Motion Events Research Articles

Sequential Time construal is primary in temporal uses of Mandarin Chinese qian ‘front’ and hou ‘back’

This article addresses two previously unresolved puzzles regarding the relationship between temporal and spatial conceptualizations in Mandarin Chinese. First, apparently conflicting data have led to disagreement over whether temporal usages of the terms qian and hou, whose spatial meanings of ‘front’ and ‘back’ are often considered to be primary, are based on a canonical facing of Ego towards past or towards future. We argue that this issue can be resolved by positing invariant Sequential (S-)Time meanings of, respectively, earlier and later for these terms, with variable uses to refer to past and future events and perspectives in Deictic (D-)Time being secondary and contextually governed. Second, the question of which of the sagittal, vertical and lateral orientational axes are more fundamental in spatio-temporal language and cognition for Mandarin Chinese speakers has been much debated. We review these issues, propose solutions based on linguistic analysis and report five experiments to test the analysis. Our findings are consistent with our analysis of the primacy in Mandarin Chinese of the invariant S-time construal of the terms qian ‘front’ (=earlier) and hou ‘back’ (=later) over their contextually governed D-time interpretations as referring to pastness and futurity. We find also that the preferred lexicalization of temporal relations between events by Mandarin speakers involves the sagittal axis terms qian and hou, but this does not mean that this linguistic conceptualization is also imposed by speakers as a preference for the sagittal axis for non-linguistic representations of event sequences. Finally, our data indicate that the temporal meanings of qian and hou (earlier and later) are more salient for speakers than their spatial meanings (front and back) in motion event conceptualizations.

이동과 직시 및 시간의 담화 인지적 해석

The motion of the motion event in cognitive semantics, and deixis in pragmatics have the flow of time. The motion and deixis can appear in the same sentence concurrently with time. Also translocation, which is similar to the motion, can accompany deixis. The motion and deixis have the element of a path. When there is the element of a path, there is the direction. The direction causes the flow of time. Time in language has various types of forms including conceptualizations. In this paper, several kinds of appearance for time in language are searched, and the relation between the motion and deixis in linguistic expressions is explored in terms of cognitive grammar and pragmatics.

Motion iconicity in prosody

Evidence suggests that human non-verbal speech may be rich in iconicity. Here, we report results from two experiments aimed at testing whether perception of increasing and decliningf0can be iconically mapped onto motion events. We presented a sample of mixed-nationality participants (N= 118) with sets of two videos, where one pictured upward movement and the other downward movement. A disyllabic non-sense word prosodically resynthesized as increasing or declining inf0was presented simultaneously with each video in a pair, and participants were tasked with guessing which of the two videos the word described. Results indicate that prosody is iconically associated with motion, such that motion-prosody congruent pairings were more readily selected than incongruent pairings (p< 0.033). However, the effect observed in our sample was primarily driven by selections of words with decliningf0. A follow-up experiment with native Turkish speaking participants (N= 92) tested for the effect of language-specific metaphor for auditory pitch. Results showed no significant association between prosody and motion. Limitations of the experiment, and some implications for the motor theory of speech perception, and “gestural origins” theories of language evolution, are discussed.

TYPOLOGICAL VARIATION IN ENCODING THE MANNER OF MOTION EVENT IN TRANSLATED VERSIONS OF ENGLISH AND TURKISH SHORT STORIES

The aim of this study is to examine how speakers of typologically different languages, Turkish (a verb-framed language, V-language) and English (a satellite-framed language, S-language) express manner of motion events and how each language adapts itself to the demands of the other in translations with regard to the use of manner-of-motion verbs. In this respect, a total of 20 short stories (10 Turkish and 10 English) were selected to analyze. The effort was made to include the ones that are well suited for eliciting manner of motion verbs. For the identification of the motion verbs, Talmy’s (1985) definition of motion events was taken into consideration. According to the results, English writers were found to express manner of motion in their texts at a higher rate with regard to both token and type frequency of manner-of-motion verbs. As far as the translation strategies were considered, it was found that Turkish and English writers mostly used literal translation. In order to adapt the characteristics of the target language, it was also found that translators used a variety of strategies indicating compensation for language requirements.

Thinking-for-speaking patterns in the L2 classroom: A mindful conceptual engagement approach to teaching motion events

Inspired by sociocultural psychology principles applied to understanding language learning and conceptual development, this participatory action research illustrates a pedagogical intervention to teach motion events as conceptual categories in the Second Language (L2) classroom. The goal is to develop and implement conceptual engagement tasks that promote mindful understanding, application, and internalization of motion events as productive concepts in communicative tasks. This is the basis for a Mindful Conceptual Engagement (MCE) approach to L2 development. We focus on L2 Spanish classroom learners when asking-and-giving-directions. This task is conceptually challenging for First Language (L1) English L2 Spanish learners because it is connected to motion events and how Thinking-for-Speaking (TFS) patterns operate in L2 communication. Twenty-three L2-Spanish students from three different courses participated in the project. A selection of coded data and examples of graphic representations are analyzed. Findings illustrate how to teach motion events conceptually and how MCE promotes conceptual awareness and control of L2 communicative features. We also document the challenges of developing functional conceptual categories of meaning as they only emerge when mindfully applied in conceptual engagement tasks. L2 learners must create their own conceptual representations as learning tools to understand motion events. It is concluded that shifting L1 TFS patterns requires creative and mindful conceptual engagement by L2 learners.

A “Thinking for Speaking” Study on Motion Events’ Lexicalization and Conceptualization

This paper investigates the lexicalization of Motion Events by Chinese EFL learners and the reflected language-specific conceptualization patterns from their language use. The researcher aims to explore the implied relation between language and thought through the observation of language users’ online thinking for speaking data. The current study used the classic Frog Where Are You story narration task to collect linguistic data of English motion event expressions from 30 college students from China and the United States. The results indicate that the way of thinking in the Chinese mother tongue can influence the participants’ choice of vocabulary and sentence structure in verbalizing motion events. With the improvement of language proficiency, Chinese EFL learners are more likely to produce similar target language lexicalization patterns as their counterparts of English native speakers. The research may provide evidence for thinking for speaking linguistic relativity and some implications on foreign language acquisition.

거대 사건 이론에 기반한 ‘V上N’ 구문 연구

This research was conducted in order to analyze the ‘VshangN’ construction in Standard Chinese with ‘Macro-Event’ theory proposed by Talmy(2000). Therefore, the present paper attempted to regard ‘shang’ as a satellite while applying ‘Macro-Event’ theory to categorize all the framing events ‘VshangN’ construction can represent. To draw a conclusion, the present paper found ‘VshangN’ construction can represent all the framing events, such as Motion event, temporal contouring event, state change event, action correlating event and realization event. Meanwhile, the present paper also combined metaphor with ‘Macro-Event’ theory in order to provide a new horizon about ‘VshangN’ construction.

Under the surface

AbstractThrough a survey of crosslinguistic empirical studies on narratives and in the domain of motion events, we argue that the principles of language use pose a hurdle for second language acquisition, an issue that has not been given adequate attention in earlier research. These principles are part of our pragmatic knowledge which encompasses language-specific information organization at the discourse level as well as event schemata at the level of construing reportable units. The findings show how highly competent L2 speakers activate L1-based knowledge that reflects deeply entrenched principles and seems resistant to change.

Motion event construal in L2 French and Italian: from acquisitional perspectives to pedagogical implications

AbstractThis study explores motion event construal in a story-telling task produced by learners of L2 French and Italian (intermediate vs advanced), whose L1 is typologically close to (Italian or French) or distant (English) from the TL. English, characteristically classified as S-language, contrasts with Italian and French, both typically considered as V-languages. Nevertheless, Italian is more satellite-framed than French. We examine (a) the extent to which learners get closer to the target preferences in coding motion, (b) the role of cross-linguistic influence, (c) the implications of our typological and acquisitional results in the language class. The findings show that L2 intermediate productions are similar across L1s’ (no specific L1 effect in L2), whereas cross-linguistic influence is evident at the advanced level when SL-TL have analogous formal structures (verb-particle constructions). L1 Romance learners look for similarities in the L2 rather than for L2-specific alternatives, despite the partial proximity between French and Italian.

Evaluating multi-modal mobile behavioral biometrics using public datasets

Behavioral biometric-based continuous user authentication is promising for securing mobile phones while complementing traditional security mechanisms. However, the existing state of art perform continuous authentication to evaluate deep learning models, but lacks examining different feature sets over the data. Therefore, we evaluate the performance of user authentication based on acceleration, gyroscope (angular velocity), and swipe data from two public mobile datasets, HMOG (Hand-Movement, Orientation, and Grasp) (Sitová et al., (2015) dataset et al. (2015)) and BB-MAS (Behavioral Biometrics Multi-device and multi-Activity data from Same users) (Belman et al., (2019) dataset et al. (2019)) extracted with different feature sets to observe the variation in authentication performance. We evaluate the performances of both individual modalities and their fusion. Since the swipe data is intermittent but the motion event data continuous, we evaluate fusion of swipes with motion events that occur within the swipes versus fusion of motion events outside of swipes. Moreover, we extract Frank et al.’s (2012) Touchalytics features Frank et al. (2012) on the swipe data but three different feature sets (median, HMOG (Sitová et al. (2015)), and Shen’s (Shen et al. (2017))) on the motion event data, among which the Shen’s features were shown to perform the best. More specifically, we perform score-level fusion for a single modality utilizing binary SVMs (Support Vector Machine). Furthermore, we evaluate the fusion of multiple modalities using Nandakumar’s likelihood ratio-based score fusion (Nandakumar et al. (2007)) by utilizing both one-class and binary SVMs. The best EERs (Equal Error Rates) of fusing all three modalities when using the one-class SVMs are 8.8% and 0.9% for HMOG and BB-MAS respectively. On the other hand, the best EERs in the case of binary SVMs are 1.5% and 0.2% respectively. Observing the better performances of BB-MAS compared to HMOG in swipe-based experiments, we examine the difference of swipe trajectory between the two datasets and find that BB-MAS has longer swipes than HMOG which would explain the performance difference in the experiments.

Path Under Construction: Challenges Beyond S-Framed Motion Event Construal in L2 German

The encoding of motion events is known to be challenging for second language (L2) users, particularly if the lexicalization patterns of their first language (L1) diverge from those of the L2. This paper analyzes oral and written motion event descriptions produced by advanced L2 users of German, an information-dense satellite-framed language. Based on L2 usage and error patterns, we discuss six major challenges with respect to motion event encoding and, more specifically, path encoding. These challenges clearly go beyond event construal and the acquisition of the basic satellite-framed lexicalization pattern (e.g., verb semantics) as well as beyond expected challenges related to the use of prepositional phrases (e.g., prepositional semantics, case marking). Advanced L2 users actually particularly struggle with “smaller” path encoding devices such as particles, locative and directional adverbs, their formal and functional differentiation, their usage patterns and combinatorial potential. These aspects seem to be challenging for advanced L2 users of German with either verb-framed L1s (French, Spanish) or satellite-framed L1s (Danish, English). We therefore discuss characteristics of the target language input that might explain why L2 users struggle with identifying and differentiating these path encoding devices, their usage, and combinatorial patterns. We sketch potential implications for L2 teaching.

Thinking rhythm objects.

The focus of this mini-review is on rhythm objects, defined as strongly coherent chunks of combined sound and body motion in music, typically in the duration range of a few seconds, as may for instance be found in a fragment of dance music, in an energetic drum fill, in a flute ornament, or in a cascade of sounds of a rapid harp glissando. Although there has been much research on rhythm in continuous musical sound and its links with behavior, including the neurocognitive aspects of periodicity, synchrony, and entrainment, there has been much less focus on the generation and perception of singular coherent rhythm objects. This mini-review aims to enhance our understanding of such rhythm objects by pointing to relevant literature on coherence-enhancing elements such as coarticulation, i.e., the fusion of motion events into more extended rhythm objects, and intermittent motor control, i.e., the discontinuous, instant-by-instant control and triggering of rhythm objects.

Uyghur–Chinese Adult Bilinguals’ Construal of Voluntary Motion Events

The study examined the implications of Talmy motion event typology and Slobin’s thinking-for-speaking hypothesis for the context of Uyghur–Chinese early successive bilingualism. Uyghur and Chinese represent genetically distant languages (Turkic vs. Sino-Tibetan) that nonetheless share important framing properties in the motion domain, i.e., verb-framing. This study thus aimed to establish how this structural overlap would inform bilingual speakers’ construal of motion events. Additionally, it sought to offer an “end state” perspective to a previous study on Uyghur–Chinese child bilinguals and to shed light on issues around the longevity of crosslinguistic influence. Thirty adult Uyghur–Chinese early successive bilinguals were invited to describe a set of voluntary motion events (e.g., “a man runs across the road”). Their verbalizations, alongside those from 24 monolingual Uyghur and 12 monolingual Chinese speakers were systematically analyzed with regard to the kind of linguistic devices used to encode key components of motion (main verb vs. other devices), the frequency with which the components are expressed together (Manner + Path) or separately (Path or Manner) and how they are syntactically packaged. The findings show that the bilinguals’ thinking-for-speaking patterns are largely language-specific, with little crosslinguistic influence. A comparison of our findings with previous studies on Uyghur-Chinese child bilinguals revealed no developmental change either in the analyzed aspects of motion descriptions or in patterns of crosslinguistic influence. As such, the findings lend support to accounts that propose crosslinguistic influence to be a developmental phenomenon.

Caused motion events in Modern Uyghur: a typological perspective

AbstractTalmy’s motion event typology (Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Towards a cognitive semantics: Conceptual structuring systems, vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press) has served as an influential framework for exploring event representation across languages. While confirming its basic premises, many studies argued that the typology cannot fully capture the vast intra- and inter-typological variations. Consequently, proposals have been made to expand the typology and/or reconceptualize it as a typology of constructional strategies for encoding events. This article furthers this line of inquiry by examining caused-motion expressions by adult speakers of an understudied Turkic language, Modern Uyghur. Systematic analyses of lexicalization patterns, that is, which components are typically selected for expression, how frequently they are selected, and how they are packaged in syntactic constructions, show that Uyghur is a prototypical verb-framed language. It differs most strikingly from English (considered satellite-framed) in terms of lexicalization patterns. Detailed comparisons with French and Turkish (putatively verb-framed) reveal intra-typological variations in that Uyghur speakers systematically used verb-framed constructions while French and Turkish speakers exhibit much flexibility and a general preference for satellite-framed constructions. Overall, our data lend support to Talmy’s typology conceived as a strategy-based typological framework.

Multisensory perception of natural versus unnatural motion.

Previous research has shown that visual perception is influenced by Newtonian constraints. Kominsky et al. showed humans detect unnatural motion, where objects break Newtonian constraints by moving at a faster speed after colliding with another object, faster than collisions that do not violate Newtonian constraints. These findings show that the perceptual system distinguishes between realistic and unrealistic causal events. However, real-world collisions are rarely silent. The present study extends this research by including sound at the collision point between two objects to evaluate how multisensory integration influences the perception of natural versus unnatural colliding events. Participants viewed an array of three simultaneous videos, each depicting two objects moving in a horizontal back and forth motion. Two of the videos showed the objects moving at the same speed while the third video was an oddball that either moved faster before the collision and slower after (natural target), or slower before the collision and faster after (unnatural target). A brief click was presented at the collision point of one or none of the videos. Participants were asked to indicate the oddball video via keypress. Replicating Kominsky et al., participants were faster when identifying unnatural target motion events compared with natural target motion events, both with and without sound. The findings also demonstrated lower accuracy rates for unnatural events compared with natural events, especially when a sound was added. These findings suggest that the addition of a sound could be distracting to participants, possibly due to limitations in attentional resources.

Representation of motion concepts in occipitotemporal cortex: fMRI activation, decoding and connectivity analyses

Embodied theories of semantic cognition predict that brain regions involved in motion perception are engaged when people comprehend motion concepts expressed in language. Left lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) is implicated in both motion perception and motion concept processing but prior studies have produced mixed findings on which parts of this region are engaged by motion language. We scanned participants performing semantic judgements about sentences describing motion events and static events. We performed univariate analyses, multivariate pattern analyses (MVPA) and psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses to investigate the effect of motion on activity and connectivity in different parts of LOTC. In multivariate analyses that decoded whether a sentence described motion or not, the middle and posterior parts of LOTC showed above-chance level performance, with performance exceeding that of other brain regions. Univariate ROI analyses found the middle part of LOTC was more active for motion events than static ones. Finally, PPI analyses found that when processing motion events, the middle and posterior parts of LOTC (overlapping with motion perception regions), increased their connectivity with cognitive control regions. Taken together, these results indicate that the more posterior parts of LOTC, including motion perception cortex, respond differently to motion vs. static events. These findings are consistent with embodiment accounts of semantic processing, and suggest that understanding verbal descriptions of motion engages areas of the occipitotemporal cortex involved in perceiving motion.

Dynamic imaging using motion-compensated smoothness regularization on manifolds (MoCo-SToRM)

Objective. We introduce an unsupervised motion-compensated reconstruction scheme for high-resolution free-breathing pulmonary magnetic resonance imaging. Approach. We model the image frames in the time series as the deformed version of the 3D template image volume. We assume the deformation maps to be points on a smooth manifold in high-dimensional space. Specifically, we model the deformation map at each time instant as the output of a CNN-based generator that has the same weight for all time-frames, driven by a low-dimensional latent vector. The time series of latent vectors account for the dynamics in the dataset, including respiratory motion and bulk motion. The template image volume, the parameters of the generator, and the latent vectors are learned directly from the k-t space data in an unsupervised fashion. Main results. Our experimental results show improved reconstructions compared to state-of-the-art methods, especially in the context of bulk motion during the scans. Significance. The proposed unsupervised motion-compensated scheme jointly estimates the latent vectors that capture the motion dynamics, the corresponding deformation maps, and the reconstructed motion-compensated images from the raw k-t space data of each subject. Unlike current motion-resolved strategies, the proposed scheme is more robust to bulk motion events during the scan.

Motion events in Changana spoken narrative

This article examines the expression of motion events in Changana. The typological classification of this southern African Bantu language is proposed based on the results collected from the elicited narrative of Mayer’s picture book Frog, where are you?. Fifteen frog stories narrated by adult Changana speakers from Mozambique were analysed. In the light of Talmy’s typology expanded by Slobin, the results suggest that Changana falls into the domain of verb-framed languages (or Path languages), a typology that is shared by most languages across Africa. However, it differs fundamentally from the prototypical verb-framed language in terms of the expression of manner. In its turn, Changana is a manner-salient language, with a diversified lexicon of manner verbs and a dense lexicon of motion ideophones, which makes it a non-prototypical verb-framed language.

Typological features of Telugu: defining the parameters of post-Talmian motion event typology

ABSTRACT Recent research in motion event typology has moved beyond the binary Talmian division of “verb-framed” and “satellite-framed” languages and has established the existence of at least four distinct typological clusters, instantiated by, for example, Swedish (Germanic), French (Romance), Thai (Tai-Kadai) and Telugu (Dravidian). In this paper, we focus on characteristic features of Telugu, as a representative of the fourth cluster. In the study, 30 native Telugu speakers described video-recorded translocative events, in which the factors boundedness, viewpoint and causation were manipulated. Using the model Holistic Spatial Semantics, we show that Telugu speakers (a) preferentially used Direction verbs rather than Path verbs, (b) predominantly used case markers rather than verbs for encoding Path, (c) extensively used Landmark and Region expressions, and (d) frequently used Manner verbs in situations of “boundary-crossing” unlike speakers of typical “verb-framed” languages. We propose these features to be criterial of the fourth typological cluster mentioned above, a claim to be investigated in future research.

Linguistic and nonlinguistic evaluation of motion events in a path-focused language

AbstractThis study examines how properties of path (the trajectory of motion) and manner (how an action is performed) components of motion events are reflected in linguistic and nonlinguistic motion event conceptualization in a path-focused language, Turkish. In two experiments, we investigated how path and manner differed in salience (i.e., prominence) and ease of expression (EoE, i.e., effort of describing), and how these factors were related to lexicalization and similarity judgments of motion events. In Experiment 1, participants rated motion events based on path and manner salience and EoE and expressed path and manner in a written format. Results indicated that manner was rated as more salient and path as easier to express. Path salience and EoE were related to both types (i.e., number of different expressions) and the total number of paths and manners used. However, manner EoE but not salience was associated with only types and the total number of manners used. In Experiment 2, participants rated the similarity of motion event pairs created using the ratings in Experiment 1. We found that higher manner salience and EoE difference were associated with lower similarity ratings. These findings suggest that salience and EoE of path and manner are related to both linguistic and nonlinguistic aspects of motion event conceptualization.