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.

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.

Abstract In English, a single sentence can be formed with only one core verb, while in Chinese, a serial verb construction is required to encode elements that are semantically equivalent to the English core verb. In English, verbs that involve no horizontal/vertical path, such as swirl, or even verbs that lack the concept of motion, such as roar, can directly enter a sentence when coupled with an element denoting the path. Yet in Chinese, the complement from a main movement verb is required. For example, verbs like xu á nzhu ǎ n ‘swirl’ and h ū xi à o ‘roar’ can only function as additional elements to modify main movement verbs like f ē i ‘fly’ or sh ǐ ‘drive’. Building on this observation, the present research investigates autonomous motion event sentences in Chinese and English, proposing that in both languages, characterizing an autonomous motion event requires the semantic conflation of its motion and path to express a concept of translational movement. The differences in semantic conflation patterns between Chinese and English can be attributed to the greater number and variety of prepositions in English. Some English prepositions, such as across, encode a directional path, while others, such as in, do not. Prepositions expressing a directional path could compensate for the absence of directional motion in non-horizontal/vertical movement verbs. However, Chinese has far fewer prepositions, and none encode a directional path, making movement verbs or directional path verbs indispensable. This study concludes that when a complement for movement is needed to characterize an autonomous motion event, prepositions expressing path perform this function in English, whereas in Chinese, the role is fulfilled by verbs.

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。

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 In this article, we examine the semantics of RA in Persian, focusing on the aspectual notion of delimitation. Delimitation is a term commonly used in the study of aspect and information structure. We distinguish between two functions of RA: as a semantic operator that measures delimited events involving mereological theme and incremental path verbs, and as an information-structural marker where RA serves as frame-setting accusative adjuncts. We also explore the aspectuality of RA in correlation with a motion construction involving a TA-headed goal phrase within the scope of RA. The motion event with TA, representing the vector, is rendered bounded through the influence of RA, indicating the endpoint of the path. Using Croft’s (2012) two-phase dimensional model of aspect, we demonstrate that TA and RA are both associated with delimitation, but operate on different axes of boundedness – TA on the qualitative axis and RA on the temporal axis.

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.

ABSTRACT This article discusses the specific use of deictic verbs for encoding boundary-crossing situations in descriptions of non-actual motion, i.e. dynamic depictions of static spatial configurations (e.g. The road comes from the tunnel). We analyse data elicited with visual stimuli from speakers of Finnish and Estonian to show that venitive (‘come’) and andative (‘go’) deictic verbs tend to appear in boundary-crossing contexts of entering and exiting. This pattern applies to both actual and non-actual motion descriptions produced by the same speakers, thus showing pervasiveness in the expression of both concrete and abstract meanings. We suggest that this tendency can be interpreted in terms of functional deixis: motion (actual or non-actual) encoded in relation to the speaker’s visual and interactive circle of attention. Considering the relevance of spatial boundaries for event perception, boundary-crossing situations can be expected to show specific encoding patterns not only in the verb-framed languages, in which the expression of these situations typically requires the use of Path verbs, but also in the satellite-framed languages of the Talmian typology. Extensive variation between participants in our study indicates that in Finnish and Estonian, the use of deictic verbs in boundary-crossing situations is an optional strategy instead of a constraint.

Abstract Motion event description has received little attention in contact linguistics as compared to other branches of linguistics. To address this gap, I provide an overview of the grammatical and lexical resources for the encoding of motion events in Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA). 10 GPA speakers narrated the story of a boy, his dog, and his missing pet frog. The results revealed: (a) the participants used a relatively large number of path verbs and a comprehensive number of spatial particles; (b) they showed an overwhelming aversion to the description of manner in boundary-crossing and caused motion situations; and (c) they engineered coercive constructions to deal with semantically complex situations. Taken together, the linguistic evidence suggests GPA is developing into a verb-framed language type. This study adds a significant methodological and empirical weight to the existing literature and has the potential to encourage intra- and inter-disciplinary comparative work on motion event description.

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.

The motion events expressions in Chinese have been a controversial topic and few research on them from the developmental perspective. Therefore, based on the long-term tracking corpus of two Mandarin children SWK and WMX from their 13 months to 48 months, this paper studies the lexicalization of Chinese children’s motion events in the process of language acquisition to reveal the unique features in Chinese motion event expressions. Research revealed that at age 3, Chinese children began to express motion events primarily using the serial verb structure, that is, a manner verb + path verb pattern and children’s motion event expressions grew progressively more extensive with age. Chinese children follow the satellite-framed language pattern early on. The authentic language use in corpora and the features found based on them prove that Chinese is a satellite-framed language. The present study offers a new type of evidence for the typological properties of the language from the developmental perspective and could shed fresh insight on a thorny issue regarding the classification of Mandarin Chinese in motion events.

The SEND‐NP‐V‐ING‐PP construction, the transitive variant of the V‐V‐ING‐OBL pattern, also incorporates the Goal of Motion (cf. Dragan 2016b). According to Talmy (1985; 2000), the Goal of Motion is favored by speakers of Germanic languages to describe motion events, but it is not generally available in Romance, where motion is typically expressed by Path verbs and optional PPs, and Manner is omitted. Building on Talmy's claims, the article explores the compensation strategies selected to translate the SEND‐NP‐V‐ING‐PP construction from English into Romanian and relates the resulting syntactic structures to his theory of lexicalization patterns. It is shown that, at least in the translation of narratives, Talmy's lexicalization pattern for Romance is the exception rather than the rule as Manner is frequently translated to preserve the visual dynamism of the scenes.

Any event includes countless components, giving the learner many possible options in mapping verb meanings. Previous research demonstrates that children are sensitive to the distribution of motion verbs in their language, mapping ambiguous verb-event pairings to manner if their language has more manner verbs, like English, and path if their language has more path verbs, like Spanish. Previous work also demonstrates that children have some sensitivity visual components, such an event’s location, when they are learning motion verbs. Our study explores how the learner weighs components of visual scene against the distributional factors present in their language. Like previous studies, we find that English-learning children are better at encoding manner than path information. Additionally, we build on previous work on motion verb acquisition, showing that children are differentially influenced by different kinds of background environments.

The human experience is shaped by information from different perceptual channels, but it is still debated whether and how differential experience influences language use. To address this, we compared congenitally blind, blindfolded, and sighted people's descriptions of the same motion events experienced auditorily by all participants (i.e., via sound alone) and conveyed in speech and gesture. Comparison of blind and sighted participants to blindfolded participants helped us disentangle the effects of a lifetime experience of being blind versus the task‐specific effects of experiencing a motion event by sound alone. Compared to sighted people, blind people's speech focused more on path and less on manner of motion, and encoded paths in a more segmented fashion using more landmarks and path verbs. Gestures followed the speech, such that blind people pointed to landmarks more and depicted manner less than sighted people. This suggests that visual experience affects how people express spatial events in the multimodal language and that blindness may enhance sensitivity to paths of motion due to changes in event construal. These findings have implications for the claims that language processes are deeply rooted in our sensory experiences.

This paper examines the similarities and differences between actual motion (AM) and non-actual motion (NAM) expressions in Telugu via a qualitative approach. The findings revealed the following similarities: (a) the extensive use of generic deictic verbs, (b) the obligatory use of case markers for encoding Path, (c) the limited number of path verbs and their uses, and (d) the use of spatial nouns for expressing Region. In addition, the findings also revealed that AM had a reasonable number of Manner expressions, whereas NAM contained almost no information about Manner.

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.

We compare the motion lexicalization patterns produced by L1 and L2 speakers of Mapudungun, an indigenous minority language spoken in Chile and Argentina. According to previous descriptions, the patterns of motion expression in Mapudungun have some characteristics of an equipollently-framed language, which contrast with the usual motion expression in Spanish. The data comprise oral narratives of the picture storybook “Frog, where are you?”, collected from 10 Mapudungun native speakers and 9 Spanish native speakers who are late bilinguals of Mapudungun. We report the general results (comparison of total clauses, translational clauses, types, and tokens) and analyze three general conflation patterns: the encoding of the semantic components of Path and Manner, the conflation of various components into serial verb constructions, and the encoding of Ground. The results show that L2 speakers encoded a significantly lower proportion of Manner verbs and a higher proportion of Path verbs than L1 speakers, used a significantly less diverse inventory of Path and Manner verb types, a significantly lower number of motion serial verb constructions, and a significantly higher number of plus-Ground clauses than L1 speakers, suggesting cross-linguistic influence from Spanish.

ABSTRACT This study contributes to the analysis of thinking-for-translating in comics. It explores the translation of motion events in five albums of the French comic Asterix and its corresponding translations into Galician and into English. It aims at analysing any differences in the number and the type of motion verbs used across the three languages and the strategies used to translate Manner and Path of motion verbs. With this purpose in mind, the study includes type-token analyses of all motion verbs; it covers the intratypological language pair French > Galician that has not been analysed in the phenomenon of motion events in this genre, as well as the intertypological pair French > English. Finally, while most studies focus on the translation strategies for manner verbs, this study includes the strategies not only of manner but also of path verbs. Findings in the compiled corpus indicated intertypological differences in the translation of path and manner verbs into English. With regard to the strategies used for the translation of both manner and path verbs, it was observed that Manner and Path tend to be retained and intertypological differences were found in the use of omission, replacement and visual compensation strategies in the translation of path verbs.