Abstract This paper examines the role of manner-of-motion verbs in shaping subjective temporal perception and emotional resonance. Through four complementary studies, we explore how these verbs influence the conceptualization of time, examining their use in literal and metaphorical (temporal) contexts. Our findings reveal that faster verbs (e.g., fly, zoom ) evoke dynamic and engaging temporal experiences, often linked to positive emotions and greater agency. In contrast, slower verbs (e.g., crawl, drag ) convey passivity, monotony, and negative emotions, reflecting tedious or constrained experiences of time. These effects are amplified in metaphorical contexts, where manner verbs encode emotional and experiential nuances that transcend their literal meanings. We also find that participants prefer manner verbs over path verbs (e.g., go, pass ) in emotionally charged temporal contexts, as manner verbs capture the experiential and emotional qualities of time more effectively. These findings highlight the interplay between language, motion, and emotion in shaping temporal perception, offering insights into how linguistic framing influences subjective experiences of time.

Abstract Boundary-crossing events have been analyzed from the perspective of the thinking-for-speaking hypothesis (Slobin, 1996) both in first and second language acquisition. Moreover, this framework has also been applied to translation, leading to the thinking-for-translating hypothesis. Audio description (AD) is a type of intersemiotic translation (Jakobson, 1959) that involves translation across sign systems. In this field of research, no studies have been conducted on boundary-crossing testing the thinking-for-speaking hypothesis. The present study aims to fill that gap by analyzing this constraint in audio descriptions (ADs) of two films in the Harry Potter saga. Differences across English and Spanish AD are analyzed as well as the use of the different types and tokens produced in path, manner, and path+manner verbs. Additionally, the omission and inclusion of boundary-crossing across both ADs has been included. Findings show that English AD contains more boundary-crossing events. In Spanish AD, a higher proportion of path verbs were used while more manner verbs were used in English AD. Moreover, expressing Path and Manner outside the verb was more common in English AD, and boundary-crossing events were omitted to a larger extent in Spanish AD.

ABSTRACT Audio description for the blind and visually impaired has received little critical analysis within the thinking-for-speaking and the thinking-for-translating hypotheses. Because languages typically describe motion in varying ways, the audio-described experience for speakers of different languages may also vary. Thus, the primary aim of this paper is to examine the information included about motion in an English-Spanish and a German-Spanish corpus of audio-described films aimed at children and young adults. The results of the study confirm the impact of the describer’s mother tongue on the end product of AD (e.g. regarding the lexical diversity of manner verbs and the use of typical V-framed and S-framed lexicalization patterns). Additionally, the contribution includes a report on the availability of AD in Spanish in a series of streaming services in Spain (i.e. Disney+, Filmin and HBO/Max).

Abstract In studying ideophones in motion descriptions, this article focuses on Khalkha Mongolian (sov, agglutinative), a verb-framed language (Talmy, 2000) with occasional satellite-framed constructions and a rich inventory of manner verbs (cf. Matsumoto and Badema, 2025). Drawing upon a database of ideophones built within our project and supplemented by elicitation questionnaires, we (i) scrutinize the semantics of Mongolian ideophones in motion descriptions (partially using Ibarretxe-Antuñano’s (2019) Semantic Grid), and (ii) define the role of ideophonic constructions in forming core predicates or satellites in motion constructions (Talmy, 2000). We also examine the status of ideophones in relation to manner verbs, particularly if they are used in place of manner verbs (cf. Slobin’s (2006) discussion of manner salience) or as their secondary modifiers (cf. Schaefer, 2001). We have identified the prominent role of ideophones on the periphery of motion construction, whereas the contribution of Mongolian ideophones to manner salience remains disputable.

In this work, not only are different types of motion verbs, such as manner verbs and path verbs, but the embedding relations between motion verbs and text structures are systematically and comprehensively studied, based on Arabic-English parallel narrative texts, within the scope of a contrastive semantic and typological framework. The study is grounded in Talmy’s (2000) prominent motion event typology and Slobin’s (2004) influential “Thinking for Speaking” hypothesis. It systematically considers how these two languages encode and represent the four core semantic components of motion: path, manner, figure, and ground. In English, a satellite-framed language, manner is expressed within the main verb and the path is expressed in prepositional satellites (e.g. ran into). In contrast, as a verb-framed language, Arabic encodes path in the verb and manner elsewhere (or idiomatically) in the clause, as in the expression “دخل راكضاً” “dakhala rākiḍan”.Based on a qualitative analysis of parallel narrative examples from a variety of Arabic and English literary specimens, this study reveals significant typological, cognitive, and stylistic differences. These differences have profound implications for translating practices, second language acquisition methods, and theories of cognitive semantics. These investigations would improve awareness of the ‘varieties of motion in languages, especially among languages. The findings of this study contribute to an enhanced understanding of the distinct motion modes of thought and typologies of linguistic expressions across different cultural and linguistic systems, which is significant for both the area of typology in linguistics and language pedagogy/educators. The statistics presented here are shown in different ways, with examples that are intended to be utilised for direct learning. The content originated from credible sources, such as Google Scholar, Google Books, and other online platforms.

Abstract Despite considerable research on motion event encoding, studies from the perspective of intra-language differences are still few in number. To examine whether motion event encoding is influenced by event types (translational vs. fictive events), this study investigates lexicalization patterns and associated linguistic features of Mandarin advent path (one type of fictive motion) expressions and compares them with existing findings on translational motion event expressions. Data were collected from a self-built corpus. Results show that fictive motion expressions differ from translational motion event ones in encoding motion events. Specifically, in Mandarin advent path expressions, 1) there are three main lexicalization patterns: the satellite-framed language pattern, the double-framing pattern, and the verb-framed language pattern; 2) the frequency of path verbs is similar to that of manner verbs; 3) alternative expressions of manner information are used frequently; and 4) the complexity of Ground encoding is low. These findings suggest that event types contribute to intra-language differences of motion event encoding and that a motion event encoding pattern is better applied to a certain event type in a certain language than to a language as a whole.

This article centers on The Call of the Wild, an English novel by American author Jack London, alongside two Chinese translations by Dajie Liu and Menglin Zhang, and Rongyue Liu. Seventy sentences containing motion events and their corresponding translations were randomly selected for analysis. The study focuses on the primary elements of motion events—manner, path, and ground—and examines their Chinese translations through the lens of Skopos theory. Skopos theory emphasizes whether translators can adopt appropriate translation strategies according to various contextual factors during the translation process. Compared to verb-framed languages, satellite-framed languages possess a richer vocabulary for manner verbs, express more detailed manner information, use more satellite words to indicate paths, and incorporate more background information. Verb-framed languages, by contrast, typically express manner information only when necessary and tend to include less background information. The analysis reveals that both Chinese translations embody the core principle of Skopos theory: translation strategies are determined by their purpose. To fulfill the novel’s translation objectives, the translators adeptly adjust their strategies for motion event components based on different contextual needs. It is noted that the Chinese translations do not fully retain the characteristics of English as a typical satellite-framed language. This observation aligns with Skopos theory’s purpose-oriented approach, which prioritizes translation goals over strict adherence to source text characteristics.

Abstract The influence of inter-typological variations on the processing of manner information has been extensively examined in the domain of motion. Manner, however, extends to more other semantic domains, as demonstrated in the onomasiological approach to manner analysis. This study, based on this approach, analyses the influence of directionality and cognitive load (measured by interpreting performance) on the transfer of manner under high cognitive demands, using bidirectional corpus data of consecutive interpreting between Chinese (an equipollently framed language) and English (a satellite-framed language). The results indicate that (1) increased interpreting performance correlates with higher transfer rates of both manner adjuncts and verbs; (2) transfer rates for manner verbs are significantly higher when interpreting into English (CE) than into Chinese (EC), supporting previous findings on the salience of manner in English; (3) interpreting direction influences resistance to cognitive load, with manner adjuncts showing greater resistance in the EC direction due to Chinese’s more flexible locus of manner information, while manner verbs exhibit better resistance in the CE direction, reflecting English’s higher verbal codability of manner. These findings suggest the broader applicability of Talmy’s typology to semantic domains beyond motion and to processing under high cognitive loads in different language combinations and interpreting modes.

ABSTRACT: Given that pattern paths, one type of fictive motion, have been understudied so far, this paper examines pattern path expressions from the perspective of motion event typology. Through manually collecting Mandarin pattern path data from books and magazines, we first explored the semantic elements in pattern path expressions with a focus on the Figure and the Ground, and then investigated their lexicalization pattern by studying the grammatical slots encoding the Path, the semantic elements integrated in the verb, the expression of manner information, and the complexity of Ground information. The results showed that, in Mandarin pattern path expressions, typical semantic elements include the Figure, the Ground, the Motion, the Path, and the Cause, among which Figural entities are usually large-scale geographical or architectural entities, and the Ground is often left out linguistically; second, the Path is encoded in both the verb and the satellite, but more frequently in the verb; third, the number of manner verbs is low in both type and token while that of path verbs is high, and accordingly, alternative expressions of manner information usually modify path verbs rather than manner verbs. Our findings suggest that pattern path expressions are an economical way to express the state change of large-scale entities and that Mandarin Chinese behaves more like a V-language when expressing pattern paths. 摘要: 鉴于虚构运动中模式路径尚未得到足够关注，本研究从运动事件类型 学视角对其进行考察。从汉语出版物中收集了模式路径语料；分析了 其所涵盖的语义要素，并重点关注焦点和背景；从多方面考察了其词 汇化模式，包括路径信息编码位置、动词所编码的语义信息、方式信 息的表达特点以及背景信息的复杂度。结果发现，首先，模式路径中 的典型语义要素包括焦点、背景、运动、路径及原因，其中焦点多是 规模较大的地理或建筑实体，且背景常常不编码；其次，路径信息既 可用动词编码，也可用卫星词，且动词更多；第三，方式动词的形符 数和类符数均较低，而路径动词二者均较高，与之相关的是，非动词 编码的方式信息常常修饰路径动词而非方式动词。结果表明，模式路 径可以经济性地表达大规模实体的状态变化；汉语普通话在表达模式 路径时的特征与动词框架语言更相似。

Abstract Languages vary in the way they encode motion. Following Talmy, languages can be divided into verb-framed (VF, henceforth) or satellite-framed (SF, henceforth), based on how they encode path of motion. However, this difference is not always clear-cut. Italian, for instance, is typically considered a VF language but has also been shown to display a hybrid pattern. Since variation has typically been considered a prerequisite for language change, we investigated whether variation in encoding Italian motion events could indicate incipient language change. We simulated the chain of language change adopting an apparent-time approach and investigated whether the impact of semantic properties (the manner verb’s association with directional motion) on the interpretation and productions of SF Italian constructions was affected by participants’ age. We found that, although this semantic property affects both the interpretation and production of SF constructions, younger participants more readily accepted SF constructions than older participants; this age difference, however, was not significant in the production task. We suggest that these findings might speak for incipient language change, which starts from comprehension and subsequently gradually influences production.

This article analyzes the functioning of the so-called adverbial verbs (otherwise named verbs of manner). Their distinctive feature is that they express not only an action or process, but also the manner in which it is carried out. The English language is rich in such resources, and the researcher’s task is to study the functional (pragmasemantic) properties of adverbial verbs and analyze their role in building up a compact yet capacious semantic space of English business discourse. Methods of functional-semantic, pragmatic analyses, and classification are relevant for the purpose of disclosing the semantics and functional properties of the said verbs. The study is conducted within the framework of English business discourse. The characteristics of adverbial verbs are considered in the context of linguistic economy, functional synergy, and the diversity of adverbial verb types based on semantic criteria. The authors conclude that English adverbial verbs belong to a category of linguistic devices that allow for the expression of fairly extensive content in relatively concise forms. This characteristic is based on the verbs’ ability to actualize the functional synergy, that is, to generate semantic increments that arise through contextual interaction with other elements of the semantic system and exceed the simple sum of their semantic components. Since business people always strive for saving time and money, mastering this category of linguistic devices is entirely appropriate for their purposes. Using English business discourse as a basis, this article suggests a classification of adverbial verbs based on semantic criteria. The following groups of verbs are identified: a) verbs of spatial movement; b) causative verbs; c) verbs characterizing speech; d) verbs expressing direct impact on an object. In conclusion, prospects for further development of this topic are outlined, such as the study of contextually generated adverbial properties in verbs not originally classified as adverbial, as well as the development of practical aspects of using these tools to enhance the communicative competence of future business representatives.

This is a study in the syntax and semantics of Old English verbs of motion, including verbs of neutral motion, verbs of manner of motion and verbs of path of motion. Its aim is to identify the morphosyntactic alternations in which these verbs participate. The theoretical basis of the research draws on Goddard’s semantics of motion, Levin’s model of verb classes and alternations and Talmy’s typological distinction between satellite-framed languages and verb-framed languages. The grammatical patterns of the verbs under analysis are discussed, as described in The Dictionary of Old English (Healey), with special emphasis on the study of transitivity, case, prepositional government, and reflexivity. As far as meaning components are concerned, this work concentrates on the study of polysemy. The conclusions of this study refer to the consistency of the syntactic behaviour of the verbs under analysis and the main alternations found within the verbal classes.

Abstract French is a typical verb-framed language, in which manner verbs cannot freely combine with result-denoting constituents in a single VP. Drawing on experimentally elicited production data on Hexagonal French, this study examines how the syntactic (in)flexibility of manner-of-creation verbs influences the lexicalization of the event result. As for result lexicalization within the VP headed by the manner verb, the study explores the occurrence of effected objects and resultative PPs. Thus, it addresses the availability of the material/product alternation (sculpter une poupée à partir du bois/sculpter le bois en (une) poupée) as a type of argument alternation, whose existence has been questioned for the Romance languages. Furthermore, it is explored how the verbs’ syntactic flexibility influences whether manner and result are lexicalized within a single VP at all or distributed onto different VPs. The results show that the material/product alternation does occur, but that only a limited set of verbs has the syntactic flexibility required for it. Additionally, it is shown that syntactic flexibility favors a denser packaging of conceptual components, since with verbs that admit an effected object, the result is realized more often in the VP than with verbs that do not.

Given that pattern paths, one type of fictive motion, have been understudied so far, this paper examines pattern path expressions from the perspective of motion event typology. Through manually collecting Mandarin pattern path data from books and magazines, we first explored the semantic elements in pattern path expressions with a focus on the Figure and the Ground, and then investigated their lexicalization pattern by studying the grammatical slots encoding the Path, the semantic elements integrated in the verb, the expression of manner information, and the complexity of Ground information. The results showed that, in Mandarin pattern path expressions, typical semantic elements include the Figure, the Ground, the Motion, the Path, and the Cause, among which Figural entities are usually large-scale geographical or architectural entities, and the Ground is often left out linguistically; second, the Path is encoded in both the verb and the satellite, but more frequently in the verb; third, the number of manner verbs is low in both type and token while that of path verbs is high, and accordingly, alternative expressions of manner information usually modify path verbs rather than manner verbs. Our findings suggest that pattern path expressions are an economical way to express the state change of large-scale entities and that Mandarin Chinese behaves more like a V-language when expressing pattern paths.

ABSTRACT The traditional Talmian binary typology of satellite-framed vs. verb-framed languages has proven to be insufficient for showing the diversity across the world’s languages. One approach within post-Talmian motion typology follows Holistic Spatial Semantics, which has been applied to languages like Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu, but not to Slavic languages. This motivates the present research. We used “frog stories” and analysed translocative motion event descriptions, given by nine native speakers of Russian and seven of Bulgarian, all adults. The descriptions were first segmented into clauses and each clause was analysed with respect to the key categories of Path, Direction, Region and Manner. The results show that the two languages pattern differently, most significantly in the expression of Path and Manner. We conclude that Russian shares features of languages like Telugu by encoding Path by case markers, and features of languages as Swedish, through a predominance of Manner verbs. Bulgarian differs typologically from Russian by lacking cases and using motion verbs, either to express Path, similarly to French, or to express Manner, similarly to Swedish. These findings show that Slavic languages should not be simplistically placed within a single type and provide additional support for Holistic Spatial Semantics.

Abstract Languages vary in the mapping of relational terms onto events. For instance, English motion descriptions favor manner (how something moves) verbs over path (where something move) verbs, whereas those of other languages, like Spanish, show the opposite pattern. While these lexicalization biases are malleable, adopting a novel lexicalization pattern can be slow for second language learners. One potential mechanism for learning non-native verb mappings is cross-situational statistical learning (CSSL). However, the application of CSSL to verbs is limited and does not explicitly examine how lexicalization biases may complicate adults’ ability to resolve the referential uncertainty of multiple referents. We ask English-speaking monolingual adults to learn the mappings of ten verbs via CSSL. Verbs mapped onto either manner or path of motion, with the other event component held constant. Adults in both conditions demonstrated successful learning of novel verbs, with adults learning the manner verbs showing more consistent performance across accepting correct referents and rejecting incorrect ones. Our results are the first to demonstrate adults’ use of CSSL to acquire verb meanings that both align with and cut against native lexicalization biases and suggest a limited influence of lexicalization biases on adults’ learning in idealized CSSL conditions.

Notre étude vise à étudier l’expression de déplacement selon la typologie de Talmy en diachronie. Nous examinons l’hypothèse de Slobin (1997, 2004) selon laquelle la proportion de verbes de manière est plus importante dans les langues à cadrage satellitaire et l’hypothèse de Schøsler (2008) selon laquelle la différence entre les langues à cadrage satellitaire et les langues à cadrage verbal se trouve dans l’emploi des verbes de manière et dépend aussi du type de texte. Notre étude est innovante du point de vue méthodologique car elle cherche à vérifier ces hypothèses sur un très grand ensemble de données en s’appuyant sur des mesures adaptées. Nos résultats montrent une augmentation de la saillance de la manière (au sens de Slobin 1997, 2004), contrairement à ce que nous attendions. Cette augmentation de la proportion des verbes de manière pourrait s’expliquer par une augmentation de la diversité lexicale dans le domaine de l’expression du déplacement en général. De plus, nos résultats soutiennent l’hypothèse de Schøsler, car les facteurs textuels influent sur l’emploi des verbes de manière.

Abstract Talmy divided the world’s languages according to how they express movement. Spanish, a verb-framed language, purportedly constrains the use of motion verbs expressing the manner of movement (such as roll) to contexts in which no spatial boundary is crossed. Previous research suggests that this constraint sometimes does not apply. We report the first large-scale investigation of the constraint and its modulating factors (movement direction, verb type, entering/exiting, Ground size, the preposition used) across different Spanish-speaking communities. A task with open-ended description of animated videos, a sentence interpretation task, and a rating task found that Spanish and Latin American speakers (n = 180 in total) often use manner verbs to describe boundary-crossing situations (especially entering a place), although this is modulated by the preposition following the verb (more with a than en). Better understanding of this constraint in verb-framed languages has applications in, for instance, L2 acquisition research.

English (Germanic) and Romanian (Romance) are typologically different in the expression of both change-of-location and change-of-state events (cf. Talmy 1985, 2000). English favours Goal of Motion (GM) and resultative constructions, which combine manner verbs with directional PPs and Result Phrases, respectively; Romanian typically opts for inherently directed motion and change-of-state verbs to achieve the same goals. At the same time, the existing typological differences have been shown to impact both the translation strategies rendering change events, and the syntactic structures they produce (Slobin 2004, 2005, 2006; Capelle 2012; Alonso 2018 et al.). The present article examines the strategies used by professional translators to translate resultatives into Romanian, and the resulting syntactic patterns, shown to be dependent on the type of resultative translated (fake/true). It demonstrates that the mostly compensatory techniques generate structures which, overall, reflect Talmy's lexicalization patterns for Romance and support the uniform treatment of GM and resultatives crosslinguistically. It also argues that the higher syntactic/semantic variation of resultatives (vs. GM) is responsible for the higher number of strategies and patterns translating them.

The lexicalization of Chinese motion events has been a controversial topic. Most of previous studies on the lexicalization patterns of Chinese movement events has been conducted with laboratory experiments, leaving the natural Chinese motion events in daily life unstudied. Therefore, this paper investigates the language acquisition process of Chinese children resulting in movement events based on naturalistic data of language development from 13 to 48 months in Mandarin-speaking children SWK, which greatly reduces the influence of human factors on the findings. The results showed that 1) path verbs developed slightly faster than manner verbs at all times. Besides, both kinds of verbs develop fastest at the age of 2-3 years, and peak at the age of 3 years. 2) Modern Chinese exhibits the characteristics of a satellite-framed language in some aspects. 3) Caused motion events develop slower than voluntary motion events.