Manner of motion: A privileged dimension of German expressions
(2011) Conférence Internationale de Linguistique Cognitive (ICLC 11) — Location: Université de Xi’an en Chine (11.July.2011)
Files
ICLC11July2011DeKnop-Gallez.pdf
Open Access - Adobe PDF
- 76 KB
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- German belongs to the typological category of satellite-framed Germanic languages which generally express the manner of motion in the main verb (Talmy 1985 and 2000, Slobin 1996 and 2000). A more accurate look at specific German lexicalization patterns makes it clear that the expression of the manner of motion is not restricted to verbs but that this dimension pervades numerous patterns of lexicalization making it a prominent characteristic in the German language. Our presentation aims at describing different levels of lexicalization in German at which the manner of motion is typically being expressed: (i) At the level of motion verbs, e.g. (1) fahren, gehen, fliegen, stellen, setzen, legen,… In German – as opposed to Romance languages like French which can use aller (‘to go’) or mettre (‘to put’) for all sorts of motion – there is an obligation to express the way individuals are changing places or objects are being moved (see De Knop 2008). This also pertains to expressions of location, i.e. of motion in a wider sense (Talmy 2000: 28), in which several verbs obligatorily express how human beings, animals or objects are: in a standing, sitting or lying position: (2) stehen, sitzen, liegen (compare Lemmens 2002 and Lemmens and Perrez 2010 for Dutch). (ii) At the level of complex prepositional groups, especially in cases where the preposition bis (‘up to/till/until’) expressing a path is combined with a second preposition and a noun expressing a manner (see also De Knop fc): (3) Ich werde dich lieben bis in den Tod *‘I will love you till in death’ (4) Die Wut steht ihm bis über den Kopf *'Anger stands till over his head’ = ‘is overwhelming him'. (iii) At the level of complex postpositions which are favoured in German and which are hardly translatable into other languages (See De Knop fc.), e.g. (5) Dann kam der Tornado bis auf den See herunter *’Then came the tornado up to on the lake down’. (iv) At the level of a special type of complex particle verbs which combine a particle expressing a path of motion with a simplex verb that expresses a manner (but not a motion), e.g. (6) in eine Familie einheiraten ‘to marry into (a family, a country, etc.)’, (7) sich durch das Leben durchboxen ‘I had to box myself through (through life)’. The use of these verbs affects the whole construction in which they are embedded (See Talmy 2000 : 248 and Gallez in prep.). (v) Expressions of fictive motion often privilege the manner of motion dimension, e.g. (8) Einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr, ‘A good slide into the New Year’ (= ‘A happy New Year’). The talk will present the theoretical aspects of these categories highlighting the «German way of thinking and speaking». In a contrastive perspective it will illustrate the difficulties encountered when trying to translate the above examples in the different categories of lexicalization patterns into French. These difficulties result from the lack of manner of motion prominence in this Romance language. It will further show what the implications for FLT are, especially for French-speaking learners (belonging to the Romance group) of German (Germanic language). The study will further describe the need to redefine some of the elements of a motion event, including the co-event, especially the notion of « satellite ». References Ameka, F. K. and S. C. Levinson. 2007. Introduction: The typology and semantics of locative predicates: Posturals, positionals, and other beasts. Linguistics 45(5/6): 847–871. De Knop, S. and R. Dirven. 2008. Motion and location events in German, French and English: A typological, contrastive and pedagogical approach. In De Knop, S. & T. De Rycker (eds.), Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar – A Volume in Honour of René Dirven, 295-324. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. De Knop, S. Forthcoming. Deutsche Konstruktionen mit komplexen bis-Präpositional- gruppen. In Grammatik als Inventar von Konstruktionen? Sprachliches Wissen im Fokus der Konstruktionsgrammatik, hrsg. von A. Lasch and A. Ziem. Berlin: De Gruyter. Evans, V. and A. Tyler. 2005. Applying cognitive linguistics to pedagogical grammar: The English prepositions of verticality. Revista Brasileira de Lingüistica Aplicada 5(2): 11-42. Gallez, F. in prep. Resultative and caused motion constructions: A cognitive and constructional study of German constructions with particle verbs. Kopecka, A. 2006. The semantic structure of motion verbs in French: Typological perspectives. In Space in Languages: Linguistic Systems and Cognitive Categories, M. Hickmann and S. Robert (eds.), 83–101. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kutscher, S. & E. Schultze-Berndt. 2007. Why a folder lies in the basket although it is not lying: The semantics and use of German positional verbs with inanimate Figures. Linguistics 45 (5-6): 983-1028. Lemmens, M. 2002. The semantic network of Dutch posture verbs, In Newman, J. (ed.), The Linguistics of Sitting, Standing and Lying, 103-139. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lemmens, M. and J. Perrez. 2010. On the use of posture verbs by French-speaking learners of Dutch : A corpus-based study. Cognitive Linguistics 21 (2), 315-347. Matlock, T. 2004a. Fictive motion as cognitive simulation. In Memory and Cognition 32(8): 1389–1400. Matlock, T. 2004b.The conceptual motivation of fictive motion. In Studies in Linguistic Motivation, G. Radden and K.-U. Panther (eds.), 221–248. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Meex, B. 2004. Motion, path, and aspect. The case of the German path adpositions über and durch. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 18: 299-322. Pourcel, S. and A. Kopecka. 2005. Motion expression in French: Typological diversity. Durham and Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 11: 139–153. Serra-Borneto, C. 1996. ‘Liegen’ and ‘stehen’ in German: A study in horizontality and verticality. In: Cognitive Linguistics in the Redwoods, E. Casad (ed.), 458-505. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Slobin, D. I. 1996. Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In Grammatical Constructions: Their Form and Meaning, 195–220, M. Shibatani & S. A. Thompson (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Slobin, D. I. 2000. Verbalized events: A dynamic approach to linguistic relativity and determinism. In Evidence for Linguistic Relativity, S. Niemeier and R. Dirven (eds.), 107– 138. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Talmy, L. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol. 3: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, 57–149, T. Shopen (ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. Talmy, L. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Affiliations
Citations
De Knop, S., & Gallez, F. (2011). Manner of motion: A privileged dimension of German expressions. Conférence Internationale de Linguistique Cognitive (ICLC 11), Université de Xi’an en Chine. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/190455