The conceptualisation of motion and location in French, German and English: Lexical, morpho-syntactic and figurative challenges.

De Knop, Sabine
(2008) Expressions of posture and motion in Germanic languages — Location: SeSLa, Université Saint-Louis (24.October.2008)

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  • De Knop, Sabineorcid-logoUSL-B
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Abstract
In the larger frame of typological distinctions between Germanic and Romance languages my research will describe the contrasts in the expressions of motion and location between French as a verb-framed language, English as an intermediate satellite-framed language and German as a more extreme satellite-framed language (Talmy 1985, Slobin 1996, 2000). Let’s take as an example the scenario of athletes swimming across a river as expressed by the French sentence Les athlètes traversent le fleuve (à la nage). The typical construal in French is one of a transitive structure, using the full verb traverser (‘to cross’) to express the path of motion and optionally specifying the manner of motion by a prepositional phrase (à la nage ‘by swimming’). Such a construal is also possible in English, witness The athletes cross the river, but far less preferred than one which encodes manner of motion at the level of the verb: The athletes swim to the other bank. This tendency to express the manner of motion in the verb and the path of motion in the so-called satellites (in our example the preposition to in English or an in German) is much more pronounced in German, which only permits Die Athleten schwimmen ans andere Ufer. The study will focus on extensions of the prototypical concept of spatial motion into reduced motion of instrumental body parts (e.g., in einen Apfel beißen/to bite into an apple), fictive motion (e.g., Wir sind über den Berg/We are over the mountain = ‘We have overcome all obstacles’) and metaphorical motion (e.g., in eine andere Sprache übersetzen/to translate into another language). It will further show that there is a subtle interplay between differences in conceptualisation and corresponding differences in morphosyntax, more specifically, in the German case marking system. Both motion and event schemas neatly reveal the cognitive motivation for the two-way case markings of the so-called “two-way” (Smith 1995) German prepositions like an, in, and vor (‘at,’ ‘in,’ and ‘in front of/before’). These prepositions can be used with either the accusative or the dative, depending on the conceptualisation that they are intended to express: the accusative case for dynamic motion (e.g., Vati stellt die Vase auf den Tisch or ‘Daddy puts the vase on(to) the table’) and the dative case for static location (e.g., Die Vase steht auf dem Tisch, ‘The vase stands on the table). The distinction between these two is notoriously hard to learn, but causes even more learning problems with examples of partial, fictive or abstract motion. For example, why an accusative as the realisation of a dynamic movement in an abstract example like sich an die Hoffnung klammern/to cling to hope? One strategy which may facilitate the learning process is to offer learners “a very concrete, visual and even tactile way of experiencing the learning problem and associating the linguistic expressions with these bodily experiences” (De Knop and Dirven 2008). Another strategy would be to take into account the relevant conceptual metaphors such as CHANGE IS MOTION or MOTION (and ABSTRACT CHANGE) IS CHANGE OF LOCATION, which would exploit the same embodied conceptualisations in abstract domains. The presentation of variation in the conceptualisation of motion events in English, French and German thus becomes the basis for learning strategies for the acquisition of typical German conceptualisations by means of case marking.
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De Knop, S. (2008). The conceptualisation of motion and location in French, German and English: Lexical, morpho-syntactic and figurative challenges. Expressions of posture and motion in Germanic languages, SeSLa, Université Saint-Louis. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/190114