German motion expressions without motion verbs
(2017) Thinking, Doing, Learning (TDL3) — Location: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) (19.April.2017)
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- Since Talmy’s (2000) seminal work it is well-known that German as a satellite-framed language expresses the path of motion mainly with satellites and the manner of motion in the main verb. Short constructions expressing a dynamic motion along a path without any verb are also possible in oral German, e.g. (1) Ab ins Bett ! (lit. ‘Off into the bed!’) (2) Rauf auf den Berg! (lit. ‘[Towards the speaker] up on the mountain! ’) (3) Hinein ins Vergnügen! (lit. ‘[Away from the speaker] into into the pleasure’) (4) Los, ins Wasser! (lit. ‘Go, into the water!’) (5) Ins Boot bitte! (lit. ‘Into the boat please!’). With a collection of oral examples from IDS corpora, the presentation describes such ‘verb-free’ examples (compare Jacob’s (2008) “verblose Direktiva”) in the framework of Talmy’s (2000) typology and Goldberg’s (1995; 2006) Construction Grammar model. The study focuses on the conditions for the production of such examples. Pragmatically, these constructions mostly express orders or commands. They are composed of a prepositional phrase introduced by a locative two-way preposition followed by a noun which designates a (fictive) location. The nominal phrase is often preceded by an adverb which expresses the path of motion (in examples (2) and (3) it is a pronominal adverb also expressing the perspective of the speaker) or the source or start of the movement (examples 1, 4). But examples without such an adverb are also possible as illustrated in (5). The expression of the motion trajectory is further sustained by the German case system, the accusative case being used after the two-way preposition for the expression of dynamic motion along a path. These examples illustrate the tight interplay between the semantics of the satellites used in the nominal phrase, the morphosyntactic case-marking and the pragmatic function of the phrases.
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De Knop, S. (2017). German motion expressions without motion verbs. Thinking, Doing, Learning (TDL3), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/182018