Satellite-framed or verb-framed? Towards a typology of motion events in English as a lingua franca

Abstract

The present paper analyzes English as a lingua franca (ELF) from the perspective of Talmy’s (2000b) typology, which divides languages into S- and V-types. S-languages express the path of motion in a verb particle and the manner of motion in a verb, while V-languages encode the path in a verb and manner in an adverbial. Talmy’s (2000b) typology has been felicitously applied in research on standard languages. However, studies on dialects (Berthele 2004) have shown that a division into S- and V-categories may not be sufficient in the case of contact languages. To test this hypothesis, we apply Talmy’s (2000b) typological distinction to English as a lingua franca. Based on the results of a qualitative pilot study among Polish users of English, we demonstrate that although Polish and English are both classified as S-languages according to Talmy’s (2000b) typology, ELF – a contact language between them – reveals characteristics not yet classified as belonging to either S- or V-types. We thus conclude that Talmy’s (2000b, 2017) dichotomous distinction is in need of further refinements to be applicable in the context of ELF.