English is less rich in manner-of-motion verbs when translated from French

Abstract

This paper reports on a corpus-based method used to compare translated and non-translated English texts, more specifically with respect to how extensively they use verbs expressing manner of motion. On the basis of the well-known typological distinction between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages, it is hypothesized that English translations from French, which is a verb-framed language, contain relatively fewer manner-ofmotion verbs than originally produced English texts. Furthermore, no such difference should exist between English translated from German and original English, as Germanic languages are classified as satellite-framed. Both these hypotheses are borne out, both for self-motion (e.g. crawl, hop, scurry) and caused motion (e.g. chuck, heap, sweep). It is argued that these findings challenge the Explicitation Hypothesis and support the Unique Items Hypothesis.