier marched deeper and deeper into the dark forest.

Talking about Motion

On the other hand, the expression in (10) is unacceptable, because the kind of
space that is referred to by the object of the preposition is not extended space and
therefore the whole expression is easily discarded as unlicensed. But once again, if
we use a plural noun instead, the expression becomes acceptable, as in: The soldiers marched through the door for half an hour.
We therefore reiterate the importance of both the external and internal argument in the study of lexicalization patterns. The extended time notion (extended
moment-of-change in this case) is present with plural subjects regardless of space
extension, and our notion of extended space is introduced only as a theoretical
possibility to account for the cases where some expressions with subjects in the
singular might be acceptable (cf. (11)), even though we cannot attest on this occasion how frequent and likely they are to occur. With prepositions that can be used
in both boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing situation types (like
across, over, or through), the constraint of extended time applies when they are
used to refer to a boundary-crossing situation, as in: The wounded stumbled
through the doorway for well over an hour. In clearly non-boundary-crossing
situations, there is no need for evoking extended space or extended time, since
there is no change of location expressed and the temporal phrase is that of nochange, as in He kept an eye on her as they ran across the field. 3
We will concentrate on some potentially problematic corpus examples that do
not necessarily involve any syntactic restrictions we have discussed in relation to
the prepositions we analyzed in this section, and will see how far our situation type
analysis can take us. We saw that the combinations of manner verbs in the simple
past and directional prepositions like into, out of and onto would normally be
used to refer to boundary-crossing/change-occurred situation types, except in
some restricted cases we just explained. We have to point out that in the case of
two clauses expressing parallel actions connected by while or when, it is easier to
decide on an interpretation than when the clauses are connected with as, because
as can mean both while and when. The following example (12) is an expression
of boundary-crossing/change-occurred. The space referred to by the object of the
preposition is unlikely to be construed as extended:
(12) Not much hope of that, muttered Adam as he bounced into the centre of the
ring.4

Since the preposition into is normally used in expressions of boundary-crossing,


we should be able to predict that the situation type referred to by an expression
containing this preposition is most likely to be that of boundary-crossing/change3.

See Table 1 in chapter 3.

4. E.g. ?Adam bounced into the centre of the ring for 10 minutes.

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

occurred type (see examples (13) and (14)). Still, this is not so obvious in examples
(15), (16), and (17), because although the expression contains the verb file in the
simple past tense and the preposition into, as in examples (13) and (14), the structure that refers to two parallel events with the subject in the plural can potentially
indicate that the situation type referred to is actually that of boundary-crossing/
moment-of-change.
(13) After, two women filed into the dock, and with a whisper of mock modesty an
official suggested that I should leave the court as the case concerned prostitution.
(14) The five of them filed into a cab and were decanted outside the Hospitality Inn.
(15) The door closed, then Black turned to watch Mirandas face as the five men
filed into the adjoining room.
(16) [] all a little bit like a fairy tale, isnt it? she whispered as they filed into the
throne room with the other guests, and he nodded eagerly in reply.
(17) `It certainly is, Lindsey smiled, forbearing to mention that, as guests filed into
the reception lounge to be formally greeted by the captain and his deputy,
each couple would have handed their formal invitation card to a senior officer
and had their names discreetly murmured into the captains ear as the introductions were made.

The problem in (15)-(17) again lies in the meaning of as rather than anything else,
because it can be used in expressions that refer to two parallel actions (e.g. As we
walked along the river bank, we indulged in a pleasant conversation), or to two
actions that occur one after another (e.g. As I walked into the room, I saw her
standing by the window).5 There are reasons why these three examples have moment-of-change lexicalized rather than change-occurred. In (15), the use of the
verb watch indicates duration, meaning that the two activities (watching and filing into the room) were two parallel processes rather than two instants. Similarly,
in (16) and (17) multiple subjects as external arguments of the verb file induce the
understanding of the activities described as processes. Moreover, in the case of
(16) it seems strained to argue that the expression refers to the situation in which
the person whispered at exactly the same moment at which all the moving Figures
changed location (i.e. filed into the throne room). In the next example, however,
the interpretation is achieved with the help of the adverb finally and reinforced by

5. The issue does not arise when when or while are used instead. For example, the expression For Sartre, the journey came to a halt in 1956 when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest obviously refers to a boundary-crossing/change-occurred situation type.

Talking about Motion

the following clause. The situation type referred to is that of boundary-crossing/


change-occurred:
(18) The next moment Rachel was surrounded again as with many hugs and cuddles the group took their leave of their new friend and finally filed into the
minibus, where they lined the windows, smiling and waving.

If the subject is in the singular, the moment-of-change interpretation is less likely.


However, in cases in which understanding space as extended (cf. also the example
(9)) is possible, the interpretation seems more difficult. In (19), Carrie thought of
her own words could refer to either an instantaneous occurrence (a single thought)
or a process of certain duration. If the former is the case, the whole expression
refers to boundary-crossing/change-occurred type. On the latter understanding,
the situation described is boundary-crossing/moment-of-change. The more likely
interpretation seems to be that of boundary-crossing/change-occurred because
there is no indication that further inward movement occurred (unlike (8) or (11),
where the adverbials for half an hour and deeper and deeper respectively induce
the understanding of further inward movement). In general, moment-of-change
interpretation in (19) would have been extremely marked and therefore less likely
to be reached:
(19) As she limped into the farmhouse behind Seb, Carrie thought of her own
words.

In the next example (20), the time clause introduced by as with the subject in the
singular refers to a boundary-crossing/moment-of-change situation because the
verb watch in the following clause implies duration and thus the motion expression shuffled into refers to a parallel durative action rather than a single instant.
The same situation type is illustrated with plural subjects in (21) and (22):
(20) As Ludovico shuffled into the kitchen, Constance waited fearfully on the landing.
(21) Then the front door was smashed and people streamed into the house for
what seemed an eternity.
(22) Although the opening parade was not due to start until noon, crowds thronged
into the Grounds of Eglinton Castle from early morning, everyone hoping for
a good place in the arena.

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

5.4 Particles used in both boundary-crossing


and non-boundary-crossing expressions
We have seen the potential problems that arise when manner verbs in the simple
past combine with prepositions that are used to refer to boundary-crossing and we
explained how the right interpretation of such examples can be reached. Combinations of manner verbs and prepositions that can be used in expressions of both
boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing situation types raised even more
issues. If the boundary is crossed, we have a change-occurred type; if the boundary is not crossed, we have a no-change type. But how do we know which one of
the two situations an expression refers to? In many cases the interpretation will
depend on what the noun (or the NP) following the preposition refers to boundary or location. Since this is the point where our greatest difficulty surfaces, we
decided to give it a thorough consideration.
The greatest hurdle in the interpretation of such verb+particle combinations is
the possibility that they can be used in expressions of completely opposed situation types, namely those where the change of location is present or absent respectively, which we deemed to be the critical notion for perceptual distinctions in
situation types. So how is it that the same expression can be used to refer to both?
Should languages not have the means to mark this distinction, which is perceptually very salient? We can say that colors like blue and green are perceptually salient, even though they are not distinguished linguistically in all languages. Similarly, the count/mass distinction seems salient enough perceptually, but it is
marked linguistically in some, not all, languages. Japanese, for example, does not
provide speakers with the means to lexicalize count/mass distinctions, but Japanese speakers do draw the distinctions just like English speakers (cf. Iwasaki, Vinson and Vigliocco (in preparation)). Similarly, Spanish speakers do not lexicalize
manner of motion with the same frequency and detail that English speakers do,
but nevertheless their memory of manner of motion apparently does not differ
from that of their English peers in experimental tasks of recognition (Filipovic (in
progress)). If we assume that speakers are able to perceive the difference, which
was our starting assumption, why would they not specify the distinctions? Why do
they use one underspecified form of verb+preposition to refer to both changeoccurred and no-change, and how do hearers extract the relevant information regarding the location of the moving Figure if it is not clear whether the Figure
changed location or not?
Higginbotham (1995) points out that the inputs of both lexical (meanings of
words and morphemes) and combinatorial (meaning of larger constructions built
up from meanings of their parts) types are required to map any complex meaning
onto its expression (ibid.: 7). He argues that major and minor lexical semantic

Talking about Motion

parametric differences are possible between languages, but contends that positing
combinatorial differences is unnecessary because a sentence in one language could
wear its logical structure on its face, i.e. providing in the overt syntax what is executed only abstractly in another, for example.6 Following that logic, we may say
that, while spatio-temporal information regarding events is always overtly marked
in Serbo-Croatian, it is covertly (or abstractly) marked in English. The combinatorics would be the same: the only difference between them could lie in how much is
actually heard (cf. Higginbotham (1995)). We have to ask one question here: what
is a learner or a translator to do then? Universalist-oriented scholars favor this UGinspired idea that parameters are covert in some languages and overt in some other
languages, but they are always underlyingly present (and as Higginbotham argues,
abstract presence counts equally). This does not help learners of English as a second
language or translators, who cannot do much with the knowledge that some operations in English are executed abstractly. Moreover, we argue that entrenchment of
lexicalization patterns has a profound effect on: a) habitual presence or absence of
information, b) use, productivity and frequency of processes and constructions,
and c) crosslinguistic engendering of language-specific narrative style. It is not just
a matter of major or minor lexical parametric differences. They are important in
crosslinguistic comparisons, but they are not the whole story.
Another proposal may come from theorists who contend that certain inferences (e.g. aspect-related phenomena) could only be drawn in contexts larger than
a sentence, which is the level at which we chose to operate here. We agree that
broader context has an important role to play in the understanding of individual
expressions (and we touch upon it in 5.4.4.), but we also suggest other pathways to
interpretation, via default meanings established through frequency of use and conventionalized scenarios. We did not choose the sentence level solely out of practicality, but because we established that corpus examples of sentences containing
motion expressions actually proved to be informative enough for our purposes.
We must bear in mind that our situation types are based on perceptual factors.
The flexibility of the human mind to construe the same spaces as either boundaries
or locations is evident although not always reflected in language in cases in which
a particular language does not obligatorily mark these distinctions. We illustrated
how a situation type can be individuated in a great number of cases in order to
achieve the right interpretation and translation into languages that offer different
lexicalization means depending on what spatio-temporal information needs to be
6. Cf. Higginbotham (1995) on quantifier scope in Hungarian and English. A man went into
every store is ambiguous in English, but not in Hungarian because surface order determines
relative scope. For Higginbotham, the difference is parametric and English and Hungarian show
no difference in their combinatorics.

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

expressed. Namely, translation of English motion expressions that are interpretable


as either boundary-crossing or non-boundary-crossing is facilitated if we have additional information. We found out that the distinction is being drawn in English,
not necessarily on the basis of verbs+directional particles in all cases. The specification of which situation type the expression refers to is done on the basis of:
i. the object of the preposition (internal argument)
ii. sentence complex (e.g. V + accumulated prepositions, time adverbials, conjunctions)
iii. defaults
iv. further narrative context
There is a brief reference in Talmy (2000) regarding the relevance of what the object of the preposition refers to. Talmy (2000: 324326) argues that the expression
I walk across the pier is not acceptable, whereas I swam across the river and I
walked across the square field both are (see example (23) below). The schema
represented by the closed-class English preposition across has a feature pertaining to the relative lengths of two linear elements. Specifically, this preposition requires the length of the Figures Path to be the same or less than the length of the
axis of the Ground object perpendicular to that Path. Thus, Talmy (ibid.) goes on
to say that:
if I walk across a pier having distinct width and length axes, I must traverse the
width axis of the pier running perpendicularly to my Path, namely its length axis.
If I did traverse the length axis, my Path would be much longer than the now perpendicular width axis, and in fact across could not be used. Rather, the case
where the Path is longer than the perpendicular axis generally falls into the schematic venue of the preposition along, so that I might now say that I was walking
along the pier.

He then considers how the acceptability of across in expressions varies on the


basis of what kind of space the object of across refers to. In this succession, the
axis of the Ground object that the Figure traverses progresses by stages from being
shorter to being longer than the Ground axis perpendicular to it, as illustrated
below (examples marked as ? and * by Talmy):
(23)



I swam/walked across the


a. river.
b. square field.
c. ?rectangular swimming pool.
d. *pier. (where my Path is from one narrow end to the other of the
pool/pier)

Talking about Motion

The partial acceptability of (23c), for which the Path is only moderately longer
than the perpendicular axis, suggests that the relative length feature of the across
schema permits some stretching of its basic specification. But the unacceptability of (23d) shows, in Talmys opinion, that it cannot be stretched too far (ibid.).
Talmy also mentions some peculiarities about the use of across. Across is
used in expressions of motion whereby the Figures Path begins at one edge, lies on
(or covers the space above) the surface, and ends at the farther edge of the Grounds
bounded plane. This is illustrated by the usual understanding of sentences like
The shopping cart rolled across the street, and The tumbleweed rolled across the
field in one hour (ibid.). But one or more components of this schematic feature
can be suspended or cancelled when they conflict with other specifications in the
sentence. So the final component (the end of the Path) is dropped in the following
example: The shopping cart rolled across the street and was hit by an oncoming
car. Comparably, the boundedness of the across schema is canceled by an indicator of open-endedness for one hour together with the fact that a prairies great size
places its boundaries outside of the tumbleweeds hour-long trek: The tumbleweed rolled across the prairie for an hour.
Talmy mentioned two of the factors, the object of the preposition and time
adverbials, which he termed indicators of open-endedness and which are decisive for achieving the right interpretation of an expression. We discuss the importance of the objects of the preposition and temporal adverbials as well, but we also
include analysis of complex sentences connected by different conjunctions,
verbs+multiple PPs, potential to include defaults and conventionalized scenarios
as well as narrative setting in interpretation of motion expressions.
5.4.1 Object of the preposition
There should not be any doubt that speakers can differentiate between boundarycrossing and non-boundary-crossing, as well as between change-occurred and nochange type. Obviously, if a distinction is not clearly drawn in a language, it might
lead us to the conclusion that it is not relevant for the speakers of that language.
However, we believe that some differences, for example the difference between
change-occurred and no-change, are based on perceptually extremely salient distinctions and are left unspecified in language only when it does not matter for the
consequences of the event itself. For example, imagine that an English speaker produces the following sentence: I ran across the meadows. The speaker could be construing the meadows as a boundary or a location. We cannot know on the basis of
this simple sentence. This is a contrived example and we emphasize again that such
simple, out-of-context sentences are extremely rare in the corpus. Even in everyday
communication, if we stop to think about it, we can see that people do not

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

communicate using bare, uncontextualized clauses. Our claim is that we may not
know what the speakers perceptual or emotional construal of the situation was, so
we have to be able to infer our interpretation based on his linguistic construal.If this
were not possible, and if this underspecification were such an omnipresent phenomenon concerning motion expressions in English, then translation into languages like
Serbo-Croatian would depend exclusively on the choice of the translator and his
preference for perfective or imperfective verbs. This is not the case. For example, it
is not necessary to specify whether the speaker was referring to a change-occurred
or no-change phrase in They stumbled over the uneven ground, because the following clause specifies that the location had definitely been changed:
(24) They stumbled over the uneven ground and plunged, half-laughing, into the
entrance of the cave.

The example leaves an option to interpret the uneven ground as a barrier that was
overcome, or a location where the motion event took place (i.e. in the sense of
They stumbled over the uneven ground for a while and then plunged into the
cave). When the direct object explicitly expresses a boundary to be crossed, this
problem does not arise (e.g. The door flung open and Sarah stumbled over the
threshold). In (24) we interpret the former expression on the basis of the latter (i.e.
they must have crossed the uneven ground since they ended up at a different location afterwards). We would assume that if the speaker wanted to direct the hearers
attention to the process of overcoming the boundary, he would have emphasized
the process features of the activity (by using a different tense or an adverbial modifier) instead of just simply reporting how the Figures changed locations.
In English, it seems that not every part of the event chain needs to be specified
as to what phase of motion an expression refers to, whereas in Serbo-Croatian it is
done by default due to consistent morphological rules. Speakers of Serbo-Croatian
need to lexicalize temporal features of every portion of an event or a chain of
events, because that conditions the choice of verbs and verb forms. The equivalent
of the expression in (24) in Serbo-Croatian would contain an imperfective manner
verb if it is understood as a non-boundary-crossing situation type, and a perfective
directional (because an adequate perfective manner verb is not available) if it is
understood as a boundary-crossing one.
English speakers definitely have the means to specify whether they refer to the
uneven ground in (24) as a boundary or as a location (by further modifying the
verb+particle combination), but they would not do it unless a real communication
necessity exists. The expression of the latter situation type (and plunged into the
entrance of the cave) induces the interpretation of the former as boundary-crossing/change occurred. It is true that the same means (verb+particle) can be used to
express both boundary-crossing and non-boundary crossing events (as in stumbled

Talking about Motion

across), but it is also true that such combinations do not come as such, bare and
without surrounding elements that signal the intended interpretation. Using corpus data helped us realize that such combinations, often deemed problematic, ambiguous or unspecified, are actually not pervasive. We focused on the hearers perspective, especially if the hearer is a speaker of a typologically different language.
Further research into default meanings and frequency of use of particular
verb+particle combinations will help us learn more about the linguistic and communicative strategies that native speakers of English employ when they lexicalize
motion in what seems to non-native speakers to be an ambiguous way. Since this
was not the object of our study, we do not expatiate on these issues within English,
but we discuss some of them in this chapter (cf. our discussion of examples (31)(32) in this section and also section 5.4.3.). Native speakers of Serbo-Croatian and
Spanish, when translating from English, will be attuned to and will expect cues for
one or the other meaning as soon as possible in the message (i.e. expression).
We will now focus on how the interpretation is facilitated by the object of the
preposition. The situation in (25) is obviously boundary-crossing/change-occurred:
(25) She stumbled over the threshold.

Unlike the uneven ground in (24), the threshold in (25) is more likely to be conceived of as a boundary. Similarly, the next example contains an expression that
most naturally refers to boundary-crossing/change-occurred situation type because border is less likely to be construed as a location:
(26) We drove across the Belgian border at Aachen, stopped at a service station
about 30 miles from Brussels, and slept in the cab.

Similarly obvious is the use of through in He bobbed through the door, because
of what the object of the preposition refers to, i.e. the nature of the boundary expressed. When the noun following the preposition refers to a kind of space that
can also be a location of motion, as in He ran through the house, the interpretation is likely to be potentially indeterminate between non-boundary-crossing/nochange: He ran through the house all day looking for some old photos and
boundary-crossing/change-occurred: He ran through the house and ended up in
the back garden. The reason for this is that house can be seen as extended space
and not necessarily a boundary, whereas door is clearly more easily interpretable
as a boundary.
Again, the next two examples contain the same verb+particle combination,
whereby the interpretation is achieved after it is established that the object of the
preposition in the former example (27) designates a location rather than a boundary, whereas the object of the preposition in the latter example (28) clearly refers

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

to a boundary that is crossed. The situation type in (27) is non-boundary-crossing/


no-change, and boundary-crossing/change-occurred in (28):
(27) And the two men shook their heads over the inconsistent, bloody-minded
civilians who swarmed through a general practitioners surgery, deliberately
misleading qualified men about the nature of their fatal diseases.
(28) The idea was that the police would wait until they had incontrovertible evidence before moving in for the arrest, but Branson and Draper had barely sat
down with the Clarkes before some forty policemen swarmed through the
door, knocking over tables and chairs and arresting the two brothers.

The following examples (29) and (30) are an illustration of non-boundary-crossing/no-change, the nouns following the preposition designating a space that is a
location rather than a boundary:
(29) A Catholic friend had pointed him out as he hurried through the streets with
a small boy at his side, clutching a worn black leather bag probably answering a sick call, his friend had suggested.
(30) [] currently Vasilariov was being scarred by some of its own weapons as
Harq Obispal raged through the hive like an angry bear.

The verb+particle combination in (31) is followed by multiple prepositional phrases


and can potentially be interpreted as boundary-crossing or non-boundary-crossing:
(31) This unsavoury pack of rogues streamed across the meadows to our Manor
House like rats towards an unguarded hen coop.

We could say that the motion expression describes a boundary-crossing/change


occurred situation type because the phrase to our Manor House indicates that
another boundary was reached (which could have been done only if the first one
had been crossed, i.e. the Figures streamed across the meadows and reached the
Manor House). However, in the following phrase like rats towards an unguarded
hen coop the prepositional phrase headed by towards is related to the prepositional phrase headed by to in the preceding VP, and one should be aware that to
can sometimes mean towards, which seems to be the case here. Therefore, we
would contend here that the situation type in (31) is non-boundary-crossing/nochange. The occasional overlap in meaning between to and towards is sometimes
problematic, although perhaps not to the extent that some argue. If an expression
only contains a manner of motion verb and the preposition to, as in He swam to
the island, we would argue that the reference is to a boundary-reaching/changeoccurred situation type, rather than ambiguous, as Fong claims (1999: 125126).
A simple way to test how problematic such cases are to present native speakers

Talking about Motion

with an expression (e.g. The man swam to the island.) together with pictures or
video depictions of the situation, whereby two opposing scenes are depicted: one
in which the man swam and reached the island and the other where he swam towards but did not reach the island. Native speakers of English unanimously chose
boundary-reaching/change-occurred stimuli, i.e. the one depicting the man reaching the island.7 Fong contends that the reason for ambiguity in this case is that to
is ambiguous for some speakers. To what extent this is so is yet to be established
with accuracy, because as our corpus and experimental examples demonstrate,
speakers seem to have less difficulty with this kind of expressions than linguists
give them credits for. We also found examples in which to is clearly not used in a
boundary-reaching context:
(32) Indeed, the injured man did not even know he had been bitten until the water
turned red as he swam to shore.

The meaning of to does not seem to indicate boundary-reaching in (32) and the
situation type referred to would be non-boundary-crossing/no-change, because
the water did not turn red when the Figure reached the shore but rather while he
was swimming towards it. The conjunction as further reinforces the interpretation of the motion event as processual (i.e. two parallel actions are expressed, a
man swimming while the water was turning red). A thorough frequency analysis
could provide clearer insights into how often speakers mean towards when they
use to and in what constructional environments.
5.4.2 Sentence complex
We noticed that certain features of a sentence structure facilitate the determination of the temporal phase in a motion expression and that certain others make it
more difficult. In addition to (and often in combination with) the interpretation of
the object of the preposition, we need to consider the immediate context where a
motion expression is inserted. A particular difficulty occurs in cases in which motion situation types were a part of a larger sentential environment created by the
conjunction as. The same conjunction created difficulties for us in 5.3. We will
discuss a number of examples in order to provide a more in-depth analysis of how
the difficulties could be dealt with. In (33) we see that although the expression of
motion can potentially refer to boundary-crossing, it does not, because the clause
that follows indicates that the expression refers to a non-boundary-crossing/nochange situation type (two parallel processes).

7.

Tested on 20 native speakers, all Cambridge University graduates.

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

(33) Carrie hurried through the evening street and Fred struggled to keep up with
her.

The following example is an illustration of a boundary-crossing/change-occurred


situation type:
(34) They drove through the gates and up the avenue of ancient lime trees.

Curiously, the next example contains the same verb+particle combination (drove
through) as (34), but it is used in a construction that refers to two parallel events,
in which case the expression of motion can potentially refer to either change-occurred or moment-of-change:
(35) Rain spattered against the windscreen as Fenn drove through the tall iron
gates.

If the conjunction as is taken to mean when (e.g. Rain spattered against the
windscreen when Fen drove through the tall iron gates), the interpretation would
more likely be that of boundary-crossing/change-occurred. If it is taken to mean
while, (e.g. Rain spattered against the windscreen while Fen drove through the
tall iron gates), the situation type referred to should be that of boundary-crossing/
moment-of-change. Furthermore, if we could imagine a situation when the moving Figure (Fenn) drove through a number of gates (e.g. a number of gates in a row
on a big estate) and the rain spattered all the way, than we have a situation type
which is non-boundary-crossing/no-change, which would presumably be the least
likely interpretation (such a scenario being very uncommon). The verb spatter
with the external argument the rain probably does not refer to a single instantiation of spatter, but a process instead. Our knowledge of the world tells us what
spattering of rain looks like. It is because of this depiction of a process in the preceding clause that we interpret the motion expression in the following as boundary-crossing/moment-of-change. The difficulty with examples containing clauses
introduced by as is encountered yet again in (36), accompanied with the problematic manner verb+multiple PP combination (blow+ across+ to):
(36) A cardboard box banged her knees as she blew across the road to where an old
lady was hopping on the spot and poking at a plastic bag on her foot.

She blew across the road on its own can refer to a boundary-crossing/changeoccurred situation type. Is the road a boundary or a location? Is to understood
as towards or not? We can say that the usual way to carry a cardboard box is with
both hands in the position parallel to the chest. It is impossible to see how a box
carried in such a way could repeatedly bang the carriers knees. Therfore, we could
argue that the expression in (36) refers to a single bang that occurred when the

Talking about Motion

moving Figure reached the other side of the road and lowered the box to the knee
level. This interpretation seems to require much more reading into it and harder to
reach than the alternative one. Imagine that the box was being carried on a string
(which is also a way to carry boxes) and suddenly it seems more likely that the
banging of knees happened while the Figure was crossing the boundary (i.e. while
blowing across the road), not when she reached the other side.
In (37) and (38), the objects of the prepositions are more likely to be interpreted as locations rather than boundaries and the conjunction as is less likely to
cause problems in interpretation. Therefore the whole expressions refer to nonboundary-crossing/no-change situation types. It is is more difficult to construe
grass or a field as a boundary, as shown in the following two examples:8
(37) The Headmaster still had on his gown and he flapped in the wind like a bat as
he charged across the grass.
(38) She enjoyed his company as they ran across the field.

In (39) we can notice that the clause following the motion expression reinforces
the interpretation of non-boundary-crossing/no-change:
(39) That evening Holmes and I drove across the moor until we could see the lights
of the Stapletons house in front of us.

It would be possible to interpret the moor as a barrier to be crossed if there was


no adverbial. The situation referred to is not that of boundary-crossing, but rather
the process of moving at a certain location for a certain period of time (i.e. until
we could see the lights ). The syntactic environment is clearly conducive to
processual understanding of one activity that was interrupted by another (i.e.
driving until something else happened).
In the next example, the expression containing under is obviously used to
express the situation type of boundary-crossing/change-occurred. However, it
would not have been so clear if we did not have a complex syntactic environment
including the expression of the preceding events:
(40) He took a running dive off the trolley, rolled when he hit the carpet, and scurried under the nearest seat.

The context that follows seems to resolve the interpretation of the following example (boundary-crossing/change-occurred):
(41) The white queen rolled under the table and was not found for several weeks.
8. Cf. Talmy (1988: 179) for the importance of bounded/unbounded space (e.g. We flew over
water vs. We flew over a sea).

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

Similarly, the interpretations of different combinations of walk and under seem


to be resolved on the sentence level:
(42) Luxuriating in the warm midmorning sun on her shoulders, she walked under the lattice archway and on to the bottom end of the garden (boundarycrossing/change-occurred)
(43) They walked under the leaves in an ominous quietness. (non-boundarycrossing/no-change)

We can pause and draw a preliminary conclusion here: syntactic information in


English (clause connectives and sentence structure) often seems to convey the
kind of information about situation types, which is found in Serbo-Croatian at the
morphological level. And it is the restrictions on the morphological level that determine the use of different means to express motion events in Serbo-Croatian,
whereas we can see that the relevant information in English is rendered more
through the lexical semantics/syntax interface. Thus, in English, the verb itself is
not a cue to determining situation types, and neither is the VP. Sentential context
is a more informative level. In Serbo-Croatian these problems do not arise because
the verb is such a cue in almost all cases.9 As a result, we cannot but conclude that
crosslinguistic contrasts should start from situation types and check which levels
in individual languages are responsible for expressing the relevant distinctions.
5.4.3 Defaults
There is another line of potential research that bears relevance to any study of lexicalization patterning, and that is the possibility of arguing in favor of default meaning. We can look at defaults from various angles.10 Different approaches to defaults
have been taken in the past (cf. Levinson (2000), Jaszczolt (2005)), tackling a variety of language phenomena (such as inference, implicature, belief reports, intentions, etc.). We do not want to discuss the psycholinguistic background and implications of positing defaults, but rather to explore the possibility that searching for

9. The only exceptions are some verbs prefixed by PRO- that can refer to movement at a certain location for a certain period of time (chapter 6).
10. Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca (1994) have made an observation concerning the English simple past tense: although the simple past encompasses various aspects including perfective,
habitual and progressive the default correlation is between perfective and simple past (ibid.:
ch.3.11).

Talking about Motion

them might provide a fresh look at some old problems. The underlying justification
for studying defaults in general is aptly phrased in Jaszczolt (1999: 272):
Defaults are less obvious to a researcher who lists the possible interpretations.
These defaults are only obvious when one realises how little has to be said for the
hearer to pick out the referent correctly.

The idea of default meanings in lexical semantics has been explored mainly in the
domain of categorization. Prepositional meanings, for example, are often subject
to different categorization practices (prototypes, clusters, networks, etc.). However, being aware of the networks of prepositional meaning, based on any classification criteria, is only a part of the complex picture of domain lexicalization and the
search for adequate translation. Consider the following example:
(44) The bottle floated through the pipe.

This expression is most spontaneously rendered into Serbo-Croatian as Boca je


prola kroz cev (The bottle passed through the pipe), which is a boundary-crossing/change-occurred type. Although the English example can potentially refer to
the non-boundary-crossing/no-change type as well, Serbo-Croatian speakers seem
to be in favor of the boundary-crossing/change-occurred interpretation.11 Native
speakers of Serbo-Croatian translated the verb in this example from English with a
perfective verb. To the question Where was the bottle then? the participants answer out of the pipe or (more imaginatively) in the sewer. This confirms the readiness to translate the simple past with perfective forms in Serbo-Croatian by default
(cf. Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca (1994) for further discussion). The no-change/
non-boundary-crossing meaning is more likely to be the chosen interpretation if
the past progressive was used instead (The bottle was floating through the pipe).
Speakers of Serbo-Croatian need to use one or the other form (perfective or imperfective) and cannot leave the expression underspecified with regard to the phase of
motion. An English speaker who uttered The bottle floated through the pipe would
no doubt know whether (s)he was referring to change-occurred or no-change type,
because it is an important experiential event feature involving a difference in observable consequences (i.e. the bottle is either inside or out of the pipe), but (s)he
does not need to draw the distinction in the verb or verb phrase. How does another
English speaker make a decision as to whether the bottle is still in the pipe or not?
We did not test intuitions of native speakers of English, but perhaps, in the absence
of any further specification, native speakers may be more inclined towards one of
the two interpretations, just as was the case with the example The man swam to the
shore (cf. discussion of examples (31) (32)). The fact is that such isolated
11. Filipovi (1999); experimental data.

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

expressions, consisting only of very few components, taken out of context, are not
the best examples to illustrate the way of conveying meaning in a language, but
such examples are used for the purpose of seeing the extent to which it is possible
to single out the decisive elements in the structure and define their potential.As we
saw in the algorithm for English, certain verbs and VPs have the potential to induce
interpretation easily, unlike some others.
Another detail seems to be of consequence for the Serbo-Croatian speaker
here: if the expression is interpreted as a reference to a non-boundary-crossing/
no-change situation, an unprefixed (imperfective) manner verb can be used. But if
the interpretation is boundary-crossing/change-occurred, and there is a prefixed
(perfective) manner verb where the prefix expresses the desired direction, it will
be used. Since there is a cline in prefix use, and the verb expressing manner cannot
be prefixed by the relevant prefix (e.g. * proplutati through-float is not found),
a deictic verb (e.g. otplutati from the speaker/scene-float) is used (because they
are the most numerous and could combine with all prepositions), most often adding a piece of information not found in the original.A directional verb is another
alternative with Manner either expressed in an adjunct or omitted because it is
predictable (e.g. the verb proi pass through is used).
Only two examples ((45) and (46)) in our corpus data provide very simple
sentential context and apparently make it impossible to establish the reference to a
single situation type:
(45) Five Norwegians skied over the beautiful white snow.

One interpretation could be that the skiers did not cross any boundary, and another interpretation could be that they passed over the beautiful white snow and
then hit some snow that was not so beautiful and white, but rather a brown and
mushy patch. Native speakers seem to opt more for the non-boundary-crossing
interpretation, and when they are asked to put this expression in a broader context, most of them added an adverbial phrase to the effect of all day long, or all
morning.12 The fact that there are multiple subjects performing the activity could
potentially induce the non-boundary-crossing interpretation, together with the
obvious unboundedness of the Ground element (snow). In this case, however, a
broader context is necessary to establish precisely what the situation type was. The
preposition over can be used both in boundary-crossing and non-boundarycrossing situations, and the beautiful white snow can be seen as a boundary to be
crossed or as a location. In such cases, we are certain that the speaker had one or
the other meaning in mind, and it is the hearers inference that we should examine
further. One way of doing so is by introducing default inferences, whereby it can be
12. Tested on 10 English native speakers, all Cambridge University graduates.

Talking about Motion

assumed that the most likely interpretation would be the default one unless evidence to the contrary is given. Default inferences could be based on the frequency
of use, e.g. how often certain VP combinations occur, whether boundary or location interpretations are more common in certain cases and how conventionalized
the scenarios are that are lexicalized by those VP combinations. Shibatani (1973)
explains how conventionalized scenarios license certain expressions in language
and condition their interpretation (cf. chapter 7). In the case of example (45) the
default inference can be that a non-boundary-crossing/no-change situation type is
expressed, because in the provisionally termed skiing scenario, the white snow is
where the activity of skiing unfolds, not a boundary that skiers have to overcome.
Further psycholinguistic experimental evidence should throw more light on default inferences and the input that is necessary in order to process the intended
meaning of the speaker.13 So we contend that most of the expressions of motion
clearly refer to one situation type, and it is specified on different levels depending
on the meaning of different elements and their combinations (verbs, prepositions,
nouns or noun phrases, adverbials) with respect to the relevant features of motion
events they express (combined to create the situation types), and the interpretation is achievable on a sentence level.
The other example that seems hard to interpret within the situation type analysis is the following:
(46) The dog ran under the table.

How are we to determine what situation type such an expression refers to? It could
refer to either boundary-crossing/change-occurred, or non-boundary-crossing/
no-change. This, in effect, would depend on the kind of event the speaker was describing. In this case there are three possibilities:
i. the dog was located under the table and ran there
ii. the dog was somewhere else and ran under the table (and stayed there)
iii. the dog passed under the table running.
Presumably, the speaker would know what kind of event (s)he had in mind, but
how is the listener/translator to know on the basis of this expression? Speakers
seem to be confirming the assumption that some defaults are justifiably posited.
Since the expression can obviously be used to express very different events, we
cannot say that the distinctions are not drawn in this expression because they are
not relevant for the event. When we communicate, we tend to locate and follow
the Figure in both space and time. Moreover, this kind of indeterminacy would
cause a frequent misunderstanding in communication, which does not seem to
13. We argue throughout our study that the quantity and quality of this input varies across
languages and across lexicalized experiential domains.

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

happen habitually. We might have to concede that there is a number of cases in


which context is absolutely indispensable.14 The cases as in (45) and (46) await
further research based on default meanings, potentially driven by conventionalized scenarios. If the object of the preposition were different in example (46) as in
He ran under the tree to hide from the rain, only the second interpretation (ii)
would be possible. A solution can come from conventionalized scenarios, i.e. how
often and in what situations does one use a particular combination such as skied
over and ran under? If one interpretation is the most frequent, that could be
considered a default, possible to override in a particular context. For example, the
combination ran under seems to cause less doubt in the following example
(boundary-crossing/change-occurred):
(47) It hit the platform fence and ran under the carriage.

It seems that knowledge about the world, together with knowledge of the typical
contexts in which verbs and constructions are used, as well as the frequencies of
particular constructions and combinations of lexical items, could be decisive in the
interpretation of expressions that can potentially be used to express very different
events, and thus make some interpretations more likely (i.e. defaults). A future direction of investigation could lie in checking frequency effects of all verb+particle combinations (e.g. how often is run+under used and understood to mean i., ii. or iii?).
How do speakers and hearers resolve this in conversation? We argue that the speaker definitely has one construal in mind (e.g. i., ii. or iii. in the case of (46)). However,
the expression as such has the potential to be mapped onto more than one situation
type by the hearer. Could it be that this is simply a case of polysemy, whereby the
same form can have different mappings onto two different situation types? This is
not an uncommon way of looking at word meanings in lexical semantics in some
instances. Alternatively, could it be the case that certain languages do not seem to
provide speakers and/or hearers with the means to express these differences on all
occasions, even though we argued that they are relevant and in our opinion define
the crucial spatial and temporal qualities of the situations described?
Although we suggested a number of steps to follow within the algorithm for
English in order to achieve the right interpretation, it is still not an all-encompassing outline of what happens in language use. Typically, the indeterminacy can be
resolved in one of the ways discussed in this chapter. On the other hand, perhaps
we are asking too much from a model, namely, expecting an explanation as to why,
on certain occasions, a system (English) does not make the relevant distinctions at
14. Other authors state that the status of under is unresolved and quote examples similar to
our (62): The mouse ran under the table, or The bottle floated under the bridge (cf. Fong and
Poulin (1998) and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995)).

Talking about Motion

the sentence level or below. Recent psycholinguistic evidence from the count/mass
domain suggests that even though the relevant distinctions are not made in Japanese, Japanese speakers make the same count/mass distinctions in verbal tasks (in
this case, similarity judgments on words and substitution errors in picture naming), just like English speakers (Iwasaki, Vinson and Vigliocco (in preparation)).
Similarly, English speakers know what they are referring to when they utter an
expression (if we are correct in defining our situation types as perceptual), but the
interesting thing would be to account for the hearers interpretation, especially in
cases where verb+particle combinations can be used in expressions of all three
situation types. We are not offering a definitive solution here, and are very much
looking forward to more psycholinguistic evidence of processing such expressions,
both by native speakers and language learners. Spatio-temporal inferences need
further probing, whereby the focus will be on the receiver of the message (especially one that speaks a different mother tongue) and the amount of information
(s)he needs in order to draw inferences regarding the spatio-temporal information
offered by the speaker. We selected the sentence as the unit in our study, but we by
no means want to imply that this is the necessary and sufficient context for communicating all the relevant situation type details in all the languages. The search
can start with the sentence as a minimal unit of analysis, but then it could lead, as
is the case in English, to exploring other contextual cues, when necessary. Potential areas to explore further are the immediate context (preceding and following),
as well as the general narrative scene setting, which could offer cues for interpretation. The point is, however, that if the speaker deems a piece of information, or a
contrast, extremely relevant, this will be highlighted, and an extra effort will be put
into drawing the distinction (e.g. by using past progressive, as a marked tense in
narrative, as in They were marching into the building, but then they stopped, so
not all of them managed to get in). However, if the speaker can achieve the same
effect by using a more economical, energy-efficient form (e.g. stick to the simple
past in narrative) or perhaps by considering the previous (or immediately following) contextual cues, this will be the preferred option. Translating a non-boundary-crossing situation from English into Serbo-Croatian or Spanish would cause
reorganization of information from the original because of the restricted use of
manner verbs, resulting in foregrounding of Manner in an adjunct. Languages
such as Serbo-Croatian or Spanish are not problematic in this sense, because the
use of verbs clearly indicates which situation type is expressed.
5.4.4 Narrative context
Since we have taken our analysis as far as the sentence level, we do not intend to
analyze narrative factors that could contribute to the interpretation of verbalized

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

events. Our corpus search did not present us with broader contextual information
beyond the kind of complex sentences we used as examples in this section. Nevertheless, we also pointed out in the previous section that two examples from the
corpus appeared without a broader, complex sentence context, which made it
more difficult to interpret them. We can conclude that the use of simple, underdetermined sentences, leaving open the possibility for the hearer to guess if change
of location occurred or not in a motion event, is not common in written or spoken
lexicalization of motion events in English. Nevertheless, it is possible that even a
complex sentential context can leave us wondering what situation type an expression refers to and imagining what the most likely scenario could be. In (48) we
have a complex sentence, but the interpretation of the temporal phase seems hard
to determine (moment-of-change or change-occurred):
(48) Carol was giggling insanely and Melissa was still trying to pull her jumper
down over her unruly, but perfectly formed, breasts as they ran across the
road to the van.

This brings us to narrative setting and topicalization in particular. What seems to


the point in (48) is the fact that Carol was giggling and Melissa was pulling her
jumper down whereas their running forms a kind of background setting to their
individual activities. Thus, the description of motion was not topical in (48). In
this case we checked intuitions of native speakers and they uniformly prefer
boundary-crossing/moment-of-change interpretation to boundary-crosssing/
change-occurred.15 In other words, the speakers view the situation as described in
(48) to be a description of giggling and pulling a jumper down while running.
Some speakers commented that the giggling and pulling a jumper may have continued when the other side of the street was reached, but that it was definitely happening while crossing the street.
Communication happens in a narrative context, which is established as soon
as the communication starts between the speaker and the hearer (or reader). The
introduction of a defined narrative context anchors the communicative situation
and facilitates the receipt of the message. We underlined that further research
tackling the frequency with which certain potentially ambiguous expressions refer
to one or the other situation type needs to be carried out in broader narrative contexts in order to establish other factors relevant for event lexicalization. We can
illustrate how narrative context in translation process can further clarify what situation type an expression refers to. For example, if a sequence of events is described
using the simple past tense in English, we can determine the situation type more
15. We are very grateful to David Vinson and 6 other native speakers who shared their intuitions on this example.

Talking about Motion

easily than when a single expression is given, and consequently opt for an adequate
form more readily when translating into a Slavic language. We take an example
from Danchev (1992: 329). When submitted to informants (ibid.), the verb cross
in the expression Soldiers crossed the street can be translated into Bulgarian (another morphologically complex language) by both perfective and imperfective
verbs, and the choice varied depending on the expansion of context. For the reason of concatenation of consecutive events, all the informants chose the perfective
form in the following cue: A siren wailed somewhere in the distance. Then a dog
chased a cat into a passage. Soldiers crossed the street. The imperfective form was
more readily chosen in the following narrative context: Sirens wailed in the distance, dogs barked in the garden and soldiers crossed the street. Danchev argues
that things evidently boil down to quantification made more explicit so as to allow an unambiguous single or multiple event reading of the respective texts
(ibid.). As we showed in chapter 3, it is not necessarily quantification that is decisive for the choice of perfective vs. imperfective verb (at least not in some Slavic
languages, e.g. Serbo-Croatian or Russian). These examples just show that expressions with plural external arguments and particles that have both directional and
locational reading can elicit different verb choices in Bulgarian. They do not tell us
anything about English aspectuality per se. We know now how native speakers of
Bulgarian (and perhaps other Slavic languages) react to examples such as Soldiers
crossed the street. What is the reaction of English native speakers? We already
introduced a simple experimental task in the case of our example The man swam
to the shore in chapter 3, whereby native speakers opted for a boundary-reaching/
change-occurred interpretation rather than non-boundary-crossing/no-change.
Perhaps there is one interpretation that is favored in English, which could differ
from case to case, i.e. the default meaning being different for different individual
V+PP combinations. This default may then be overridden in context. Therefore,
the relevance of context in English might be greater if seen through the eyes of speakers of languages in which such distinctions are explicitly drawn via morphology
(Slavic) or verb choice (directional vs. manner verb in Spanish) than for native speakers. We can also choose to say that the distinctions we are discussing here are latent/covert/abstract in English, but our analysis does not benefit from this. Instead, we chose to deal not with categories and facets of individual linguistic
systems but rather with universal experience of and interaction with space that
affects the experience of temporality (in the sense of the inner temporal contour of
events, traditionally aspect, not tense). This is our version of spacetime continuum,
represented in our situation type network.
Danchev (1992) focused on iterativity (which we do not tackle at present), arguing against a monosentential approach to aspectuality in general and in favor
of recognizing the broader context for the purpose of explicitation of aspectual

Chapter 5. Data analysis for English

meanings (ibid.). Our sentential approach was not only practical, but also managed to cover a lot of ground. We never claimed that we can account for absolutely
all occurrences, but we detected principles and mechanisms that could help us understand how to carry out a crosslinguistic study efficiently and reliably. We acknowledge that some further understanding of the spatio-temporal intricacies of
events in reality and their verbalized counterparts crosslinguistically could come
from further exploration of narrative setting. For verbalized motion events, the
unit could be that of a journey in terms of Slobin, as we discussed in chapter 2.
Nevertheless, we showed that the sentential level is gratifyingly informative and
offers numerous clues in English when it comes to understanding situation type
references. The spatio-temporal network in terms of situation types is still valid as
a neutral tool because it unites perceptually relevant spatial and temporal features
which are likely to be salient across a great number of languages and prove useful
in comprehensive crosslinguistic contrasts. Further research into preferential, default interpretations and the frequencies of scenarios in reality that might motivate
the use and interpretation of lexicalizing expressions in a domain, as well as narrative patterns and narrative scene-setting crosslinguistically, may yet provide us with
more profound understanding of what other factors could contribute to better understanding of event verbalization. The interplay of experiential input, conceptual
processing and linguistic expression could truly be unified in this endeavor.
Summary
We argued in this chapter that our situation types are a useful matrix for lexicalization study within and across languages. We focused on the aspects of lexicalization
of motion events in English that are particularly difficult for non-native speakers.
The aim was to show that even though the relevant spatio-temporal distinctions
are not uniformly drawn in English in the way it is systematically done in SerboCroatian or Spanish for example, it is possible to determine which situation type is
described based on various constituents in a sentence and their combinations. The
fact that there are no morphological, syntactic or semantic restrictions (as is the
case in Serbo-Croatian and Spanish) could condition the use of manner verbs in
English; they combine freely with directional particles and are used to refer to all
situation types. Learning the rules of using tenses properly would not tell us very
much about the meaning of motion expressions. Lexical meanings of verbs also
offer limited information with respect to events in reality which they are involved
in lexicalizing. Verb+preposition combinations reveal more information about
our situation types, but they are not explicit enough because they also map onto
more than one situation type depending on the external and internal arguments in

Talking about Motion

the sentences. We saw that this is not an insurmountable problem, and listed the
ways in which it can be resolved. We emphasized that the spatio-temporal features
we proposed do not necessarily achieve systematic surface realization at the sentence level in all languages. The spatial notion of boundary and the temporal notion of change lie in the essence of our spatio-temporal network for verbalized
motion events, which are our motion situation types. We assume that these notions are universal, accessible to speakers of all languages. We also noticed that
typologically different languages can be contrasted on the basis of how their speakers talk about boundaries and changes in motion events. Perhaps the sentence
level is not the ideal universal platform for a contrastive lexicalization study. An
immediate example that springs to mind is Yucatec Mayan in which continuous
motion cannot be lexicalized in a single clause. Instead, when speakers of Yucatec
Mayan express change of location, they talk about a series of locations (cf. Bohnemeyer (1997)). The equivalent of He walked out of the house into the garden
would be something to the effect of He was at the house. Then he was in the garden. As a result, we may not be able to account for all the phenomena in all languages at one structural level (sentence), but we hope we have shown how it is a
good start to begin from universal features of a cognitive domain and move towards language-specific realization of those features on the lexical semantic, syntactic and morphological levels. We offered instructions that foreign language
learners, teachers and translators can use to systematically facilitate the grasp of
similarities and differences between the two languages, the latter of which frequently leads to difficulties and misunderstandings. We welcome further research
into habitual use of verb+particle combinations and constructions that feature in
the lexicalization of motion events, as well as other cognitive domains such as
posture or causation in order to pin down the trends and tendencies that are potentially universal (e.g. all languages habitually lexicalize Path of motion) as well as
those that are language-specific (e.g. some languages lexicalize Cause more often
and earlier in acquisition than others).

chapter 6

Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian


6.1 The importance of being a prefix
Studies of lexicalization of events have rarely comprised issues related to morphology. In one study, Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1998a) pointed out that in expressing motion, Russian differs from English in one morphological feature. In both
Russian and English, morphologically simple verbs of manner of motion have the
activity sense (in Vendlerian terms, which is what Levin and Rappaport Hovav
use), as in:
(1) a. On begal
po
komnate.
He ran-PST-IPFV-3SG-M around room-DAT
He ran around the room.

Unlike English, Russian uses morphologically simple verbs only for the activity
sense. In the accomplishment sense, the verbs form is morphologically complex,
including one of a range of directional prefixes indicating the goal of motion, as in:
(1) b. On ubeal
u komnatu.
He into- ran-PST-PFV-3SG-M into room-ACC
He ran into the room.

Levin and Rappaort Hovav conclude that in Russian, lexical semantic units of a
certain complexity cannot be associated with monomorphemic items (ibid: 257).
When verbs are semantically and morphologically related, the morphological devices used to signal such relations are associated with grammatically relevant components of meaning, such as aspectual classification (Levin and Rappaport Hovav
(1998a: 267)). However, this analysis hardly reveals anything about the relation
between lexical semantics and morphology. All the two authors present is the fact
that perfective forms are morphologically more complex than imperfective forms,
and that marking aspect is relevant for Russian. What it means for the whole system, what constraints (if any) can be seen in the lexicalization process and whether it can have further consequences for crosslinguistic comparisons are not indicated. This is what our study aims to show for Serbo-Croatian.

Talking about Motion

As demonstrated, English speakers can freely, and would most naturally, use
manner verbs in all situation types. In Serbo-Croatian, the choice of whether a
manner verb or a directional verb is to be used depends on whether a perfective or
an imperfective form of the verb is needed. Serbo-Croatian prefixed manner verbs
are used in cases in which change-occurred is expressed:
(2) Utrao
je
u
sobu.
Into-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP into room.
He ran into the room.

This is possible in cases in which an adequate prefixed verb exists, i.e. when the
relevant verb can be prefixed by the prefix that expresses the desired direction. If
the verb does not exist, an OD-/DO- verb is used:
(3)



Poto su
se
naekale napolju,
one su
After be-COP REFL waited a lot outside, they be-COP
najzad dobatrgale
unutra.
finally to-the-speaker/scene-lumber-PST-PFV-3PL-f inside.
After they had waited a lot outside, they finally lumbered inside.

In translations where an adequate manner verb does not exist in the target language,
a directional or a semantically simpler manner verb is used, as in example (4), which
is the repeated example (8) from chapter 4, and example (5) respectively:
(4)


She rustled into the room.


Ula
je
u sobu uz utanje svoje svilene haljine.
Enter-PST-PFV-3SG-F be-COP into room with rustling her silk dress-GEN
She entered the room with a rustle of her silk dress.

(5)






As I ambled into the bar I decided to make my last stop for the night.
Kad sam
uetao
besciljno u bar,
When be-COP into-stroll-PST-PFV-3SG-M aimlessly into bar,
odluio
sam
da to bude moja poslednja stanica
decide-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP that this be-PRS my
last
stop
te noi.
that night.
When I walked into the bar aimlessly, I decided it would be my last stop that
night.

When a moment-of-change is to be expressed in Serbo-Croatian, the imperfective


verb form is needed and the verbs used are directional.Imperfective (unprefixed)
manner verbs are used to express no-change, and cannot be used for moment-ofchange. Prefixed manner verbs cannot be used on that occasion either since they

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

are also perfective at the same time. Imperfective directional verbs are different
from imperfective manner verbs because they do not seem to be related to their
perfective equivalents in the same way in which imperfective manner verbs are:1
(6) Ulazio
je
u
kuu puzei.
Enter-PST-IPFV-3SG-M be-COP into house crawling.
He was crawling into the house.

In an expression of no-change phase, an imperfective manner verb is used:


(7) Trao
je
preko dolina
celo popodne.
Run-PST-IPFV-3SG-M be-COP across meadows all afternoon.
He ran across the meadows all afternoon.

An important distinction we have pointed out earlier, but we feel we have to get
back to at this point, is that of directional vs. locational.There are cases where nonboundary-crossing/ no-change meaning is preserved in Serbo-Croatian in certain
expressions, but the meaning conveyed in the expression, due to the different case
of the object of the preposition, can be either directional or locational.The preposition u (into) can be used in boundary-crossing and non-boundary-crossing expressions, but when used with an imperfective manner verb, the situation type
referred to is always non-boundary-crossing/no-change. The distinction that is
decided by the case of the object of the preposition is that of directional vs. locational, and is marked by the case form of the object of the preposition as follows
(cf. example (8) in 3.3. and (2c) & (2d) in chapter 4):
(8) Trao
je
u kolu.
Run-PST-IPFV-3SG-M be-COP into school-ACC
He ran towards the school.
(9) Trao
je
u sobi.
Run-PST-IPFV-3SG-M be-COP in room-LOC
He ran in/inside the room.

In (8) in Serbo-Croatian, the meaning is directional/non-boundary-crossing, and


in (9) it is locational/ non-boundary-crossing. In both cases an imperfective manner verb is used; the temporal phase is that of no-change.
The meanings of cases in Serbo-Croatian generally do not interfere with the
temporal phase in motion expressions. In both (8) and (9) an imperfective manner
verb is used, and regardless of the difference in the cases of the objects of the prepositions, the two expressions refer to the same kind of situations, the relevant spatiotemporal features (non-boundary-crossing/no-change) being the same for both.
1.

Cf. chapter 3.

Talking about Motion

In the following examples we illustrate how sometimes the difference in meaning is drawn in expressions depending on what comes after the verb: direct object
or preposition+ object of the preposition. Talmy (2000: 127) claims that if the direct object is used, the idea of overcoming an obstacle is more salient:
(10) a. Preplivao
je
reku.
Across-swim-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP river-ACC
He swam the river.
b. Preplivao
je
preko reke.
Across-swim-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP across river-GEN
He swam across the river.

There are examples where this salience is more prominent in Serbo-Croatian. For
example, the verb pretrati (across-run or 'along-run') can be followed by either
a direct object or a preposition + object of the preposition. The example (10c) can
have two interpretations, whereas (10d) can only have one interpretation:
(10) c.


Pretrao
je
ulicu.
Across-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP street-ACC
He ran the whole length of the street.
or He ran across the street.

d. Pretrao
je
preko ulice.
Across-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP across street-GEN
He ran across the street.

The possibility of the expression in (10c) to refer to an event where a Figure covers
the whole length of the street running comes from the fact that the noun in the
accusative case can refer to either axis of the object (in this case the length or the
width of the street). And this dual interpretation is more likely if the direct object
refers to a street than if it refers to a river, because, on the basis of our knowledge
about the world, it seems easier to imagine a situation in which somebody ran
from one end of the street to the other length-wise, than the situation in which
somebody swam from the beginning to the end of a river!2 Still, native speakers
opted for the latter interpretation in (10c) as the preferred one, and the former,
which lexicalizes the length axis of the street, although possible, was not favoured.3
2. A Slovenian swimmer, Martin Strel, actually brings this less likely scenario to life by swimming the length of the Amazon, Danube, Mississippi and Yangtze. This unique scenario is an
exception.
3. Native speakers (20) were shown pictures that represented both interpretations of example
(10c) in writing and had to choose which one the expression referred to. The width axis was the
preference of 17 speakers.

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

Some speakers admitted that it would have been clearer that the expression referred to running the length of the street if it contained the word celu (whole) in
front of the word ulica (street):
(10) e. Pretrao
je
celu
ulicu.
Along-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP whole-ACC street-ACC
He ran the whole length of the street.

6.2 OD-/DO-: deixis, aspect, boundary


We will look at all the prefixes that feature in the process of lexicalization of motion events in Serbo-Croatian and analyze various examples in order to illustrate
the claim that morphological restrictions have a crucial role in the lexicalization
process in this language. We discovered that depending on the situation type that
is expressed in Serbo-Croatian, speakers tend to employ different techniques in
the process of rendering experience into the linguistic system. The prefixes, their
meanings and frequencies are given in Table 2. Corpus and dictionary searches
revealed that not all the manner verbs can be prefixed freely by all prefixes.
Table 2. Prefixed perfective manner of motion verbs
Prefixed manner verbs
DOODIZUPROPRENAPODTotal

Types








118
118
43
43
41
20
5
3
391

Tokens








423 (31.9%)
396 (29.9%)
169 (12.7%)
117 (8.8%)
135 (10.2%)
74 (5.6%)
10 (0.7%)
2 (0.2%)
1326 (100%)

The interpretation of the prefix PRO- (through or past) is resolved by the prepositions
that normally follow PRO-verbs, which are different depending on this difference in meaning.
For convenience, PRO1- (directional) and PRO2- (locational) data are given together since this
does not affect the point we are making.

Talking about Motion

OD-/DO- verbs are the most frequent because:


a) they combine with all prepositions:
(11) Odepao
je
preko vlanog ljunka.
From-the speaker/scene-limp-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP over moist gravel.
He limped off over the moist gravel.

b) they accumulate directional phrases onto a single verb:


(12) U baraku preko
se doteturao
Into shed opposite REFL to-the-speaker/scene-stagger-PST-PFV-3SG-M
otud
iz logora.
from there out prison camp.
He staggered into the shed opposite from there out of the prison camp.
(13)



Doskakao
je
uz stepenice
To-the-speaker/scene-jump-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP up stairs
u
devojinu sobu.
into girls
room.
He jumped up the stairs into the girls room.

c) they habitually express deixis (a strong feature in Serbo-Croatian lexicalization and narrative pattern):
(14)




To je rekao i
oteturao
He said that and from-the-speaker/scene-stagger-PST-PFV-3SG-M
se u gostinjsku sobu.
REFL into guest
room.
He said that and staggered away into the guest room.
(Note that uteturati into-stagger exists).

In this way, a speaker of Serbo-Croatian would more often than not provide information related to his/her position, or have a referent other than the Figure that is
moving. The frame of reference in Serbo-Croatian seems to be in most cases a
relative one. Saeed (2001: 173) argues that deictic devices in a language commit a
speaker to set up a frame of reference around herself , and he gives examples of
Somali, where the two deictic morphemes (soo towards the speaker, and sii
away from the speaker) combine freely with verbs (ibid.: 176). We noticed the
complete freedom in the combination of deictic OD-/DO- prefixes with verbs in
Serbo-Croatian. This, in effect, brings this argument to Levinson (e.g. (1999a),
(1999b), (2003)), who studies a number of diverse (and less commonly discussed)
languages. The concept of the frame of reference, mainly based on Gestalt theories
of perception is a unit or organization of units that collectively serve to identify

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

a coordinate system with respect to which certain properties of objects, including


the phenomenal self, are gauged (Levinson 2003: 24). Levinson distinguishes intrinsic (object-centered), relative (viewer-centered), and absolute (environmentcentered) frames. One common mistake is to think that intrinsic is opposed to
deictic; moreover, relative frame of reference is often referred to as deictic. Actually, the opposition is between 1) coordinate systems: intrinsic vs. relative, and 2)
origins: deictic and non-deictic (ibid: 38). It is clear that, although the viewpoint in
the relative frame is normally speaker-centered, it can be addressee-centered or
centered on a third party. In fact, Levinson shows that all three frames may have a
deictic centre: The ball is in front of me (intrinsic), The ball is in front of the tree
from where I am standing (relative), and The ball is north of me (absolute). On
the other hand, none of the three frames of reference need to have a deictic center:
The ball is in front of the chair, The ball is in front of the chair from Bills point of
view, and The ball is north of the chair (ibid.: 5051).
Although there is no one-to-one relationship between deictic and relative, as
Levinson explains, we do not insist on this distinction for the purpose of the
present analysis. The reason for this approach lies in the fact that our data do not
give access to the information on the origin, in Levinsons terms. One cannot be
sure in all cases whether, in the descriptions of motion events, the movement described was to/from the speaker, addressee or a third party. Any point of view
could be taken and it is not obvious from an expression given within the limited
context of a sentence. Accounts of events in literary works contained in the corpus,
for example, could have been written in first or third person, and there is no way
of knowing unless one is familiar with the source (e.g. the whole novel). Thus,
since there is no great harm done to the understanding of frames of reference, the
distinctions offered here cut across Levinsons, and are simplified for the purpose
of this study, bearing in mind that subtler (and by no means unimportant) differences exist. What is meant by intrinsic here is the Figure-centered frame, whereas
the relative one is the speaker/scene-centered frame. The frames of reference used
in Serbo-Croatian are intrinsic and deictic/relative, but when it comes to the central situation type that is the backbone of the intratypological contrasts (boundary-crossing/change-occurred), it seems that the deictic/relative perspective is favored because of the power of OD-/DO- verbs to combine with all prepositions
and accumulate them in a single clause in this situation type. It is vital to analyze
other experiential domains apart from motion events in this framework as well as
to study possible effects of preferred frames of reference in verbalization, information processing, perception and memory. The cline in prefix use that we established is an indicator that the deictic/relative frame is a preferred option in SerboCroatian, as opposed to English, where the intrinsic (Figure-centred) perspective

Talking about Motion

appears to be favored, which a study of manipulating objects in space has demonstrated (Carroll 1999).4
The analysis of deictic and other directional prefixes in Serbo-Croatian is aimed
at drawing attention to the fact that deixis constitutes an important part of the
lexicalization process. The deictic meaning of certain prefixes in Serbo-Croatian
has not been of much interest, and it is hardly ever mentioned in some major descriptions of the system of prefixes5. The cline in prefix use we established is a reliable indicator that the relative frame is a preferred option in Serbo-Croatian.
The term deictic derives from a Greek root meaning to show or to point.
Deictic uses cannot be accounted for by language alone, but require additional
knowledge of certain details of the interactional situation in which the utterances
are produced (Fillmore 1982: 35). Lyons (1999: 170) states that the essential
property of deixis [] is that it determines the structure and interpretation of utterances in relation to the time and place of their occurrence, the identity of the
speaker and the addressee, and objects and events in the actual situation of utterance. Several kinds of deixis have been distinguished (cf. Lyons (1991)), notably
person, place and time, prototypically represented in language by I, here, and
now. For example, in place deixis, understanding the uses of this and that or
here and there require knowing where the participants in a discourse are, relative to the objects in a scene. Similarly, Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976: 396) define place deixis as the linguistic system for talking about space relative to a
speakers egocentric origin and coordinate axes.
Some of the subtlety of deixis comes from the fact that many deictic terms can
be used non-deictically, especially intrinsically, such as front and left (Tversky
(1999: 466)). If one says The tent is in front of the boulder, one is using the term
front deictically. The boulder has no front side, so one is stating that the tent is
located between the speakers front side and the boulder. In that case, the
interlocutor(s) must know where the speaker is located and how the speaker is
oriented with respect to the boulder to understand what the speaker means. In
contrast, if one says My pack is in front of the tent, one can be using the term
front either deictically, as in the example with the boulder, or intrinsically, i.e.
with respect to the objects natural sides. Thus, for the intrinsic use, the speaker
meant that his/her pack is located near the front side of the tent (ibid.). The absolute (or extrinsic) case is the clearest. Absolute uses of language rely on an external
4. Note that we take a broad view on spatial deixis, whereby movement from or to the speaker
or scene-setting is considered deictic because it draws narrative attention of the listener/reader
towards assuming the position in focus (i.e. positioned at the location of the speaker/scene).
5. Not mentioned in some major studies of prefixes in Serbo-Croatian (e.g. Beli (1964),
Stevanovi (1989)).

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

reference system, such as canonical directions, north-south, east-west. If one says


The tent is south of the boulder, one is using language extrinsically.
Obviously, the examples we discussed so far are related to location, and what
we are interested in are motion events and spatial deictic reference. Slobin and
Hoiting (1994: 140) have pointed out that directional deixis plays a key role in
signed languages, in that directional verbs are used in expressions not only with
respect to source and goal, but also with respect to the sender and receiver, together with points that may be established in signing space to indicate the locations and viewpoints of protagonists set up in the discourse. They further point
out that spoken languages express deixis and direction through separate elements
(either through two verbs or through a satellite expression and a verb). According
to them, this reflects an inherent limitation of spoken languages. In other words,
spoken languages must linearize deictic and directional information, rather than
express it simultaneously, as is easily done in signed languages.6 Our analysis of
deictic and other directional prefixes in Serbo-Croatian is aimed at drawing attention to the fact that deixis constitutes an important part of the lexicalization process. Our claims made in this chapter will be further supported by evidence from
the corpus data.
When reference point is not explicitly stated with OD-/DO- verbs, it is inferred to be the speaker/scene where the attention of the listener/reader is focused,
in which case we have deictic reference, as in:
(15) U tom trenu je
dotrao
Marko.
In that moment be-COP to-the-speaker/scene-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M Marko.
In that moment Marko ran up to me/us/here.

In the following example we do not have information about speaker/scene setting,


but rather Figure-centred, intrinsic perspective on the change of location. However, OD-/DO- examples of this kind are comparatively rare, because they involve
providing information about both source (OD-from) and goal (DO-to):
(16) Oteturao
se od vrata do stola.
From-stagger-PST-PFV-3SG-M REFL from door to table.
He staggered from the door to the table.

We also found examples when an OD-/DO- verb is used, although it would have
been possible just to use the verb that is prefixed by a prefix that expresses the desired direction, without adding the deictic element, as in:

6. Studies in sign language could be evoked as an illustration of the overall presence and importance of deictic reference in motion lexicalization (cf. Slobin and Hoiting 1994).

Talking about Motion

(17)



Dotrao
je
u sobu.
To-the-speaker/scene-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP into room
gde su sedeli gosti.
where the guests were sitting
He ran into the room where the guests were sitting.

Note that utrati ('into-run') exists in Serbo-Croatian, but still a deictic verb
(dotrati) is used instead. Similarly, the verb uteturati (se) (into-stagger) exists,
but a deictic doteturati (se) is used instead in the following example:
(18)



Izvukao se
iz svog skrovita, i
He
sneaked out of his shelter, and
doteturao
se
u
selo.
to-the-speaker/scene-stagger-PST-PFV-3SG-M REFL into village.
He sneaked out of his shelter and staggered into the village.

The point here is that even when verbs signaling different directions (non-deictic)
exist in the language, a deictic verb can be used, and the direction specified in the
preposition, as illustrated in the example above. It is understandable that when
there is no verb prefixed by the directional prefix that is needed to express the desired direction, a verb prefixed by a deictic OD-/DO- prefix would be used. What
we emphasize here is that even when an adequate non-deictically prefixed manner
verb exists (as in (17) and (18)), a deictic OD-/DO- verb is still opted for more
often. Since those verbs are used more frequently than verbs prefixed otherwise,
an additional piece of information is frequently found in translation from a language that does not have deixis as a strong feature of the system (e.g. English) into
one that does (e.g. Serbo-Croatian). Therefore we find numerous examples where
no deictic reference is found in the original, but is found in the translation (cf.
Filipovi (1999)). The reason for this could be an incompetent translator, but it can
be shown that on a number of occasions the translation would be strained if a
deictic expression is introduced every time in a translation into a language which
does not favour deictic expressions (e.g. from Serbo-Croatian into English).
The following example illustrates the same point that although a verb prefixed
by U- (into) exists, it is not used here. Rather, a deictic verb is used, thus providing a piece of information regarding the position of the speaker or the focus of the
attention of interlocutors or readers.
(19)



Drugog dana je
dobasao
Second day be-COP to-the-speaker/scene-trudged-PST-PFV-3SG-M
u
umu.
into woods.
On the second day he trudged into the woods.

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

Interestingly enough, in order to render the meaning of the expression dobasati u


umu more precisely in English, the deictic verb come could be used in English
and the manner would then have to be rendered in an adjunct (trudging in came
trudging into the woods). However, that is not the typical way of expressing motion events in English. We are aware that there is always a possibility that speakers
would use a different pattern from the typical one. It can be a matter of choice for
speakers, as there are no particular systemic restrictions in English that would
prevent the use of alternative patterns. However, this possibility only arises because of difficulties in translation. When would an English speaker regularly need
to distinguish come and go away with different directions of motion signaled by
prepositional phrases following, as in (17), (18) or (19)? The combination directional or deictic verb + a manner adjunct is just not opted for on most occasions in
English, because there is a more practical, economical and habitual way in the
system to pack information regarding motion events, namely to express manner in
the verb and then add directional particles.
We illustrate the extensive use of deictic verbs in Serbo-Croatian with various directional particles:
(20)



Uto je
dobrzao
Then be-COP to-the-speaker/scene-speed-PST-PFV-3SG-M
neko
kroz
vinograd.
someone through vineyard.
Then somebody quickly arrived through the vineyard.

(21)



Berina majka je
dobrzala
Beras mother be-COP to-the speaker/scene-speed-PST-PFV-3SG-f
iz
kuhinje i
otvorila vrata.
out of kitchen and opened door.
In that moment the bell rang and Beras mother arrived quickly from the
kitchen and opened the door.

(22)





Pafko je urlao kao sumanut da die ruke od svega toga i


Pafko was roaring like mad
to lift hands off everything and
dojurili
su
svi
to-the-speaker/scene-rush-PST-PFV-3PL-M be-COP everyone
iz
predsjednikova ureda.
from presidents
cabinet.
Pafko was roaring like a madman saying that he was giving everything up and
everybody rushed to the scene from the presidents cabinet.

We will now analyze the situations including movement away from the speaker or
from the point where the attention of the audience is focused, and see where the

Talking about Motion

potential difficulty lies for translating the expressions of such situations into English. For example:
(23)



Morala je ostati na sceni jo pet minuta,


a
zatim je
She had to stay on the scene five more minutes, and then be-COP
otrala
u kupaonicu.
from-the-speaker/scene-run-PST-PFV-3SG-F into the bathroom.
She had to stay on the scene five more minutes, and then she ran from the
scene into the bathroom.

The particle off is a possible equivalent for the deictic OD-, but when this particle
is used in a motion expression, it can create the impression that the movement was
sudden or abrupt, which the deictic prefix in the Serbo-Croatian verb can, but
does not necessarily express (cf. examples (23), (24) and (25)):
(24)



Sad znam da je nema,


otrala
Now I know she is not there, from-the-speaker/scene-run-PST-PFV-3SG-F
je
prema gradu.
be-COP towards the town.
Now I know she is not there, she ran towards the town.

(25)



Mukarac se digao, duboko uzdahnuo i


The man rose,
took a deep breath and
odepao
po automobilski akumulator.
from-the-speaker/scene-limp-PST-PFV-3SG-M for car battery.
The man got up, took a deep breath and limped off to fetch the car battery.

Here the speaker does not necessarily express that the movement was sudden, but
rather that the Figure moved from the place where the speakers focus was at the
time of event observation and/or verbalization. In this way, off can be said to
convey the meaning initial phase of the movement, which is, together with the
final phase of movement, one of the meanings conveyed by the OD-/DO- prefixes
respectively in Serbo-Croatian, and as observed rightly by Verkuyl (1999), an important feature of Slavic languages in general (i.e. expressing initial/final stage of
events). The use of the particle off in English (e.g. the combination
verb+off+directional particle) is not even nearly as commonly present as the deictic prefix OD- is in Serbo-Croatian. Therefore, it cannot be considered as a potential equivalent in cases where deictic meaning away from the speaker/scene is
expressed in Serbo-Croatian. It does not render the complexity of meanings expressed by the prefix OD- in Serbo-Croatian. If we wanted to say that perhaps the
boundary-reaching prepositions from and to in English could be potential
equivalents to OD- and DO- in Serbo-Croatian respectively, we find immediate

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

confirmation that it is not so. Depending on where the speaker or scene-setting


was as expressed in a Serbo-Croatian example (e.g. Otrao/Dotrao je uz stepenice meaning He from-the-speaker/to-the-speaker-ran up the stairs), in English,
if this had to be specified in translation, it would turn a most normal English sentence like He ran up the stairs into He ran up the stairs from/to where the speaker was standing.
Thus the OD-/DO- verbs have the largest applicability of all prefixed verbs in
motion lexicalization, i.e. they can be used in all situation types when prefixed
verbs are necessary (namely change-occurred/boundary-crossing or boundaryreaching). The number of verbs prefixed by OD-/DO- found in the dictionary is
118 each. This is the number of types, and the number of tokens (the number of
examples found in the corpus data) is 396 for OD-verbs and 423 for DO-verbs. As
we have mentioned before, they are the most numerous because they can combine
with all prepositions, express deixis, and accumulate prepositional phrases. According to Slobin (1997a), one of the most important qualities of languages that
express Manner in the verb is that they can use one manner verb and then add
many directional phrases in expressions of motion events. We found out that in
Serbo-Croatian, this pattern is restricted to the OD-/DO- verbs.7 OD-/DO- verbs
are used in combination with various prepositions and can accumulate prepositional phrases in boundary-crossing expressions so that only one verb is used in
expressions where the Path along which the Figure is moving is complex and is
rendered via multiple directional phrases. In such cases, the use of verbs prefixed
by other prefixes is restricted. When a Path along which the entity moves needs to
be expressed by more than one directional element, an OD-/DO- verb is used because directional phrases can be accumulated after those verbs unlike verbs prefixed otherwise. For example:
(26)



Otrao
je
preko polja
From-the-speaker/scene-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP across field
i kroz
umu u
susedno
selo.
and through woods into neighboring village.
He ran across the field and through the woods into the neighboring village.

If we try using the same verb (trati run) prefixed by a different prefix, for example one of the prefixes related to the prepositions that follow in the directional
7. Shull (2003) argues that in Russian, the prefix combines almost exclusively with a single
preposition (e.g. OT-with the preposition ot) or with a few principal prepositions, whereas
Czech prefixes combine more flexibly with a number of prepositions in more even distributions
(ibid.: 81). Renee Perelmutter (p.c.) confirms that this claim is too restrictive for Russian, and it
would be interesting to see whether prefixed verbs+prepositions combinations reveal similar
behavior in the context of motion expressions as those in Serbo-Croatian.

Talking about Motion

phrases after the verb (e.g. PRO-, which means through), the expression is no
longer acceptable:
(27)



*Protrao
je
kroz
umu
Through-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP through woods
u
susedno
selo.
into neighboring village.
He ran through the woods into the neighboring village.

Manner verbs prefixed otherwise than with OD-/DO- cannot freely accumulate
directional phrases. They can sometimes be followed by more than one directional phrase, but they still express an event whereby only one boundary was crossed,
e.g. normally a quick change of location, for example:
(28) Istrao
je
iz
sobe na terasu.
Out-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP out of room onto terrace.
He ran out of the room onto the terrace.

We shall go back to this type of example later when we discuss IZ-/U- verbs (cf.
6.3.). It is worth pointing out that many of the verbs which are found prefixed only
by OD-/DO- and no other prefix, especially those that are found only in dictionaries and not confirmed in the corpus data, are strongly marked stylistically infrequently used (especially not in spoken language) or obsolete. Examples have not
been found for a number of manner verbs found in the dictionary, mainly prefixed
by OD-/DO-, which are semantically complex or considered old-fashioned and
not used in modern language (e.g. dobangati come limping, or dobavrljati
come with difficulty, doverugati come dragging oneself; with great difficulty,
etc.). Despite this, our proposed prefixed cline remains valid, because the number
of verbs that can be prefixed by prefixes down the cline diminishes progressively
downwards even if we exclude those marked verbs. The claim we made earlier and
repeat here with a detailed analysis goes as follows: if there is a verb prefixed by
U- or PRE-, there must be an OD-/DO- verb, while the reverse is not the case. By
the same token, OD-/DO- verbs are used on many occasions in the corpus data
when the verb used could have been prefixed otherwise.
6.3 Other prefixes
The next group of prefixes most frequently found in prefixed verbs are IZ- (out)
and U- (into). The verbs prefixed by those prefixes cannot be followed by all prepositions, but they can still be followed by more prepositions than verbs prefixed by
PRO-, PRE-, NA- or POD-. The number of types for the verbs prefixed by IZ-/U-

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

is 43 each, and the number of tokens is 169 for IZ-verbs and 117 for U-verbs. The
prepositions that follow those verbs are iz (out of ), u (into), kroz (through)
and na(onto)8. These results do not come as a surprise, because those verb and
preposition combinations cover quite a lot of possible directions of motion in situation types that one can refer to because of their combinability with other prepositions as well. The numbers are not as high as those for OD-/DO- verbs, but are
higher than those for the prefixes further down the cline. Although the accumulation of directional expressions is not possible the way it is with OD-/DO- verbs, it
is possible to use more than one directional phrase with IZ-/U- verbs, but only in
cases in which the moving Figure crossed only one boundary, as in:
(29) Uleteo
je
u
sobu kroz
prozor.
Into-fly-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP into room through window.
He flew into the room through the window.

In (29) the point A (the starting point of motion) is gapped, the point B (where the
moving Figure ended up) is the room, and through the window refers to what is
sometimes termed the medium, i.e. a kind of obstacle, barrier or space that the
moving Figure goes through. Similarly, in example (28), the starting point A is a
room, and the final point B is a terrace, the two spaces being in direct, immediate
contact (the same as in (25)). These expressions refer to the crossing of a single
boundary and events of very short duration, and the two Ground elements are in
immediate contact. It is not the same accumulation of prepositional phrases that
we find with OD-/DO verbs.
The verbs prefixed by PRO- can be followed by the prepositions kroz
(through) and pored (past). The number of types is 41, and the number of tokens 135. PRO- verbs have a high number of types and tokens (almost as high as
those of IZ- and U- verbs) even though they do not combine with that many directional prepositions. This is possibly due to their dual capacity to be used in expressions of two distinct directed motion schemas: motion through a space and motion past a Ground object. If we attempt to use a verb prefixed by PRO- and

8. There are quite a few other prepositions that are found in motion expressions in SerboCroatian, which we are not discussing here (e.g. ispred (in front of), iza (behind), niz (along),
etc.). We had to limit our corpus and focus on the crucial data that reveal further contrasts
between English and Serbo-Croatian. Therefore, we took into account the prepositions that have
a corresponding prefix, thus covering a significant number of cases.

Talking about Motion

different directional prepositions (except either pored or kroz) and try to accumulate directional phrases, the expressions are unacceptable:
(30)



?Protrao
je
kroz
dnevnu sobu
Through-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP through lounge
u kuhinju.
into kitchen.
He ran through the lounge into the kitchen.

Instead, we would have to use two verbs for every portion of the Path9:
(31)



Protrao
je
kroz
dnevnu sobu i
Through-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP through lounge
and
utrao
u kuhinju.
into-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M into kitchen.
He ran through the lounge and ran into the kitchen.

Here are examples of different prepositions that can follow verbs prefixed by IZ-,
U-, and PRO-:
(32)



Iza ponoi
pijanci
su
se izvaljali
After midnight drunkards be-COP REFL out-roll-PST-PFV-3PL-M
na ulicu i krenuli prema kasarni.
onto street and went towards barracks.
After midnight drunkards rolled out onto the street and went towards the
barracks.

(33)



Turin me napao kad sam


Turk me attacked when be-COP
izjahala
iz
ume
out-ride-PST-PFV-3SG-F out of woods
The Turk attacked me when I rode out of the woods

(34)



i
na kraju izjahao
kroz
otvorena dvorska
and in the end out-ride-PST-PFV-3SG-M through open
courts
vrata
door
and in the end he rode out through an open door of the court

(35) opet je nataknuo masku na lice i istrao


again he put mask onto face and out-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M

9. Compare with the Russian examples (2) in chapter 2.

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

iz kue na terasu,
pa odmah odatle siao u batu.
out of house onto terrace, then immediately from there descended into garden.
he put the mask onto his face again and ran out of the house onto the terrace, and then from there immediately went down into the garden.
(36)



uletjeli
su
neoekivano
into-fly-PST-PFV-3PL-M be-COP unexpectedly
iz unutranjosti butika
u prednju sobu.
out of inside clothes shop into front room.
they rushed unexpectedly out of the clothes shop into the front room.

(37) Na brod mirno


je
proklizio
pored njih
Our ship peacefully be-COP past-glide-PST-PFV-3SG-M past them
Our ship peacefully glided past them.
(38)



Otvorila su se zelena vrata i


The green door opened and
kroz njih
je
promilio
jedan mi.
through them be-COP through-crawl-PST-PFV-3SG-M one mouse
A green door opened and a mouse crawled through it.

(39) Proetali
su
svojim rodnim gradom.
Through-walk-PST-PFV-3PL-M be-cop their home town.
They walked around their hometown for a while.

The number of verbs found prefixed by PRE- in the dictionary is 20. The number
of tokens is 74. PRE-verbs combine normally with the preposition preko
(across/over).10 The PRE-verbs can also be followed by the prepositions na(onto)
or u (into), but are restricted in that the expression always refers to situations
whereby the Figure crosses (i.e. passes over/across something) onto the other side
of e.g. a river or a street, as in:
(40) Preplivao
je
na
drugu obalu.
Across-swim-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP onto other bank.
He swam across to the other side.

We can conclude that there is a kind of omission of the preposition preko


(across/over) and the object of the preposition (in the case of the example above
it would have been reka river), but somehow those two could easily be predicted
10. It seems that PRO- and PRE- verbs have more or less the same combinability power when
it comes to the possibility of being followed by different prepositions. However, the PRO-verbs
have more types and tokens than the PRE-verbs because the prefix PRO- has three completely
different meanings (through, past, and spend time at a location), unlike the prefix PRE-, which
cannot be used to refer to as many different spatial configurations.

Talking about Motion

by other elements although gapped and this is why the preposition na ('onto') can
follow a PRE-verb. It would not be possible to use a verb prefixed with PRE- and
followed by the preposition na if this reference is not understood.
By the same token, if the Ground element is not gapped, we notice the impossibility of accumulating Ground elements and combining freely with different
prepositions is illustrated in the following example:
(41) a. *Pretrao
je
ulicu u
komijinu bastu.
Over-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP street into neighbors garden.
He ran across the street into the neighbors garden.
b. Pretrao
je
u komijinu bastu.
Over-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP into neighbors garden.
He ran over into the neighbors garden.

In some situations, e.g. when a quick change of location is to be expressed, the


PRE- verbs can be followed by the prepositions iz and u together in the same
expression, as in:
(42) Pretrao
je
iz svoje u komijinu bastu.
Over-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP out of his into neighbours garden.
He ran out of his garden into the neighbours.

The restriction here is that both prepositions iz (out of) and u (into) have to be used,
and therefore this use is rather limited. Here are some typical uses of PRE-verbs:
(43) Njegova erka prevalja
se preko praga
His daughter over-roll-PST-PFV-3SG-F REFL over threshold
His daughter rolled over the threshold
(44)



Jato helikoptera s crvenom petokrakom u bijelom krugu


Flock of helicopters with a red star in a white circle
preletjelo
je,
nisko, iznad bolnice.
over-fly-PST-PFV-3SG-N be-COP low
above hospital.
A flock of helicopters with a red star in a white circle flew low over the
hospital.

(45) Savu
smo
preplivali
za dvadesetak minuta.
Sava-ACC be-COP across-swim-PST-PFV-1PL-M in twenty minutes.
We swam the river Sava in twenty minutes.

The examples of verbs prefixed with NA- and POD- are really rare. The number of
types for NA-verbs is 5, and the number of tokens is 10. The number of verbs prefixed by POD- is 3 and the number of tokens is 2. We would like to add a reminder here that our types come from the dictionaries and our tokens mainly from the

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

corpus. It happened very often that types did not have any tokens in the corpus
data and in such cases we included tokens from the dictionaries. Three types were
found for POD-verbs and the only tokens for them are the examples from the
dictionary data. The corpus has no record of them (and for podvaljati (se) roll
under even the dictionaries offer no example, but only the explanation of the
verbs meaning):
(46)



Ptica se, sekui vazduh trudila


da podleti
Bird REFL cutting air try-PST-IPFV-3SG-F to under-fly-PRS-PFV-3SG
pod jato.
under flock.
The bird, cutting through the air was trying to fly under the flock.

(47) [onda su] potrali


pod no.
[then be-COP] under-run-PST-PFV-3PL-M under knife.
They ran under the knife.

The reason for this can be found in the fact that many verbs prefixed otherwise,
e.g. OD-/DO- verbs (and sometimes IZ-/U- verbs) can be followed by the prepositions na and/or pod, and thus express the relevant situation type without a particular need for verbs prefixed by NA- or POD-. On the other hand, the verbs
prefixed by NA- and POD- cannot be followed by any other preposition except na
and pod respectively. Therefore, their combinability with prepositions is very low;
they are at the end of the cline and cannot be used in many motion expressions.
The frequency of NA-verbs is slightly higher than that of POD-verbs. Two out
of five NA- verb types have no tokens in the corpus, and one type has 6 out of the
total of 10 NA- verb tokens. However, the verb with the greatest number of tokens
(naleteti onto-fly) is used in a different sense from a purely motion one, namely come across or bump into.
(48) ona je silno naletela
na staklo.
she forcefully onto-fly-PST-PFV-3SG-F onto glass.
she forcefully bumped onto broken glass.
(49)



ili smo Petrovom ulicom,


kad je
na mene
we were going down Petars street, when be-COP onto me-ACC
naletjela
moja sestra
onto-fly-PST-PFV-3SG-F my sister
we were walking down Peters street when my sister bumped into me

Talking about Motion

The motion sense is found in the following two examples:


(50) najahao
je
na
bun kraj puta.
onto-ride-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP onto bush by road.
he rode onto a bush by the road.
(51)



imao sam lovake srece, ba


mi
je
jelen
I had the hunters luck, just then me-DAT be-COP deer
natrao
na
put.
onto-run-PST-PFV-3SG-M onto path.
...I had hunters luck, just then a deer ran in my way.

6.4 Ups and downs


We have concentrated on the horizontal scale when it comes to motion events and
have not looked into motion on the vertical scale. However, we did come across
some examples of the latter while collecting data for our research, and we decided
to include them, because they contribute to our arguments and confirm, and offer
further support for, the claims we made. We did a corpus search for Serbo-Croatian
manner verbs prefixed by prefixes expressing upward and downward motion, and
found that they are extremely rare.
Studies in lexicalization of motion mainly focus on horizontal motion, which
was also observed by Naigles et al.(1998). The same study found very interesting
peculiarities in the domain of vertical motion. For example, Spanish speakers are
more likely to use manner verbs in descriptions of boundary-crossing events if
they describe vertical motion (e.g. a girl sliding into a pool). Naigles et al.(1998)
do not offer definitive answers why this might be so, because it is not clear why
the change in plane, in and of itself, might prompt speakers to talk about manner
of motion rather than the path (ibid.: 542). They indicate that the reasons might
lie in the actors locus of control, and the possibility that the boundary-crossing is
only a by-product, and not the obvious goal, of sliding into a pool, and thus not
viewed as a true boundary-crossing (ibid.).
In English, there are no restrictions with respect to the combinations of manner verbs and directional prepositions expressing upward or downward motion.
However, a number of interesting restrictions are noted in Serbo-Croatian, in particular when motion along the vertical scale is to be expressed. Just looking at the
dictionary data, we note that there are not many examples of verbs of motion prefixed by UZ- (upwards) and S- (downwards). The number of verbs found in the
dictionary data prefixed by UZ- is 3, and those prefixed by S- is 15. It is interesting
to note that most of the verbs that may seem to be prefixed by S- cannot be defined

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

as such, because the unprefixed form does not exist for most of the examples (as it
does in the cases of the other prefixed verbs discussed so far). In a number of cases
the initial S- looks like a prefix and in some cases we have the unprefixed form, but
this is not true of all cases. For example, we can say that strati (run down) and
trati (run) are related and that we get the former when we put the prefix S- in
front of the latter, imperfective form. However, we cannot say the same for a number
of verbs that express a downward movement, like: skljusiti (se) (sit down heavily,
skombrljati (se) (fall as a pile), strmoglaviti (se)(fall head first), strovaliti (se)
(fall heavily), survati (se)(fall like a part of a mountain chipped off ), stropotati
(se) (fall heavily and noisily). Therefore, the verbs of manner of motion that indicate movement downwards all begin with S-, but this S- is not necessarily a prefix,
because the imperfective forms of these verbs do not exist, and therefore we cannot
claim that derivation took place. This is a separate issue, which will not be tackled
at present. The verbs in which S- seems to be a prefix referring to the direction of
motion (downward) are manner verbs such as the following: trati (run), leteti
(fly), jahati (ride), etc., which become perfective when prefixed.
The conclusion that one can draw here is that the vertical scale of prefixed
manner of motion verbs is much less developed than the horizontal.Therefore, in
most cases where an upward or downward movement is to be described in SerboCroatian, a deictic OD-/DO- verb would be used, as in (cf. Filipovi (1999)).
(52)



The balloon floated up the chimney.


Balon je
odlebdeo
Balloon be-COP from-the-speaker/scene-float-PST-PFV-3SG-M
kroz
dimnjak.
through chimney.

(53)



He rushed up the stairs to the girls room.


Odjurio
je
uz stepenice
From-the-speaker/scene-rush-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP up stairs
u
devojinu sobu.
into girls room

6.5 Other things we need to know about prefixes


We hoped to convey the idea of how important prefix meaning can be for the study
of domain lexicalization. The multifaceted role of prefixes has been analyzed before, although not in the same context. Their morphological status and function
receive different treatments in the literature. For example, Bybee (1985) discussed
prefixation in general in Serbo-Croatian, and initially (ibid.: 145) she states that

Talking about Motion

examples of aspect developing from derivational morphology are found in SerboCroatian and Georgian, where locative prefixes generalize lexically and take on
aspectual meaning, coming progressively closer to being inflection (our emphasis).
Then almost immediately after, (ibid.: 146) she confirms that in Serbo-Croatian
and Georgian, the perfective, which is formed with prefixes, more closely resembles
derivation, because the prefixes often add meaning other than aspect (our emphasis). It is obvious that Bybee does not explicitly differentiate between what Slavicists term grammatical (pure) perfectivization, whereby no additional lexical
meaning is added to the original meaning of a verb in the process of prefixation,
and so-called lexical perfectivization on the other hand, whereby the meaning of
the prefix affects the meaning of the original item to the extent that the meaning of
this new unit is different from the meaning of the original root. It could be the case
that only a grammatical category is expressed (e.g. an imperfective verb turned
into perfective) (cf. Grickat (1966/67)), and this is what we mean by pure perfectivization, in which case prefixation might have some qualities of an inflectional
process. This is not the case with manner of motion verbs, in which the meaning
of the root changes (due to added information on the direction of motion or deixis) when prefixed, in addition to changing from imperfective to perfective. Therefore, we realize that defining something as derivation is difficult even within one
language, and processes related to different lexemes or classes of lexemes (e.g. motion verbs) should be analyzed individually.
More recently, there has been an attempt to reject the claim that Slavic verbal
prefixes are aspectual markers at all (Filip 2000). The author states that the grammatical category of aspect, as she understands it, has been used as a cover term for
formal categories on the level of inflectional morphology or syntax that fall under
the main perfective/imperfective distinction (Filip 2000: 39). She decided to argue
against this assumption, namely that prefixes are overt grammatical markers of
perfective aspect, and she states that the reason is that verbal prefixes clearly behave like derivational rather than inflectional morphemes. Verbal aspect in Slavic
languages is standardly taken to be a grammatical category, and if this also implies
that it is an inflectional category, then prefixes cannot be aspectual morphemes,
because such morphemes ought to have inflectional characteristics (Filip (2000:
41)). We consider the argument expressed in Filip (2000) easily falsifiable, because
she starts from an already heavily flawed formalist position that there is a neat
distinction between derivation and inflection, whereas we can see on numerous
examples from different languages that it is instead a continuum (cf. Bybee (1985)).
Moreover, it is not a novelty that the prefixes in Slavic languages are derivational in
nature, and this does not prevent them from being used to express the grammatical category of aspect among other roles they play (cf. Bybee (1985: 101)). Filips
problem seems to stem from the fact that prefixes are applicable to already

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

perfectivized prefixed verbs. She apparently argues that if prefixes were markers of
perfective aspect, they ought to be applicable only to imperfective verbs, and applying prefixes to perfective verbs, simple or prefixed, ought to be in principle excluded, because it would amount to perfectivizing already perfective verbs (Filip
(2000: 74)). However, once again, she disregards the fact that perfectivization is
only one of the functions of the prefixes in most cases and sometimes more than
one prefix is needed to express the exact meaning required. There should be no
problem in arguing that although one prefix is needed to make a verb perfective,
two are needed to express the required meaning that neither of the two prefixes
can do on their own. This still does not impede the understanding of the process
of derivation in verbs. It is enough to establish that prefixes have multiple meanings and not all of the meanings have to be realized in the derivation process.
Thus, we can conclude that prefixes in Serbo-Croatian do not behave inflectionally, as it were, being attached to verbs and used without restrictions, which in
effect strengthens our claims related to the prefix cline and combinatory potential.
6.6 In need of direction: directional verbs and pattern frequency
First there has to be an agreement on what exactly the preferred pattern means.
Frequency of use? More natural-sounding expression? It has been shown here that
imperfective directional verbs are necessary in expressions of boundary-crossing/
moment-of-change situation types, because neither prefixed nor unprefixed manner verbs can be used there. Moreover, perfective directional verbs are still much
more frequent than perfective manner verbs in the corpus data of motion expressions in Serbo-Croatian. A reminder would not come amiss here, namely that of
initial conditions posited by Talmy (1985: 62) regarding what is considered to be a
characteristic expression of motion in a language:
Here characteristic means that: (i) It is colloquial in style, rather than literary,
stilted, etc. (ii) It is frequent in occurrence in speech, rather than only occasional.(iii) It is pervasive, rather than limited, that is, a wide range of semantic notions
are expressed in this type.

A rather large number of examples of prefixed manner verbs in Serbo-Croatian


(whether prefixed by OD-/DO- or other directional prefixes) is not colloquial in
style, but either literary or obsolete. The number of tokens of such verbs is small,
so the use is quite limited in the modern language. Most of the tokens among
prefixed manner verbs come thanks to first-tier verbs, which are significantly more

Talking about Motion

frequent in use and more colloquial in style.11 The most frequent verbs overall in
the corpus are perfective directional verbs. The directional verb +preposition is
also the habitual pattern in the expression of motion events spontaneously elicitied in spoken Serbo-Croatian, as demonstrated in Vidakovi (2006). SerboCroatian speakers have a choice of using either prefixed manner verbs or directional verbs in boundary-crossing/change-occurred situation type, and what they
opt for more often is the no-frills pattern, as it were, i.e. the one which is more
economical and less restrictive. The conclusion emerging from this discussion is
that in Serbo-Croatian, the characteristic pattern in motion expressions in cases
when a perfective verb is needed would be a directional verb or a first-tier manner
verb, the most numerous and frequent ones within the latter group being the deictic OD-/DO- verbs. In situation types where an imperfective verb is needed, directional verbs would be used in moment-of-change situations, and manner verbs in
no-change situations. The most frequent and semantically simplest verbs are more
likely to occur with a greater variety of prefixes in Serbo-Croatian (e.g. trati
run can be prefixed by all prefixes, which is not the case with semantically more
complex verbs like ljuljati (se) sway (REFL)) (cf. appendix 2).
Finally, the frequency claim can be confirmed by citing the frequency data
from the corpus, which prove that there are significantly more examples of motion
expressions with directional verbs even in boundary-crossing/change-occurred
situations (where prefixed manner verbs can also be used with restrictions). The
frequency of directional verbs in motion expression of the boundary-crossing/
change-occurred type is considerably higher (Table 3) in comparison to that of
manner verbs in the same situation type (cf. Table 2):
Table 3. Directional perfective verbs
Directional Verbs
Doi (come to)
Otii (go away)
Izai (go out)
Ui (go in)
Proi (go past)& (go through)
Prei (go across)
Total

Types
1
1
1
1
1
1
6

Tokens






747
693
274
228
339
202
2483

(30.1%)
(27.9%)
(11%)
(9.2%)
(13.7%)
(8.1%)
(100%)

11. See Slobin (1996); cf. also ic-Fuchs (1991). First-tier manner verbs are those that are semantically simplest, also referred to as prototypical or central category members (e.g. walk,
run, jump, fly etc.).

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

The frequency of unprefixed, imperfective directional verbs was not considered


here because, as explained, due to morphological blocking, they are used only in
expressions of one particular situation type, namely that of boundary-crossing/
moment-of-change.12 Therefore, the tables represent only the verbs used in boundary-crossing/change-occurred situations, the situation type that served as a basis
for the intratypological contrasts. The imperfective directional verbs are the only
option for rendering moment-of-change situation types since they are not constrained morphologically and semantically the way manner verbs are.
The choice of verbs is restricted when it comes to prefixed manner verbs in
Serbo-Croatian, whereas the use of directional verbs is not restricted at all. Therefore, the conclusion could be that the combination prefixed manner verb + directional particle sounds natural and is more commonly used with semantically simple manner verbs. The most frequently used pattern for expressing motion events
in spoken Serbo-Croatian seems to be the use of directional verbs (cf. Vidakovi
(2006)). Our data from the dictionary and the corpus based on spoken and written
usage of Serbo-Croatian show that even when a prefixed manner verb is possible,
it is not used as often as might be assumed.
Perhaps it is not unsound to reiterate the original proposal in Filipovi ((1999),
(2001), (2002)) that, based on all the findings so far, at least a branch of the typology should be understood in terms of a cline. The exact outline of this cline will
have to wait for further insights from individual languages.
We have to point out that in the comparison of the two languages we noticed
that there are situations where one has to use a directional verb in a boundarycrossing/change-occurred situation. There is no choice available in the form of an
OD-/DO-verb or a first-tier manner verb prefixed otherwise. This kind of situation is most conspicuous when English verbs created by noun to verb conversion
are to be rendered into Serbo-Croatian. For example:
(54)


He skateboarded across the street.


Preao
je
ulicu
na skejtbordu.
Cross-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP street-ACC on skateboard.
He crossed the street on a skateboard.

(55)


He ninjad over the sofa.


Skoio
je
preko sofe kao ninda.
Jump-PST-PFV-3SG-M be-COP over sofa like ninja.
He jumped over the sofa like a ninja.

12. There are very few prefixed imperfective manner verbs in Serbo-Croatian (the imperfective
prefixed versions of run, jump fly, and swim, and, in limited use, sail). The corpus data
contained no tokens of them; they are rarely used, mainly to express iterative or habitual activities, which involves a separate discussion, not entered into here.

Talking about Motion

This particular tendency noticed in English is worth commenting on. When it


comes to productivity of patterns, we can see that English has a highly developed
lexicon of manner verbs and other verbs that can be used in motion expressions
(cf. Levin (1993)). The influx of new words is impressive, especially through zero
conversion (noun to verb), so examples like He ninjad over the sofa are found in
the BNC data. This process and its intensity seem to be a peculiarity of English. On
the other hand, such an influx of new words into this part of the lexicon in SerboCroatian is not found. It is important to point out here that most often in translation from English into Serbo-Croatian when a prefixed verb is necessary (e.g. in
boundary-crossing situations), either a semantically more complex deictic manner verb (i.e. prefixed by deictic OD-/DO) is used, if it exists, or a semantically
simpler prefixed manner verb+an adjunct (e.g. preskoio kao ninda = jumped
over like a ninja) in order to render a complex manner of motion from the English
original.The reasons for this are not only related to a large influx of new verbs that
can be used in motion expressions in English, but also have to do with the morphological constraint on prefixes in Serbo-Croatian.
From this analysis, we can see that some choices in languages are restricted on
the basis of systemic features. There is always a chance that individual speakers
would have a free choice if more than one pattern were available to be used in a
description of the same situation type. This is the point where no definite predictions can be made. We cannot predict exactly when speakers of English will use a
directional verb rather than a manner verb, which they certainly do in some cases.
For example, if English speakers want to foreground Manner, they express it in an
elaborate adjunct that follows a simpler manner or directional verb rather than
using a more typical and common pattern for motion expressions, namely manner
verb + directional particle. This is done in situations where movement itself is
given and the manner is new: Next time I cross the Atlantic by boat. In this way,
by using an atypical pattern, the component that is expressed in an uncommon
way (in this case the Manner component) is foregrounded. In Serbo-Croatian,
perfective manner verbs (with restrictions) and perfective directional verbs (without restrictions) can be used in boundary-crossing/change-occurred. We can
point out that in Spanish, directional verbs in this situation type are obligatory,
whereas in Serbo-Croatian they may seem to be only a statistical preference. This
statistical preference, though, indicates habitual tendencies in language use, further confirmed in experimental studies. Vidakovi (2006) has studied second language acquisition of Serbo-Croatian and English by English and Serbo-Croatian
native speakers respectively. She demonstrated that Serbo-Croatian speakers (who
acted as controls in her experiments) used prefixed manner verbs six times less
often than non-manner verbs in the encoding of boundary-crossing/change-occurred situations. She also noticed that English learners of Serbo-Croatian are

Chapter 6. Talking about motion in Serbo-Croatian

extremely unlikely to use prefixed manner verbs, probably due to the difficulty of
acquiring their dual function (carrying spatial and aspectual information) and low
input from L2 (i.e. Serbo-Croatian). On the other hand, English controls provided
more diverse manner distinctions, while those were systematically omitted in Serbo-Croatian, in tasks that contained both depictions of inferrable manner of motion (e.g. canonical, unmarked walking) and non-inferrable manner of motion
(e.g. dancing or crawling). We argue that this tendency is motivated by morphological complexity and the combinatorial restrictions that manner verbs are conditioned by in Serbo-Croatian.
Summary
Our central discussion featuring the contrastive analysis of motion event lexicalization in English and Serbo-Croatian has confirmed our starting assumptions: English and Serbo-Croatian have comparable but not identical lexicalization patterns,
and the differences affect the processing of verbalized events as well as the information content of the message. While understanding of what an expression refers to
occurs at the level of the syntax/semantics interface in English, in Serbo-Croatian
this happens at the level of morphosyntax. Furthermore, even just selecting the
prefix in description of motion in Serbo-Croatian immediately conditions the possible Path segmentation due to the combinatory potential of the individual prefixed
verbs. The frequency of prefixed verb use in Serbo-Croatian is restricted due to
morphological blocking, so manner verbs are not used as freely as in English. Finally, this study has proved that a comprehensive analysis of domain lexicalization
has to include all levels where meaning is conveyed in order to provide the correct
picture of how events are rendered into a language. The use of corpora in this analysis is a significant methodological contribution because it shows that attested examples and their frequencies may provide a different angle on crucial claims that
are noticeably different and inadequate if constructed examples are used.

chapter 7

Moving on
Issues for further reflection and research

There is a number of research questions that could be asked in relation to our


topic. Some of them concern distinguishing semantic and conceptual features as
well as lexical and construction meaning, and the role of typological studies in
translation studies and applied (psycho)linguistics together with the relationship
of language and thought. We illustrate next where answers to these questions can
be sought in the context of our research.
7.1 Two levels of representation: two sides of the same coin?
Firstly, we assumed that the semantic level is a level separate from the conceptual
level. If semantic and conceptual structures are not decoupled, conceptual knowledge cannot be universal.1 That is, if people have different semantic structures in
their languages, which equal conceptual representations, they also must then have
different conceptual structures. This logical consequence may not have been fully
appreciated by proponents of theories assuming universal concepts. Let us illustrate the implications of crosslinguistic variability for the assumption of universal
conceptual structures starting from theories of conceptual knowledge according
to which there is a one-to-one mapping between lexical and conceptual representations (non-decompositional views, e.g., Fodor et al.(1975), (1983)). These views
implicitly assume that conceptual structures must differ across languages, therefore are incompatible with claims of universality of conceptual structures, unless
conceptual structures are conceived to encompass every possible concept that is
lexicalized (or is lexicalizable) in every possible language.
1. Cf. Vigliocco and Filipovi Kleiner (2004) and Filipovi Kleiner (2006b) for further discussion. We take semantic structure to correspond to meanings assigned to words and other linguistic units, and conceptual structure to correspond to mental representations for things,
events, etc. in the world. Conceptual structures are necessarily involved in language use, but are
also engaged in other cognitive functions. For brevity of exposition, we do not pose distinctions
between different levels of conceptual structures (but see Jackendoff (2002), Levinson (2003a)).

Talking about Motion

Jackendoff ((1983), (1990)) talks of meaning in terms of semantic structures,


which are in essence conceptual.Langacker (1987) states that meaning is conceptual, which is not controversial, but the fact that he does not posit an intermediate
semantic level, is. 2 However, in an earlier paper, he acknowledges a separate semantic level, but claims that even if it is recognized, it is of no interest to him, because
the meaning in language is conceptual in nature (Langacker (1976)). Similarly,
Jackendoff (1991) differentiates between E-semantics and I-semantics, the former
being concerned with the relation of language to the world independent of speakers
(mainly of interest to truth-conditional semantics), and the latter being an inquiry
into the principles of mental representations that support thought (ibid.: 10). He
argues that the issues for philosophers of language lie within I-semantics, i.e. explaining how one can make sense of the explanation offered by I-semantics within
a broader psychological, social and biological context (ibid.: 44). Primitives and
principles of combinations for a particular conceptual domain are universal for
Jackendoff they define what there is for language to express and they do not depend on the vehicle of expression (ibid.: 11). Those ingredients of conceptual
structure are connected to surface expression (syntactic structure) via correspondence rules. Since the syntactic side of the correspondence is in part language-particular, it is expected that the correspondence rules are language-particular as well,
although constrained by principles of Universal Grammar (ibid.). In this way, the
conceptualization of a domain is deemed universal, while the way it surfaces in
language could be language-specific. This in effect is not controversial.It is of interest to explain the underlying nature of conceptual representations, and Jackendoff s
mechanics of conceptual semantics is one of the solutions on offer in the philosophy of language. We do not question the universality of a common conceptual core,
but our main point here is that surface semantic systems vary to a great extent, and
to roughly the same extent as cultures, so semantic relativity seems to be correct (cf.
Hudson (1996)). Not accounting for semantic variation that is a result of different
surface realization of conceptual structures excludes language-specific habitual understanding and reference to spatial relations, which entrench and encourage the
habitual presence of certain pieces of information and absence of others. The possibility that this habitual entrenchment of patterns has some effect on certain conceptualizable features of events, causing some to be regularly triggered in some
languages and not in others, does not need to result in the denial of common conceptual structuring of a domain. It does not have to be an either/or question, but
2. Identifying semantic and conceptual representation leaves a lot of space for linguistic relativity, which ironically enough, Ron Langacker and Ray Jackendoff fervently oppose. This is not
due to their inconsistency, but rather to the insistence on what the distinction between semantic and conceptual is for them. Langacker, for example, even came up with explicit defence on
this point (1999).

Chapter 7. Moving on

the aim should be to show how the universal leads to the language-particular (e.g.
the same components of motion events being lexicalized in all languages but in different lexicalization patterns that form a typology), and back: the way languageparticular surface realization affects information content, language use and perhaps
habitual activation of certain conceptual features more frequently than others. Even
though our study did not venture into the level of conceptualization, we suggest
here that although it would be exciting to make sense of explanations offered within I-semantics (i.e. conceptual semantics), our interest in the workings of language
should not stop there. Perhaps some insights could be obtained from working our
way back, and looking into the language-particular effects that go beyond surface
forms as vehicles for universal concepts.
What has always been more controversial is whether the fact that our language
makes certain semantic distinctions could have anticipatory effects on the ways in
which we would store the experience of events. That, in effect, would mean that
languages prepare us to concentrate on particular aspects of events in advance,
which have to be lexicalized in the language we speak. Even though a Kwakiutl
speaker has the availability of different verbs meaning put on depending on the
shape of the object in question, it may, but does not have to, mean that (s)he would
store the event differently in memory from a speaker of English, for example, who
does not have this availability. We will not even start to explore this possibility at
present, but we can just mention that although language is not necessary for the
thinking process, on most occasions it is a part of it. Some people (especially visual
artists) claim they think in visual images rather than words, but the fact is that
events are most accurately described by using language. Bringing these issues closer to home, we can neither confirm nor deny lexicalization patterns in different
languages any kind of anticipatory status. We thus have no claims that concern
conceptualization, but only indicate that lexicalization patterns can be used in psycholinguistic studies in order to test some general and crucial hypotheses regarding
language and cognitive processing. Whether these effects that Levinson and others
describe can also be detected in the domain of motion lexicalization remains to be
seen. The present study offers no answer to this, but the presence (or absence) of
language effects on memory in the domain of motion events is under current investigation (Filipovi (in progress), Gennari et al. (2002); Malt et al. (2003)).
Recently, there has been a revival of relativistic ideas in a way that is not
detrimental to the theory of linguistic relativity as it was presented and understood in the past. Slobin (1997b) introduced the term thinking for speaking (as well
as thinking for listening, writing, translating, etc.), and the notion behind the term
tends to be identified with conceptualization occasionally, in which case it is highly context-sensitive. The main idea of the thinking-for-speaking hypothesis is that
experience cannot be verbalized without taking a specific perspective influenced,

Talking about Motion

if not determined, by the typological characteristics and lexicalization patterns of


a given language. The two notions, however, are strictly distinguished in Nuyts
(2001), for example, as a temporary level in the case of language production
(thinking for speaking) and long-term storage of world knowledge (conceptualization). The thinking-for-speaking hypothesis has become very popular and
has been a great incitement to many researchers, especially with reference to motion events and Talmys typology, but at present we limit ourselves to discussing
information content in the light of language-specific lexicalization patterns and
indicating where to probe for possible cognitive effects, which further experimental research should support or disprove.
Levinson asserts that more than thinking for speaking is language-driven.
Rather, linguistic differences correlate with, and seem to induce, major differences
in spatial cognition (Levinson 2003a: xviii). Decoupling the semantic and the conceptual, and non-innateness of concepts are the two strongest standpoints that
Levinson continuously and passionately defends. Current views differ, however,
with respect to the degree to which differences in semantic structures map onto
differences in conceptual structures (and therefore they differ with respect to the
degree of conceptual universality). Much research in the field addresses this controversy by showing that language-specific effects are present in cognitive tasks
that do not require either implicit or explicit verbalization (e.g., Levinson (2003a)),
or by showing that they are only present when verbalization is present (Finkbeiner
et al. (2002), Malt et al. (2003)). Some authors deny any effect of language on
thought (Munnich and Landau (2003)); some others limit the possible effect of
differences in semantic structures to those domains of cognitive function that
more directly relate to language coding (e.g. Slobin (2003), Malt et al. (2003)).
Other authors marshal views according to which semantic representations of a
particular language have a far more pervasive imprint on cognition, e.g., in spatial
cognition (Bowerman and Choi (2003), Levinson (2003b)), and in appreciation of
properties of objects (Lucy and Gaskins (2003)).
Levinson ((2003a), (2003b)) insists on showing language effects in non-linguistic testing, which would prove the dominant role of language (or rather individual languages) in spatial cognition. His experiments are aimed at testing spatial
memory whereby no use of language is required, but this does not mean that language will not be used anyway. Participants had some time for linguistic coding
between rotations in his spatial orientation experiment, which was supposed to
access non-linguistic cognition. In any case, non-linguistic cognition targeted by
introducing tasks that impede normal language presence (e.g. by introducing various distractors to suppress language use, such as hearing meaningless syllables
while performing a non-linguistic task) does not reflect real life circumstances,
where language is (tacitly at least) omnipresent.

Chapter 7. Moving on

Munnich and Landau (2003) also point out that Levinsons tasks are languagemediated. Moreover, in another study, which tackles a different kind of typological
dichotomy, namely between languages that have a salient Manner component in
motion expressions and those that do not, there was no difference in results when
instantaneous responses were elicited. When, instead, time for linguistic coding
was allowed, differences were observed (Malt et al.(2003)). It may be that the distinctions drawn within frames of reference have a more profound effect on the
relevant cognitive processes than the crosslinguistic variation in Manner/Path salience, but this certainly requires further confirmation. This, however, is not completely detrimental to Levinsons results. It means that whenever possible, language
is activated and used even when not needed, and then it has the potential to influence problem-solving, or some aspects of thinking, to put it boldly. On most occasions under normal circumstances (i.e. in a non-experimental environment) language can and will be used.
A related issue is the universality and innateness of concepts, and it is very
hard to sustain both. Even Fodor has given up the notion of complete innateness
in favor of a certain amount of mind-dependence (Fodor (1998)), which is a notion that manages to obscure the argument even more. Wierzbickas (1996) search
for primitives illustrates just how hard it is to find a suitable universal definition
without being misguided by the medium, i.e. the particular language one is using
to define them. Having all this in mind, Levinson opts for a middle route: simple
conflation of semantics and conceptual structure is not defensible, but still if we
assume a kind of partial isomorphism, decompositional theories would explain
how it is possible to learn a language by building up complex constructs from
more elementary concepts. He differentiates between two levels of representation:
decompositional and non-compositional.Mapping lexemes onto unitary concepts
occurs at one level (the level of routine language processing) and these in turn
onto a level where the unitary molar concepts are broken down into formulae of
composed atomic concepts. The generative capacity and the universals (if any) lie
at the atomic level, while all advantages that accrue to us by virtue of thinking in
high-level chunks are reaped on the molar level (2003a: 298). Such a dual-level
theory allows us to consider seriously the possibility of Whorfian effects of language on cognition while simultaneously buying into the psychic unity of mankind (ibid.: 300).
Research within language pathology has shown that language function can
remain intact while other cognitive functions are disabled, and vice versa. These
findings might lead us to the conclusion that the language faculty is one of the independent modules in the mind. On the other hand, we have witnessed many examples provided by linguists and anthropologists that point out the ways in which
certain aspects of linguistic behavior are highly interrelated with some cognitive

Talking about Motion

and cultural functions. The influence of cognition and culture on language is indisputable, but the controversy lies the other way around: the influence of a language on cognition and culture. We can see that speaker behaviour is affected both
by the universal conceptual space and the language-specific semantic maps onto
conceptual space. The balance between the two is still not resolved fully, and is
theory-dependent. More evidence is craved for in all camps.
To sum up briefly, the question was the following: do these differences in languages have any effect beyond the use of languages themselves? Slobin (2000b)
would say a restricted yes, in thinking for speaking, listening, remembering, translating, etc. So would Lakoff (1987), in his linguistic relativism evocative of Wittgenstein, and revealed in his discussion of the Kay and Kempton (1984) experiment. Wittgensteins example of a possibility of there being an undiscovered tribe
in a far-flung corner of the world, in a distant part of a remote jungle, in which
descriptions of shrubs or berries or cooking pots as red and green all over (in a
single term) is discovered to be more than just a figment of imagination; it is in fact
commonplace (Edmonds and Eidinow 2000: 183). Discussing the color terms
would require a huge detour in our discussion, but the important arguments can
be found in Davidoff et al.(1999). Finally, the unveiling of the Pirah language and
culture is apparently opening a new window into human language, culture and
cognition, which threatens to shake the foundations of many theories of meaning,
grammar and classification. Everett (2005) argues that Pirah has no basic color
terms, but that they are formed on-line, as it were, depending on contextual circumstances. Since this is very much work in progress, we will not comment further on it here.
On the whole, many languages do not draw the same distinctions, but this
does not mean that the mind is not capable of detecting and processing them.
Learning a foreign language is about learning the distinctions that different languages draw. And the fact that languages are acquired and learned says enough
about the ability of the mind to accept, process and analyze different distinctions
that are drawn. However, certain distinctions are habitually drawn in some languages but not in others and thus language-specific habitual ways of thinking and
talking about certain facets of events may become entrenched and dominant in
communicative exchange and storage of experience in memory via language. The
interesting point is that the number of possibilities in terms of distinctions that
could be drawn in a language is potentially limitless. Still, the languages of the
world do not draw a limitless number of distinctions. Rather, all languages express
either Manner or Path of motion in the verb, while there is no language in which
color terms are distinguished morphologically (i.e. where the relevant distinctions
are grammaticalized).

Chapter 7. Moving on

More intriguing evidence comes from psycholinguistic research in spatial language and cognition, where it has been suggested that the semantic maps of a
language affect speakers non-linguistic behavior (Choi and Bowerman (1992),
Bowerman (1997)). Children use spatial terms of their language semantically appropriately from very early ages (i.e. English-speaking children typically use prepositions alone in their earliest utterances about motion; cf. Choi and Bowerman
(1992: 96)). English children consistently differentiate containment from surface
contact/attachment in their earliest uses of in and on (Bowerman (1997: 166)).
Korean children, on the other hand, consistently differentiate tight fit from loose
fit in their earliest uses of kkita and nehta (ibid.). In addition, Choi and Bowerman observed that Korean children differentiate spontaneous from caused motion
in their earliest utterances, while English children used in and other Path expressions for both spontaneous and caused motion in their earliest utterances, because
in English they are not lexicalized separately. Similarly, English children use up
and down for vertical motion in a wide variety of contexts, while Korean children
differentiate vertical motion depending on the Manner or Path of motion, in accordance with the earliest verbs they learn; Korean children do not learn general
verbs meaning go up (olla katta or causative ollita) and go down (naylye kata
or causative naylita) until quite late compared to English childrens learning of up
and down (Choi and Bowerman (1992: 107)).3
In other words, there is a wide range of evidence that English and Korean
children do not categorize spatial situations in accordance with a universal set of
semantic primitive concepts which, when proposed, usually look suspiciously
similar to English prepositional semantics onto which they map their languagespecific semantics. Instead, English and Korean speakers categorize spatial situations differently and in accordance with the specific categories of their language.
Or is it just the case of spatial semantics not being decomposed enough to reach
the fine conceptual primitives that would be the common denominator for all?
Jackendoff (1991) says that it is not uncommon to come up with finer grained
components in physics all the time, which do not exist independent of each other,
and the case of phonemes may be a related example in linguistics. Bowerman and
Choi (2003), analyzing prelinguistic children, also draw an analogy with phonology and argue that semantic competence closely mirrors phonological competence: just as infants are geared from the beginning to discover underlying
3. This is very much in line with recent developments in syntactic theory. For example, Croft
(2001) contends that all aspects of the formal representation of grammatical structure are language-specific (ibid.: 4). He discusses some previous approaches in which categories from one
language (mainly English) were superimposed onto others (e.g. one approach to the category
AUX proposed that auxiliary was a part of Universal Grammar, but not every language has that
category) (ibid.: 10).

Talking about Motion

phonological regularities in the speech stream, so they are born prepared to zero
in on language-specific patterns in the organization of meaning. They also show
that adult speakers of English and Korean demonstrate differences in sensitivity to
certain concepts that closely mirror their respective language patterns. Bowerman
(1997: 160) points out that certain non-linguistic spatial concepts claimed to underlie spatial prepositions (e.g. containment or support) lend themselves much
more easily to shaping the spatial categories of English than, for example, of Tzeltal.
In other words, our ideas about primitives in the language of thought may themselves be conditioned by the language we have learned. She argues (ibid.: 168) that
English and Korean acquisition patterns testify to the contribution of both nonlinguistic spatial cognition and the categorization system of the input language to
the process of acquiring spatial words. Many linguists that are cognitively oriented
(e.g. Langacker (1987), Talmy (1985), Croft (1991)) seem to agree that the lexicon
and the grammar of a language provide a conventionalized way of conceptualizing
scenes for given purposes (Bowerman (1997: 151)). Thus, by following this line we
can understand lexicalization patterns as indicators of the ways in which the lexicons and grammars of different languages conventionalize the conceptualization
of certain domains. By stating this, we would only refer to a languages most neutral and pragmatically unmarked pattern.4
However, the fact that English children use the prepositions in and on in the
situations when Korean children use words referring to tight fit or loose fit would
not prevent either from understanding their respective ways of referring to objects
or activities, if not at the early stage, then certainly later, once they have grown up
and have fully acquired their mother tongue. There is ongoing research (cf. Bowerman and Levinson (2001)) that points out the role of languages in non-linguistic
tasks in adults and the way children acquire, or rather make sense of, words, their
meanings, the culture-specific semantic content of those words and the potential
universal underlying concepts expressed by them. Those aspects of acquisition are
beyond our scope at present, but the results regarding adult performance in those
tasks are indicative of the presence of language-specific ways of organizing spatial
data (cf. Levinson (1999b), (2001) and (2003a) on the frames of reference).
This is an illustration of the kind of research that typological insights into a
domain (e.g. spatial relations, causation, motion, etc.) can lead to. We have presented some arguments in which a mild relativistic flavor can be noticed, but once
again we have to prevent any confusion regarding the possibility of seeing any of
those factors as something that can potentially limit thought. Our interest lies in

4. Cf. Kay (1997) on intra-speaker relativity.

Chapter 7. Moving on

the extent to which information content is limited, or rather habitually shaped. Gell
(1992: 131) summarizes the rifts and strife of (neo-)Whorfian inclinations:
What is wrong with Whorfism is not that language imposes a barrier, facilitating
the expression of certain ideas and inhibiting the expression of others (it surely
does) but to imagine, as a consequence of this admissible fact, that thought is
determined by language? On the contrary, thinking (discovery of new ideas)
typically goes against the grain of language, tortures it, deforms it (paradoxes and
neologisms in the writings of philosophers and sages filled with paradoxes and
neologisms). These denaturings of language in the service of the creation of new
meanings, or more expressive communication of old meaning, provide the psychological underpinnings of language change as a global impersonal revolution.
Yesterdays trope is todays grammar, and as repositories of tropes, languages are
culturally relative entities. But, by the same token, languages, as the raw materials
for destructive restructuring are what sets cognition free to pursue its unfettered
path through history.

7.2 Between a rock and a hard place: lexical and/or construction meaning
A related area of research where lexicalization of domains crosslinguistically could
be tackled is verb vs. construction meaning. We shall now look into related claims
made by projectionists and constructionalists.
Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1998b: 127) suggest that two models are detectable in the treatment of what they term verbal polysemy. Those two models are
not necessarily completely opposed, but there are still quite a few differences worth
pointing out. What they call a projectionist model, to which they subscribe, is
based on the claim that verbs with multiple meanings must have multiple lexical
semantic representations, one for each meaning (ibid.). These meanings accordingly determine the various syntactic structures that the verb can be found in.
They term an alternative model the constructional approach, although they note
that there are different proposals within this model (e.g. Hoekstra (1992), Goldberg (1995)5). Proponents of the constructional approach claim that only some
aspects of meaning reside in verbs themselves. Certain syntactic constructions or
syntactic positions are also associated with elements of meaning (cf. Hoekstra
(1992)). Under the constructional approach, verbs name basic concepts, which are
then inserted into syntactic structures, whose meanings are then combined with
the core meanings of the verbs. The meaning of a verb in a given use is determined
5. Hoekstra (1992) claims that the constraints on the syntactic structures that verbs can appear in can be reduced to well-known syntactic constraints, although Goldberg (1995) shows
that the constraints do not have to be syntactic.

Talking about Motion

compositionally from the meaning of the verb and the meaning of the construction. The major constraint on integrating a verb into a construction is the compatibility between the meaning of the verb and the meaning associated with the
syntactic structures into which the verb is inserted. The difference in the treatment
of verb meaning by the two approaches is briefly explained next.
Levin and Rappaport Hovav claim that run type verbs (cf. Levin (1993) and
appendix 1) change their status in the presence of a directional phrase, which turns
them into unaccusative, as in the following examples (marked as ??,? and * by
Levin and Rappaport Hovav): 6
(1) a. The soldiers marched (to the tents).
b. The general marched the soldiers to the tents.
c. ??The general marched the soldiers.
(2) a. The horse jumped (over the fence).
b. The rider jumped the horse over the fence.
c. ?The rider jumped the horse.
(3) a. The mouse ran (through the maze).
b. We ran the mouse through the maze.
c. *We ran the mouse.

This claim is not a novelty in itself. The same was independently noticed by icFuchs (1991). A directional phrase is necessary for this change in meaning of expressions when the same verbs are used unergatively or unaccusatively. However,
ic-Fuchs points out that there is more than just a mere change of argument structure. She supports her claims by examples showing that not all of the components
of verb meaning are equally important in all the constructions in which those
verbs appear (if they can appear in more than one construction type). According
to Levin and Rappaport Hovav, it seems that all is encoded in the verb, and it is up
to the verb meaning to determine the meaning and the shape of the whole expression. ic-Fuchs also concentrates on verb meaning as a central and decisive element, and is inclined towards an approach which would acknowledge components
of meaning, not only those relevant for syntax and argument structure, but also
those that are responsible for the difference in the hierarchy of components within
the lexical meaning of the verb, which is then put in an adequate construction
6. In some languages (e.g. Dutch), the unergative/unaccusative alteration is marked by different auxiliaries (be vs. have in Dutch). The validity of auxiliary selection as an unaccusative
diagnostic is under debate. Theoretically, it is unclear why unergative and unaccusative patterns
should correlate with hebben (have) and zijn (be) auxiliaries, respectively (and not vice versa). The empirical argument, however, is that in languages that have the auxiliary distinction,
this is what they seem to do (van Hout (2000: 247)).

Chapter 7. Moving on

(depending on which component of the meaning of the verb needs to dominate in


order for the verb to be used in a particular structure). Although ic-Fuchs does
not say it explicitly, a position seems to emerge in which some constructions may
have their own meaning and thus make requirements as to what kinds of verbs
can be put in the verb slot. We will show how this kind of emerging compromise
between verb meaning and construction meaning may become more obvious
when we discuss examples in (4) below.
Going back to the claim that run verbs change from unergative into unaccusative only when followed by directional phrases, we can declare that we cannot
fully agree with this claim. The general marched the soldiers all day in preparation
for the parade seems perfectly acceptable without a directional phrase, and many
native speakers would not hear themselves saying either (2) or (3), or would at
least hesitate before they say they are acceptable (cf. also Erterschik-Shir and Rapoport (2005) for a similar argument). Another example is provided by Levin and
Rappaport Hovav (e.g. I promised Ms. Cain I would ride her around the ranch)
to remind us that the phenomenon is more widespread than the few examples
cited in the literature suggest, although its relatively limited use suggests that
speakers of English are conservative about exercising this option (Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995: 189). We do not think that this is the case.
First, it has not been attested that agentive verbs of manner of motion are not
used unaccusatively because speakers are conservative about it. The mere fact
that there are so few verbs that are permitted in this construction suggests that it is
not felt to be the natural way of expressing the kind of situations those expressions
could potentially refer to. Speakers do not seem to be conservative about introducing new words and using them in expressions, for example through noun to verb
conversion, so why would they be conservative about using already existing verbs
in already existing constructions, especially if it is a more economical way to express something? We can conclude that some agentive manner of motion verbs
can be used causatively, but we are not sure whether the reason for this lies only in
the components of their meaning relevant for syntax. The components of verb
meaning seem to exhibit a kind of hierarchy when verbs are used in different constructions (cf. examples in (4) below). We cannot help noticing that those constructions with agentive manner of motion verbs used causatively do not have the
meaning caused somebody to move in a certain way, but the meaning is slightly
more shifted from the pure distinction between move (in the way specified by the
verb) and cause somebody to move (in the way specified by the verb). Goldberg
(1995: 169) also gives an example where certain activities, which are conventionally accomplished in a particular way (cf. Shibatani (1973)) may be expressed as
simple causatives even when the causation is indirect (e.g. The company flew her
to Chicago for an interview).

Talking about Motion

As Ritter and Rosen (1998: 157) confirm, there are few verb pairs like walk
and walk the dog, and we assume that the process which derived this verb is not a
productive one. They contend that this use of walk is not derived from basic
walk by a productive process of syntactic insertion of an internal argument. Rather, this constitutes a distinct (but related) lexical verb, which selects two thematic
arguments instead of one, and has its own lexical semantic representation (ibid.).
Still, we have to avoid multiplying verb meanings beyond necessity (Modified Occams Razor). Although there are not many examples like this in the expressions of
the domain we are considering, we still have to explore other options and see
whether we can come up with an explanation that would not be based on a process
that overburdens the system, which multiple meaning of lexical items certainly do.
The different instances of walk in He walked and walk in He walked the dog
are certainly not separate lexical items; we cannot but agree they are more related
than walk and run are, for example. However, they are still semantically different
and the difference does not lie only in the argument structure of the verb. Finally,
these examples seem to be highly context-dependent. They are not attested in the
BNC, but even if they were attested, how often does one hear a sentence like Mark
jumped Peter over the fence, meaning that Mark made/caused Peter to jump over
the fence? If these uses occur, they do so because the whole scenario is productive,
evoking or mapping the whole context of the typical causative use of march and
jump, rather than just the alteration in the argument structure of the verb (e.g.
The husband marched his disobedient wife into the kitchen (military style, hopefully as a joke!)). Similarly to march, the following context for jump could be
imaginable: Mark and his dad Peter were playing horse-racing and Mark jumped
Peter over the fence (i.e. the dad was playing the role of the horse, as it were). In
the case of run meaning cause to run, only the experimental context involving a
mouse and a maze seems to be plausible, and it seems hard to see it becoming
productive. This argument originally given in Filipovi (2002) is also confirmed in
Erteschik-Shir and Rapoport (2005: 72), where the two authors quote an example
with march without the PP in its causative use and explain that Levin and Rappaport Hovavs account does not necessarily hold in such cases.
Another proposal how to deal with verb meaning is given in ic-Fuchs (1991).
This study provides an exhaustive analysis of motion verbs in English, as well as an
engaging analysis of the intriguing interface between encyclopedic and linguistic
knowledge in speakers. ic-Fuchs (1991: 7374) provides examples that emphasize the way in which a speakers knowledge about the world and referents of lexemes are used in expressions can be crucial in accepting some and cancelling
other constructions. For example, The bear trudged through the woods is acceptable, and *The snake trudged through the woods is not. This is due to the fact that
speakers of English who know the meaning of the verb trudge know that it refers

Chapter 7. Moving on

to a certain kind of movement that involves difficulty and heaviness of steps, a


manner of motion that cannot be associated with snakes. Thus, again, we are made
aware that knowledge of the world and knowledge of a language are united in a
strong bond. Although ic-Fuchs asserts that motion verbs are not a unified semantic group, because so many different verbs can be used in motion expressions
in English, there are certain basic assumptions that can be made regarding those
verbs which most researchers have defined as motion verbs (cf. Ikegami (1970),
Miller (1973)). She starts from analysis of the three syntactic environments the
verb walk occurs in:
(4) a. The child walked to the supermarket.
b. The children walked the city streets.
c. Young mothers walked their children to school.

The example in (4a) is intransitive, (4b) pseudo-transitive, and (4c) transitive.7


These syntactic frames, however, are conditioned by the difference in meaning, as
ic-Fuchs sees it, of the verb. She is not in favor of the componentional analysis of
meaning in the sense of the once-popular componential analysis (using terms like
+Animate; +Human, etc.), but still establishes certain relevant parts of verb meaning that are responsible for the difference in the constructions the verb appears in.
For example, although we are able to agree on the basic meaning of the verb walk,
we can see that the component walk in such a way that a distance (often long) is
covered is prominent in (4b), whereas in (4c) the meaning to accompany somebody seems more salient than the mere manner of motion (i.e. walking). The
weakness of the semantic component analysis lies in the order of meaning components, which would be the same in all three cases (primarily referring to the manner of motion), while we can see, for example, that walk in example (4c) primarily
means accompany or follow somebody, and the component walking seems rather additional.The most important component is the one that is decisive for the final outcome in the form of the syntactic construction the verb appears in. icFuchs also analyzes some sub-groups within the semantic field of motion verbs.
Those sub-groups are based on categories that are essentially defined by prototypical verbs. For example, verbs of walking can be subdivided further into verbs
that relate to walking that:
i. attracts attention (e.g. strut, prance, etc.)
ii. is uncertain (e.g. stagger, falter, etc.)
iii. is with difficulty, or heavy steps (e.g. trudge, plod, etc.)

7. Dowty (1979: 69) terms the kind of examples in (4b) pseudo-transitive. They seem to be
inherently intransitive because they cannot passivize.

Talking about Motion

ic-Fuchs then goes on to discuss more categories, such as verbs of flying, crawling,
running, etc., and lists sub-groups within them. Thus, her analysis starts by establishing the syntagmatic relations that motion verbs form with other elements in the
structures they participate in, and then goes on to establish the paradigmatic relations within the semantic field and sift all the verbs grouped around the prototypical representatives in each group through all three syntactic frames. She emphasizes that the meaning of verbs allows or prevents their appearance in those
three constructions. She does not establish a construction meaning per se, but rather contends that it is the individual verb meaning that is decisive. The expression in
(4c) has a different meaning depending on what the direct object refers to (e.g. human, animal, or an inanimate object). Thus we can either talk about the multiplicity of meaning of a lexical item in different constructions, or even in a same construction (e.g. the construction (4c)), or talk about the multiplicity of meaning of
constructions themselves. This analysis indicates that the interplay between syntagmatic and paradigmatic hierarchies offers the possibility to reconcile the projectionist and the constructionalist views. So far we have explored different arguments
based on differences in verb meaning. We will now turn to construction meaning.
As we will see next, it is also difficult to posit a unified meaning of a construction
and to avoid running into the problem of polysemy of constructional meaning.
At this stage, we have to point out that the argument seems to revolve around
the question of what should be considered decisive individual meanings of verbs,
which are multilayered, or the meaning of constructions, which can be individuated but also multilayered. Goldberg (1995: 9) emphasizes that the constructional
approach is based on the recognition that constructions and verbs are interrelated
but independent, and one should concentrate on studying the principles that relate
verbs and constructions and the relations among constructions. Somehow, it
seems that one can detect certain components of verb meaning that are responsible for explaining why certain verbs appear in some constructions and others do
not. One is more likely to imagine the situation whereby one would say He walked
two miles, and less likely would be the situation whereby one would say He
pranced two miles, precisely because of our knowledge of the meaning of those
two verbs and about what they refer to. We can still say, for example, that the
pseudo-transitive construction has a definite general meaning, but it is the meaning of individual verbs and the kind of activity to which they refer in reality that
are equally important in deciding whether a particular verb would be applicable in
the construction.
Even though Construction Grammar is not a completely unified framework
either (Kay and Fillmore (1999), Goldberg (1995), Croft (2001)), most authors
working within it agree on a few basic postulates, the central one being that meanings of constructions are individual entities, a kind of closed-class item group.

Chapter 7. Moving on

Compositionality is important for Construction Grammar.8 The meaning of an


expression, according to Goldberg (1995), is the result of integrating the meaning
of lexical items into the meanings of constructions. In this way, we do not have to
claim that the syntax and semantics of the clause are projected exclusively from the
meaning of one lexical item, namely the verb. It is a common belief that postulating construction meaning entails cancelling compositionality, since constructions
are units of meaning themselves. Goldberg (1995) does not dispense with compositionality, and Croft (Croft and Cruise (2004)) explains why this common belief
has to be dispelled. He says that constructions other than idiomatic phrases are
compositional, that is, the meanings of the parts of a construction are combined to
form the meaning of the whole construction (Croft and Cruise (2004: 253)). They
must be represented as independent constructions because semantic interpretation rules associated with the construction are unique to that construction, and
not derived from another, more general syntactic pattern (ibid.).
Depending on the semantic features of lexical items, their acceptability in certain constructions is a matter of degree. This brings us to the issue of which manner verbs can be used in motion expressions. One group of verbs used in motion
expressions seem to have a more restricted presence the verbs of sound emission.
Causal relationship seems to play a part in the following contrasting examples:
(5) a. The train screeched into the station.
b. *The bird chirped out of the tree.

Goldberg (1995: 62) found out that while (5a) is fully acceptable, (5b) is rejected
by many. The difference seems to be that in (5a) the sound is caused by motion,
whereas in (5b) the sound is not caused by motion but is simply a co-occurring
event. Similarly, not many speakers find the following relation possible: He whistled out of the room. However, the non-causally related co-occurring activity is
normally expressed by using the way construction in English (e.g. He laughed
his way out of the room), which is the only construction that can definitely be
used in motion expressions containing verbs of sound emission, whereby the
emission of sound is not causally related to motion. According to Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995), in order for a verb of sound emission to be used as a verb of
directed motion, the sound must be emitted as a necessary concomitant of the motion. Jackendoff (1990: 213) posits two semantic constraints on the verbs that can
appear in this construction: a verb must be capable of being construed as a process, and, furthermore, a verb must express a process with some kind of internal
8. Frege (1879) is generally acknowledged to have originally formulated the idea of compositionality: the meaning of every expression in a language must be a function of the meaning of its
immediate constituents.

Talking about Motion

structure. These properties of the construction would predict that agentive verbs
of manner of motion and internally caused verbs of sound emission could appear
in this construction. Jackendoff (1990) provides evidence that verbs do not exclusively determine complement configuration. He chooses to talk of the construction as a kind of constructional idiom (ibid.: 221). Levin and Rapoport (1988)
suggest instead that each verb in the construction has a special motion sense, but
we can see that this pattern occurs with an enormous variety of verbs. Therefore,
if we accept their proposal, we would need to posit a motion sense for verbs such
as laugh, joke, munch, etc. to account for examples such as:

(6) He laughed his way out of the room.

(7) He joked his way into the meeting.

(8) They munched their way through town.

It seems more plausible to say that the verbs used above should not be analyzed as
verbs with a motion sense, but rather verbs used in a particular construction that
is used to express motion. In order to show that a distinct construction is a reality,
it is necessary to show that its meaning is not compositionally derived from other
constructions existing in grammar.
It may seem justifiable to posit certain construction meanings in motion expressions in English (e.g. the agentive motion construction, the way construction, and the caused motion construction; cf. Goldberg (1995)), because there are
different kinds of verbs or verb classes that can be inserted in them, and the meaning of the construction seems preserved, i.e. the idea of motion is always present.
Some verbs of sound emission could probably be used under certain circumstances, but is this enough to posit a construction? Considering the intensity with which
English is taking advantage of capitalization upon language economy, perhaps the
template that motion verbs are used in and their argument structure become frequently adopted by some other kinds of verbs, and the construction becomes the
common denominator. Goldberg (2005: 229) argues against the possibility of positing separate lexical entries by saying that positing additional lexical entries or
verb senses fails to account for the generalization within and across verb classes.
Lexical stipulation also fails to capture the open-ended nature of the examples
(ibid.). This view opens a further perspective into an investigation regarding the
motivation for constructions, applicable crosslinguistically. Such potential and
variation in lexical insertion is perhaps not so easy to find elsewhere, or at least not
to this extent, and certainly there is none of it in the language we contrast with
English, i.e. Serbo-Croatian. We proposed two constructions in Serbo-Croatian
which we feel are good candidates for units of construction meaning (cf. chapter
3). These constructions are in line with Crofts understanding of constructional

Chapter 7. Moving on

compositionality, whereby the meaning of the construction is achieved through


combining the meanings of its constituent parts, but at the same time it is not derived from more general syntactic patterns (cf. Croft and Cruise (2004)).
However, construction meaning is not always the solution to all our problems.
There are cases where the meaning of a construction is not so uniform. The problem becomes more obvious if we look at the ditransitive construction in English.
Goldberg proposed six related constructional meanings for the ditransitive construction (Goldberg (1995: 38)) to accommodate the difference in meaning of the
ditransitive such as: Jane baked Bill a cake vs. Jane gave Bill a book. In the former,
it is possible that Bill does not receive the cake, whereas in the latter, the entailment
is that Bill comes into the possession of the book. It is always possible to superimpose one general meaning of a construction, as is often done with lexical items.
There is no reason to assume that such a thing should be objectionable in constructions whereas it is perfectly normal in the context of the lexicon. Croft (2003)
noticed that the different senses of the ditransitive construction are very closely
tied to the verb classes that each sense occurs with. He argues that the facts about
the ditransitive construction in English require the postulation of verb-class-specific constructions and verb-specific constructions, and the necessity for this indicates that there is a false dichotomy underlying the lexical rule analysis (Levin and
Rappaport Hovav (1995)) and the abstract constructional analysis (Goldberg
(1995)). Croft concludes:
In other words, the form-function mapping of the component parts of constructions is not necessarily fully specified. Another way of putting it is that multiple
analysis of the form-function mapping may be available to the speaker (cf. Hankamer 1977). Part of the reason for this is that verb-specific and verb-class-specific constructions exist as part of a speakers grammatical knowledge, so the form-meaning
mapping need not be fully specified. Verb-specific and verb-class-specific constructions are semantically partially analysable but need not be completely so. Most of
the time this is not a problem in communication, since the verb-specific construction specifies the meaning of the whole as well as its syntax. But the analysis of the
form-function mapping can vary across speakers, and can result in variation and
change across time. As linguists, we should accommodate this variation and indeterminacy in our analysis of argument structure constructions.

Finally, Thompson (2001) proposes a view on constructions whereby lexical skewing and smaller, language-specific, local templates are sources of construction
meaning rather than broad syntactic templates in the sense of Goldberg (1995).
She accounts for their properties in terms of interactional features such as turntaking, floor-holding, subjectivity, etc. She emphasizes the importance of conversational data, and insists on features such as routinization and frequency. Frequency effects based on this lexical skewing cannot be discovered with constructed

Talking about Motion

data. For example, pseudoclefts in English are often suggested to look like What
John lost was his keys. However, Thompson argues that they are in fact formulaic
prefabs used for floor-holding and rhetorical deferral of the main point (88% of
the data), and occur mainly with low-content high-frequency verbs, such as do,
happen and say, which are highly skewed lexically and genre-specifically (Thompson (2001)). Goldberg (2005: 230) has argued recently that we need to recognize
classes of verbs that are conventionally allowed. Thus the interplay of syntax and
the lexicon should be sought on smaller scales, internal to a particular language,
and then checked for wider applicability. In our case, starting from classes of verbs
(i.e. verbs of manner of motion) and attesting their appearance in contexts beyond
the VP was both theoretically and methodologically justified.
Summary
In this chapter we tackled a selection of topics from different theoretical and applied domains in linguistics and related disciplines that bear relevance to the way
we understand the relationship between events, our experience of events and our
event descriptions. Our caution comes from the argument that we also include,
namely that language may not be the ideal tool for one-to-one mapping onto reality, but it is the best one we have and it mainly caters for our need to know what
expressions refer to in reality. We reiterated our main aim, which is to account for
the effect of lexicalization patterns on the information content of expressions, and
thus our research mainly steers clear of the level of conceptualization. However, we
felt the need to comment on previous, current and future research related to
processing that is closely related to crosslinguistic differences in the lexicalization
of cognitive domains. We did not give a definitive answer about the nature of the
interplay of language and conceptualization, but we critically discussed some results available in the literature and explained how a study of domain lexicalization
can be carried out within this context. We expressed our view that verbalization of
events should be further tested and that lexicalization patterns are certainly an
area for further research with regard to the relationship of events, their cognizing
and their linguistic rendering. Finally, the verb-centered and construction-centered approaches are reconciled in our study by bringing the two camps closer
(which seems to be a general tendency among researchers on both sides, recognizing the good things in their opponents work). We explicitly favored research in
language-specific variability in the contribution to the meaning of the whole via
verbs and constructions. When it comes to lexicalization patterns in motion expressions, verb and construction meanings are very closely knit, and this is especially pronounced in English. We also saw that it makes sense to evoke construction

Chapter 7. Moving on

meaning in some circumstances in Serbo-Croatian as well (chapter 3), but perhaps


Serbo-Croatian has a different take on construction meaning due to its complex
morphology. The study of lexical and construction meaning in domain lexicalization is a potential source of understanding how the language-specific and the universal interact and coexist. Thompsons approach to construction meaning is particularly appealing to us, because it favors a study of constructions based on the
frequency of use in attested data, which systematically reveals which items frequently appear together and become entrenched in the form of a construction
through habitual language use.

chapter 8

Conclusion
Moving forward

It is time to make the final summary of our findings, and in order to do that, we
have to go back to the introductory promises that this research was set to fulfill.
First, we showed why it is essential to establish how different levels of the language
structure (e.g. morphology, syntax and lexical semantics) interact in rendering
events into a linguistic expression. It was obviously not enough only to establish
whether a component of an event is lexicalized in a verb or in a particle in a particular language. The fact that the two languages in focus (Serbo-Croatian and
English) show a certain degree of similarity in the way they express a certain component of an event (e.g. the Manner component of motion events expressed in the
verb) was not a solid base for the claims regarding the whole process of lexicalization of an experiential domain.
The theoretical background for this research was eclectic by choice and we
critically positioned ourselves towards major frameworks and relevant approaches
to meaning without siding completely with any particular one. This is the kind of
independence we are particularly proud of, because much linguistic research nowadays is unnecessarily shrouded in mystery because of theoretical dispute, and our
multifaceted, theoretically unbiased approach hopefully signals the need of all linguistic (and related) disciplines to cooperate without limiting themselves by selfimposing theoretical boundaries. We demonstrated that our data-driven approach
has advantages over a theory-driven one. Our network of spatial and temporal
parameters was a great help in achieving our goals. It enabled us to detect language
features that are relevant in the lexicalization of the experiential domain of motion
and explain how they find their way into lexicalization patterns. Different interactions of language-specific systems of lexical semantics, syntax and morphology
may compel speakers of a particular language to refer to some aspects of events
more often than speakers of other languages. We by no means neglected the fact
that the universal human capacity to perceive events and talk about them is evident, and we did not delve deeper into the level of conceptualization (events in the
mind) as an intermediate level between events in reality and events in language,

Talking about Motion

the latter being our focus. We limited ourselves to showing that the information
content of an expression is affected by the differences in lexicalization patterns. We
drew attention to the hurdles in understanding the relevant crosslinguistic differences, especially when learning, teaching or translating from and into a foreign
language. We make no predictions regarding any cognitive consequences, but discuss the ways in which lexicalization mechanisms could be used further in order
to carry out tests that could reveal the nature of event representation. We demonstrated how those universally perceivable features of motion events (e.g. whether
there was a boundary in the way of the moving Figure and whether it was crossed
or not) and language-specific patterns interact and differ depending on what kind
of events are described.
Finally, even though we did not explore issues related to processing (because
our study was not aimed at it) it seems worthwhile to comment that lexicalization
studies can serve as a solid base for exploring the potential of processing models.
Our inclination is towards the usage-based model, whereby the crucial importance is given to two usage-based properties: type/token frequency of occurrence
of particular grammatical forms and structures, and the meaning of the words and
constructions in use (cf. Bybee and Slobin (1982), Bybee (1985), Bybee (1995),
Croft and Cruise (2004)). Studying lexicalization of a domain can serve as a testing
ground for hypotheses related to frequencies. In such a way, a productive pattern
may be shown to be less frequent than assumed just on the basis of its productivity. For example, Goldberg (1995) compares two constructions, the caused motion and the ditransitive construction, which overlap in their distribution (i.e.
some verbs allow both constructions). She states that the ditransitive construction
is used with many fewer verbs than the caused motion construction, and hence is
much less productive than the caused motion construction (Goldberg (1995:
124)). However, the prototypical ditransitive construction has the highest type frequency of any ditransitive subconstructions. By the same token, manner verbs in
Serbo-Croatian have much higher type frequency than directional verbs (cf. Tables 2 and 3), but directional verbs have higher token frequency (see Vidakovi
(2006) for some recent results in support of our claims). Further inquiry into how
much manner detail is still present in expressions that contain directional verbs
(e.g. the presence of manner adjuncts) should be carried out in order to reveal
more details about the Serbo-Croatian lexicalization pattern. The type/token frequencies presented are a good indication of the typological cline proposed here.
Also, further corpus analysis and psycholinguistic evidence may reveal the difference between productive syntactic schemas and default syntactic schemas (cf.
Croft and Cruise (2004: 312)).
Finally, typological evidence, to which we also contribute, is crucial in a more
general sense. Croft explains (Croft and Cruise (2004: 322)) that typological

Chapter 8. Conclusion

evidence indicates that at least broad structure of conceptual space in universal


and therefore makes up part of human cognition, although boundaries are variable and hence less constrained by the nature of human cognition(cf. also Croft
(2001), Croft (2003)). The constraints of language were our subject here; we showed
how these constraints operate on the information content of the message. Other
sources of constraints (e.g. environmental circumstances and needs, social practices, etc.) are not negligible, but belong to a different type of study.
Our situation types proved themselves a handy tool in our language contrasts.
English and Serbo-Croatian have the means to distinguish the situation types as
predicted, but using the levels of meaning differently. The only more serious problem for our analysis which we encountered in English is the doubt between directional and locational interpretation depending on the cognizing of the referent in
the object of the preposition, which when lexicalized, can be indeterminate between boundary and location. We showed that it is frequently resolved in sentential context, because this is what speakers provide when they communicate rather
than giving underspecified verb+preposition combinations on their own. The
great majority of our corpus examples testify to that end. Sentence level is informative enough for establishing the essential typological contrasts bearing in mind
that they are not the only ones. Larger contexts (e.g. narrative) have a role to play,
but that role should not be exaggerated either.
It is important to bear in mind that situation types are not strict restrictions;
they are rather indicative of the possible ways to look for common ground in language contrasts as well as establishing the balance between the universal and the
language-specific in the lexicalization of cognitive domains. What is truly universal, in our opinion, is the ability to perceive and cognize boundaries and changes
and talk about them, for which languages provide the means. In turn, the study of
these language-specific means can take us back to the universal, for example, by
establishing the balance between the common reliance on extra-linguistic knowledge (reflected, for instance, in the effect that conventionalized scenarios could
have on interpretation) and use of language, which is inevitably spiced up with
language-specific magic of semantics 2 mechanisms (cf. chapter 1).
If a language does not oblige the speakers to mark certain distinctions, they
will not be marked systematically and on all occasions. However, we assume that
the spatio-temporal features we proposed are salient to speakers, and if boundary
vs. location is not always as rigorously marked in English as it is in Serbo-Croatian
(morphologically) or Spanish (via directional vs. manner verb choice), it is because this difference need not affect our understanding of the sequence of events.
In He staggered across the back yard and entered the conservatory, we do not
need to know whether the speaker thought of the back yard as a boundary or a
location, but we know that the moving Figure did change location (entered the

Talking about Motion

house), and this is enough to classify the motion event as boundary-crossing/


change-occurred. The crucial point is that if the distinction matters for the understanding of an event, it tends to be clearly signaled. In Serbo-Croatian, the situation types are specified regardless of whether boundary vs. location is important
or not. Therefore, in translation and communication in a foreign language, a Serbo-Croatian speaker will be tuned to gather the information informally defined as
crossed the boundary or was located somewhere as soon as possible in the sentence, because of the perfective vs. imperfective marking on the verb that brings
immediate resolution to the verbalized event interpretation in Serbo-Croatian.
This research should be understood as an invitation to move on in the investigation of crosslinguistic lexicalization patterning, rather than as a definitive answer to questions related to rendering experience into languages. We tackled a
small number of issues within this vast area of linguistic study, and limited ourselves to providing insight into which aspects should be taken into consideration
when it comes to contrasting languages and searching for potential universals and
language-specific features. The potential to apply the theory and methodology put
forward here is immense. For example, the latest applied psycholinguistic research
in translations of eyewitness testimony showed content differences in the translation of the original transcripts as well as crosslinguistic differences in narratives
due to typological differences in lexicalization patterning (Filipovi (in press)).
Preliminary experimental results showed no language-induced differences between English and Spanish speakers in short-tem memory of motion events, but
indicated higher reliance for speakers of both Spanish and English on what we
could provisionally call atomic components of motion events (perceptually primary and salient) rather than on molar, lexicalized concepts, to use Levinsons
terminology (Filipovi (in progress)). Therefore, studying language-specific tendencies could lead to establishing (potentially) universal conceptual features within a conceptual domain.
Our starting point was the typology of languages based on the ways in which
different components of events are lexicalized in different languages; a major dichotomy between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages has been established by previous researchers. As Sapir once said of grammars, we can also say of
typologies that they all leak, and thus our primary aim was not to prove that the
typology does not work. It should not be considered decisive in predicting all aspects of language use, but rather as a source of broadly sketched guidelines regarding some features and processes within different linguistic systems. We highlighted
the difficulty one encounters in drawing conclusions about how similar the languages are based on a limited criterion of where they lexicalize components of
events. We have seen that components of events that are lexicalized in various
languages seem to be universal, but the way they are lexicalized varies. We kept the

Chapter 8. Conclusion

crucial meaning distinctions constant, while examining the language-specific devices that speakers use to express them. At the same time, when speakers (or translators) use these language-specific devices, additional meanings may be conveyed,
which, as we showed, is important to look out for.
We recognize that the domain we analysed is part of universal human experience, and the capability to distinguish the relevant components of events is part of
its common conceptual core. On the other hand, we demonstrated that although
more than one option is available in a language to lexicalize motion events, there
are certain systemic restrictions which condition the choice of a pattern. The consequence of a certain pattern being consistently preferred and established as dominant can be seen in the importance and the early acquisition of certain strong
features of a system (e.g. causation in Korean). Language-specific systemic features
(e.g. morphosyntactic constraints in Serbo-Croatian and the pronounced use of
deictically prefixed manner verbs) impose certain restrictions on the final output
regarding linguistic expression, and we could see that languages need not be just
different means for expressing the same meanings all the time.
We were concerned with systemic differences, which are based on language
rules that determine what can or cannot be expressed by the means available to the
system, and not with stylistics, which deals with aspects which may or may not be
expressed and depend on the choice of a number of possible combinations.1 The
fact that there is a particular combination allowed in English does not mean that it
will be used in all contexts. Still, we have seen that it is possible to determine that
certain patterns are more dominant in a language and therefore represent a typical,
habitual pattern in expressions of events. The typical pattern in motion expressions in English is manner verb+directional particle. Expressing direction in the
verbs and manner in an adjunct is possible, but not used as a typical way of expressing motion events, and therefore is a marked option in English. Thus, in order to be able to explain the underlying mechanisms that condition the kind of
expression that will be used in specific situation types, we have to look into the
interactions among all levels where meaning is conveyed in a language. Language
processing consists of speaking or writing and understanding, whereby all means
available within a language convey meaning as a joint venture. The explanation
must be sought within the whole system and must include all levels where meaning is conveyed, namely morphology, syntax and lexical semantics, and the way
they all complement one another. Our analysis pointed out the way all those levels
function in English and Serbo-Croatian, and highlighted both the similarities and
the differences on this occasion.
1. We note, though, that stylistics is another area where our findings could have further applications.

Talking about Motion

Different levels of linguistic analysis have different degrees of contribution in


the process of conveying meaning, which varies from language to language. Once
we have established the major distinctions that are relevant within a domain, we
can establish the levels at which these distinctions are drawn. For example, the
syntax/lexical semantics interface seems to matter more in the case of English than
in the case of Serbo-Croatian, and focusing only on the similarities in lexicalization patterning between the two languages obscured many differences, which in
effect illustrate that the two systems function rather differently in the process.
Furthermore, we explained why no single theoretical approach can account
for all phenomena in all languages. And there is no reason why we should expect
any approach to be all-encompassing. Different points of view have co-existed
(and still do, although reluctantly in some cases) in the natural sciences and this
has never prevented researchers from coming up with ever more insightful and
thought-provoking solutions to old problems. Therefore, our research does not
side with any particular framework, and leaves open the possibility that more than
one approach can be used in linguistic problem solving, just as, for example, there
are different ways of arriving at the same solution to a mathematical problem.
We insist that further exploration of the issues we raised in this research is
required in order to be able to enhance the predictive power of the claims we
made. A diachronic study of the relevant parts of linguistic expressions of a particular domain will help establish the exact development of their meaning and use
(e.g. locational and/or directional meaning in prepositions).
Finally, we avoided detailed discussion of the level between events in reality
and events in linguistic expression, i.e. events at the conceptual level. However,
this does not mean that our study has no implications for I-semantics, or conceptual semantics, to evoke the terminology of Jackendoff again. Featural representations or schemas that Jackendoff uses to illustrate conceptual representations are
just a suggestion of what might be happening in the mind when experience of a
domain is lexicalized. We do not have immediate evidence about the definitive
nature of features or schemas we might be using to represent our knowledge and
experience of the world. In any case, if we take universal conceptual structure to be
decomposed into primitives, certain languages may make more use of certain features than others, or may combine them in a different way. The language then entrenches the combinations and the conceptual construal probably does not involve
building up concepts from features every time they are needed. Rather, the whole
combination of features can be already set: a cocktail of features, which may be
(and probably are) universal comes served according to a language-specific recipe.
This leads us again to Levinson and his distinction between atomic and molar
concepts, for which more psychological and cultural, as well as linguistic, evidence
must be sought.

Chapter 8. Conclusion

We may be frivolous for a moment and think of conceptual atoms as free radicals, waiting to be bound. And if this sounds too reminiscient of Plato and his
floating ideas, think of 1984. Not lexicalizing concepts does not mean they do not
exist somewhere, somehow and that they cannot be thought. No newspeak (like
the fantasy one in George Orwells 1984) could eliminate certain thoughts and
concepts by eliminating words for them. Therefore, there is a need to search for the
way to establish the right balance in the study within the humanities and social
sciences: all culture or language-specific varieties can, but need not, have transparent universal qualities. The potential to grasp diversity is the best proof of universal capabilities in humans. In spite of everything, language is the way to the brain
at the moment, and fathoming the ways in which language works can be indicative
of what might be happening in the multicoloured black box where colorless green
ideas sleep furiously. It may seem at times as if we are only pecking at the perimeter,
but nevertheless it is a start.

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Croatian National Corpus on-line (for Serbo-Croatian): www.hnk.ffzg.hr
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Appendix 1
Verbs in English

According to Levin (1993)1


1. Verbs of modes of being involving motion
bob, bow, creep, dance, drift, eddy, flap, float, flutter, hover, jiggle, joggle, oscillate,
pulsate, quake, quiver, revolve, rock, rotate, shake, stir, sway, swirl, teeter, throb,
totter, tremble, undulate, vibrate, waft, wave, waver, wiggle, wobble, writhe

2. Verbs of body-internal motion


buck, fidget, flap, gyrate, kick, rock, squirm, sway, teeter, totter, twitch, waggle,
wiggle, wobble, wriggle

3. Verbs of manner of motion


a) Roll verbs:
bounce, drift, drop, float, glide, move, roll, slide, swing
movement around an axis: coil, revolve, rotate, spin, turn, twirl, twist, whril, wind

1. Levin (1993) classifies certain verbs in more than one category; the corpus occurrences way
categories are defined is not always clear-cut, but this is not of relevance for our selection of
verbs since our aim in using this source was to compile the verbs that are used in motion expressions to refer to manner of motion.

Talking about Motion

b) Run verbs
amble, backpack, bolt, bounce, bound, bowl, canter, carom, cavort, charge, clamber,
climb, clump, coast, crawl, creep, dart, dash, dodder, drift, file, float, fly, frolic, gallop,
gambol, glide, goosestep, haste, hike, hobble, hop, hurry, hurtle, inch, jog, journey,
jump, leap, limp, lollop, lope, limber, lurch, march, meander, mince, mosey, nip, pad,
parade, perambulate, plod, prance, promenade, prowl, race, ramble, roam, roll, romp,
rove, run, rush, sashay, saunter, scamper, scoot, scram, scramble, scud, scurry,
scutter, scuttle, shamble, shuffle, sidle, skedaddle, skip, skitter, skulk, sleepwalk, slide,
slink, slither, slog, slouch, sneak, somersault, speed, stagger, stomp, stray, streak,
stride, stroll, strut, stumble, stump, swagger, sweep, swim, tack, tear, tiptoe, toddle,
totter, traipse, tramp, travel, trek, troop, trot, trudge, trundle, vault, waddle, wade,
walk, wander, whiz, zigzag, zoom

4. Verbs that are vehicle names


balloon, bicycle, bike, boat, bobsled, bus, cab, canoe, caravan, chariot, coach, cycle,
dogsled, ferry, gondola, helicopter, jeep, jet, kayak, moped, motor, motorbike,
motorcycle, parachute, punt, raft, rickshaw, rocket, skate, skateboard, ski, sled, sledge,
sleigh, taxi, toboggan, tram, trolley, yacht

5. Motion using a particular type of vehicle


cruise, drive, fly, oar, paddle, pedal, ride, row, sail, tack

6. Waltz verbs
boogie, bop, cancan, clog, conga, dance, foxtrot, jig, jitterbug, jive, pirouette, polka,
quickstep, rumba, samba, shuffle, squaredance, tango, tapdance, waltz

Appendix 2
Verbs in Serbo-Croatian

1. OD-/DO- Verbs
DOBAVRLJATI
DOBAZATI
DOBANGATI
DOBASATI
DOBASRLJATI (DOBAVRLJATI)
DOBATATI
DOBATRGATI
DOBAULJATI
DOBESNETI
DOBLATATI
DOBREKTATI
DOBRZATI
DOBRODITI
DOVALJATI (SE)
DOVERUGATI
DOVESLATI
DOVIJUGATI SE
DOVRVETI
DOVRLJATI
DOVUKLJATI/DOVUKOVATI SE/
DOVULJATI SE
DOGAZITI
DOGALAMITI
DOGALOPIRATI
DOGAMBATI
DOGAMBULJATI
DOGAMIZATI
DOGEGATI (SE)
DOGERLJATI

DOGREZATI
DOGLAVINJATI
DOGRMETI
DOGRCATI
DOZVIDATI
DOZIBATI SE
DOZUJATI
DOJAHATI
DOJEDRITI
DOJEZDITI
DOJUNJATI
DOJURITI
DOKASATI
DOKIHATI
DOKLANCATI
DOKLAPATI
DOKLATARITI (SE)
DOKLATITI (SE)
DOKLECATI
DOKLIZITI
DOKLIMATI
DOKLIPSATI
DOKLOPARATI
DOKOBELJATI SE
DOKONDRLJATI (SE)
DOKOPRCATI SE
DOKOTRLJATI (=DOKOTURATI) (SE)
DOKRAKATI
DOKRASTI SE

Talking about Motion

DOKRCATI
DOLANDARATI
DOLEBDETI
DOLEPETATI
DOLEPRATI
DOLETETI
DOLUNJATI
DOLUTATI
DOLJULJATI (SE)
DOMARSIRATI
DOMIGOLJITI
DOMILETI
DOMUVATI (SE)
DOPAUNITI
DOPEVATI
DOPENTRATI (SE)
DOPERJATI
DOPEACITI
DOPIRITI
DOPLAVITI
DOPLAZITI
DOPLAKATI
DOPLIVATI
DOPLESATI
DOPLITATI
DOPLOVITI
DOPLUTATI
DOPLJESKATI
DOPRTETI
DOPUZATI
DOPUHATI

DOSKOITI
DOSKAKUTATI
DOTAVRLJATI
DOTALASATI
DOTALJIGATI
DOTANDRKATI
DOTAPKATI
DOTETURATI (SE)
DOTRABUNJATI
DOTRALJATI
DOTRAPATI
DOTREPTATI
DOTRATI
DOTUMARATI
DOTUTNJATI
DOHITATI
DOHRAMATI
DOHRLITI
DOHUJATI
DOHUKTATI
DOCVLETI
DOCUNJATI SE
DOCUPKATI
DOANTATI
DOTAPATI
DOTRKLJATI
DOULJATI SE (=DOUNJATI SE)
DOUMITI
DOUMORITI
(total: 118)

2. IZ-/U- Verbs
IZBASATI
IZBATRGATI
IZBAULJATI
IZBRODITI
IZVALJATI (SE)
IZVESLATI

IZVIJUGATI
IZVRVETI
IZGALOPIRATI
IZGAMBATI (=IZGAMBULJATI)
IZGEGATI SE
IZGERLJATI


IZGLAVINJATI
IZGMIZATI
IZJAHATI
IZJEDRITI
IZJEZDITI
IZJURITI
IZLEPRATI
IZLETETI
IZLUNJATI
IZMARIRATI
IZMIGOLJITISE
IZMILETI
IZKLIZNUTI
ISKOTRLJATI (=ISKOTURATI) (SE)
ISKASATI
ISKLATITI

Appendix 2

ISKLIZNUTI
ISKOPRCATI SE
ISKOITI
ISKRMANITI
ISPLIVATI
ISLPOVITI
ISPLUATI
ISPRTETI
ISPRHNUTI
ISPUZATI
ISTETURATI SE
ISTRATI
ISTUTNJETI
IEPATI
IETATI
(total: 43)

3. PRO-Verbs
PROBAZATI
PROBRZATI
PROVALJATI (SE)
PROGAVELJATI
PROGALOPIRATI
PROGAMIZATI
PROGAMBATI
PROGEGATI
PROGMIZATI
PROGRMETI
PRODRNDATI
PROZVECATI
PROJAHATI
PROJEDRITI
PROJEZDITI
PROKASATI
PROKLIZITI
PROKOTRLJATI SE
PROKRSTARITI
PROLEBDETI
PROLEPRATI

PROLETETI
PROLUNJATI
PROLUTATI
PROMARSIRATI
PROMIGOLJITI
PROMILETI
PROPUZATI
PROPLIVATI
PROPLOVITI
PROTABATI
PROTANDRKATI
PROTAPKATI
PROTRATI
PROTUMBATI
PROHUJATI
PROHUKTATI
PROUNJATI SE
PROEPURITI SE
PROVRLJATI
PROETATI (SE)

(total: 41)

Talking about Motion

4. PRE- Verbs
PREBRODITI
PREVALJATI SE
PREVESLATI
PREGAZITI
PREGALOPIRATI
PREGMETI
PREJEDRITI
PREJEZDITI
PREJAHATI
PREJURITI
PREKASATI

PREKLIZITI
PREKOTRLJATI (SE)
PRELETETI
PREPLIVATI
PREPLOVITI
PREPUZITI
PRESKOITI
PRETRATI
PREETATI
(total: 20)

5. NA-Verbs
NAVALJATI
NALETETI
NAJAHATI

NATRATI
NASKOITI
(total: 5)

6. POD- Verbs
PODVALJATI SE
PODLETETI

PODTRATI
(total: 3)

Index

Talking about Motion: A Crosslinguistic Investigation of Lexicalization Patterns


Luna Filipovi
A
Albanian 45
Aristotle 6
Asher, N 24, 26
Aske, J 20
aspect 5666
Atkins, B. T. 7
B
Baicchi, A. 23, 28
Beli, A. 116
Berthele, R. 23, 29
Bohnemeyer, J. 11, 32, 108
Bolinger, D. 34
boundary 3940
boundary-crossing 20, 3740
Bowerman, M. 16, 17, 140, 143,
144
Brinton, L.J. 22
Bugarski, R. 2
Bybee, J. 13, 99, 100, 129, 130, 158
C
Carroll, M. 116
Chang, C. H. 46
change (spatio-temporal) 51,
67, 78
see also temporal frame and
boundary-crossing
Chinese, Mandarin 4648
Choi, S. 17, 140, 143
combinatory potential 74, 130
compositionality 151, 153
Comrie, B. 46, 56
construals 51
construction meaning 61, 64,
145, 150155
conventionalized scenarios see
scenarios

Croft, W. 16, 18, 29, 50, 143144,


150153, 158, 159
Cruise, A. 151, 153, 158
D
Danchev, A. 106107
Davidoff, J. 142
Davies, I. 142
default meanings 99101
deixis 17, 113122
Depraetre, I. 57
Dickey, S. M. 66
directional meaning 18
Doron, E. 58
Dowty, D. 51, 5758, 149
E
Edmonds, D. 142
Egerod, S. 47
Eidinow, J. 142
Erteschik-Shir, N. 58, 148
English 43
algorithm 7172
events 38
event lexicalization 5956
motion events 57
motion event components 17
verbalized events 5
see also construals
Everett, D. 142
extended space and time 8586
F
Filip, H. 130131
Filipovi, L. 3031, 44, 52, 65,
7678, 89, 100, 118, 129, 133,
137, 139, 148, 160
Fillmore, C. 7, 116, 150
Finkbeiner, M. 140
first- and second-tier verbs 71,
7576, 131

Fodor, J. A. 137, 141


Fong, V. 2326, 28, 9596, 103
Frege, G. 151
French 2426
G
Gaskins, S. 140
Gasparov, B. 7071, 75
Gell, A. 145
Gentner, D. 51
German 59
Goldberg, A. 29, 145, 147,
150154, 158
Goldin-Meadow, S. 51
Grickat, I. 14, 15, 35, 70, 75, 130
H
Hale, K. 58
Hankamer, J. 153
Harley, H. 58
Higginbotham, J. 4950, 58, 65,
8990
Hoekstra, T. 145
Hoiting, N. 13, 29, 117
Hudson, R. 67, 138
I
Ibarretexte-Antuano, I. 28
Ikegami, Y. 6, 149
Italian 2728
Ivi, M. 77
Iwasaki, N. 89, 104
J
Jackendoff, R. 29, 137138, 143,
151152, 162
Janda, L. 6263
Jarvis, S. 72
Jaszczolt, K. 99100
Johnson, M. 42
Johnson-Laird, P. N. 116

Talking about Motion


K
Kamp, H. 51
Kay, P. 142, 144, 150
Kempton, W. 142
Keyser, S. J. 58
Krifka, M. 4950
L
Lakoff, G. 42, 62, 142
Landau, B. 140141
Landman, F. 51
Langacker, R. 7, 42, 78, 138, 144
Lehrer, A. 33
Lemmens, M. 23, 29
Levin, B. 9, 14, 18, 23, 29, 37, 103,
109, 134, 146148, 151153, 175
Levinson, S. C. 53, 99, 114115,
137, 139141, 144, 160, 162
lexicalization 1
locational meaning 18
Lucy, J. 140
Lyons, J. 116
M
Malt, B. C. 140141
Matthews, P. H. 7
Michaelis, L. 65
Miller, G. A. 6, 116, 149
morphological blocking 7475,
132
Munnich, G.A. 140141
N
Naigles, L. 2324, 2829, 41, 128
Narasimhan, B. 30
Nuyts, J. 140
O
Odlin, T. 72
P
Packard, J. L. 46
Pagliuca, W. 13, 99, 100
Palmer, F. R. 36

Parsons, T. 51
perfectivization 130
Perkins, R. 13, 99, 100
Pianesi, F. 50, 58
Poulin, C. 2326, 28, 103
R
Rapoport, T. 58, 148, 152
Rappaport-Hovav, M. 18, 23, 29,
37, 103, 109, 146148, 151, 153
Ritter, E. 148
Roberson, D. 142
Rooryck, J. 72
Rosen, S. T. 148
Rothstein, S. 51, 5758
Rudzka-Ostyn, B. 5
Russian 2122, 6162, 108
S
Saeed, J. I. 114
satellite-framed languages 1819
scenarios 148
conventionalized scenarios 55, 102
Schmid, H. 7
semantics 7
Serbo-Croatian 43
algorithm 7274
aspect 6064
directional verbs 1516, 77,
11011, 132133
verb forms 13
prefix cline 7374
prefixes 14
Serra-Borneto, C. 42, 59
Shibatani, M. 102, 147
Shull, S. 21, 75, 121
kiljan, D. 2
Slobin, D. I. 5, 13, 1925, 2831,
43, 55, 71, 7477, 107, 117, 121,
131, 139, 140, 142, 158
Smith, C. S. 58, 60

Spanish 19, 2021, 29, 74, 104,


128, 134
spatial frame 3738
spatial and temporal features 3841
Stanoji, . 14, 35
Stevanovi, M. 14, 35, 116
Stoi, D. 2627
Svorou, S. 46
T
Talmy, L. 1, 3, 5, 7, 13, 1620, 28,
3336, 39, 42, 52, 77, 81, 9192,
98, 112, 131, 140, 144
temporal frame 38
temporal phase 39, 52
Tenny, C. 60
Thelin, N. 5657, 63
Thomas, E. 72
Thompson, S. 153155
Tversky, B. 116
U
Ungerer, F. 7
usage-based model 158
V
Van Hout, A. 146
Varzi, A. C. 50, 58
Vendler, Z. 37, 5758
verb-framed languages 1819
Verkuyl, H. 51, 5657, 5963,
6566, 120
Vet, C. 26
Vidakovi, I. 73, 77, 132134, 158
Vigliocco, G. 89, 104, 137
Vinson, D. 89, 104
W
Wierzbicka, A. 6, 141
Z
ic-Fuchs, M. 4, 6, 37, 131,
146150

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97 Dollinger, Stefan: New-Dialect Formation in Canada. Evidence from the English modal auxiliaries.
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40 Birner, Betty J. and Gregory Ward: Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English.
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39 Wanner, Leo (ed.): Recent Trends in MeaningText Theory. 1997. xx,202pp.
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22 McGregor, William B.: A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi. 1990. xx,618pp.
21 Coleman, Robert (ed.): New Studies in Latin Linguistics. Proceedings of the 4th International
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19 Blust, Robert A.: Austronesian Root Theory. An essay on the limits of morphology. 1988. xi,190pp.
18 Wierzbicka, Anna: The Semantics of Grammar. 1988. vii,581pp.
17 Calboli, Gualtiero (ed.): Subordination and Other Topics in Latin. Proceedings of the Third Colloquium
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16 Conte, Maria-Elisabeth, Jnos Snder Petfi and Emel Szer (eds.): Text and Discourse
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15 Justice, David: The Semantics of Form in Arabic. In the mirror of European languages. 1987. iv,417pp.
14 Benson, Morton, Evelyn Benson and Robert F. Ilson: Lexicographic Description of English. 1986.
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13 Reesink, Ger P.: Structures and their Functions in Usan. 1987. xviii,369pp.
12 Pinkster, Harm (ed.): Latin Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. Proceedings of the 1st International
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3 Malkiel, Yakov: From Particular to General Linguistics. Selected Essays 19651978. With an introduction by
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2 Anwar, Mohamed Sami: BE and Equational Sentences in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. 1979. vi,128pp.
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