Conceptualisation and case-marking of abstract motion events in German or why do Germans wish “einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr” on New Year’s eve?

De Knop, Sabine
(2008) Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kognitive Linguistik (DGKL), Thème: „Converging Evidence“; — Location: Universität Leipzig (25.September.2008)

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  • De Knop, Sabineorcid-logoUSL-B
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Abstract
Seen in the wider context of verb-framed and satellite-framed languages (Talmy 1985, Slobin 1996, 2000), the case study explores German examples of metaphorical motion events as in Einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr (‘A good slide into the New Year’ = ‘A happy New Year’). After a general description of the components of motion events, the example will help illustrate the German preference for the expression of the manner of motion which is not a predominant dimension in other languages like English or French. Compare for instance the English sentence The book is on the table with the German Das Buch liegt (= ‘is lying’) on the table which also expresses “how” the book is. But the New Year’s eve example is also meant to concretize the challenges for the learning tasks of foreign language learners related to the German case-marking. Traditionally, German case-marking constitutes one of the major difficulties for foreign learners, especially in such expressions of motion events in which so-called “two-way prepositions” (Smith, 1995) can be used: Er geht auf die Straße (‘He goes on(to) the street’) vs Er geht auf der Straße (‘He goes up and down the street’). The learner has to make a decision of whether to use an accusative or a dative according to the meaning conveyed. But even more problematic for the foreigner than the prototypical examples here above is the case-marking in expressions of abstract or metaphorical motion events, as in Einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr (wünschen), Ein Buch ins Deutsche übersetzen (‘to translate a book into German’) or sich an die Hoffnung klammern’ (‘to cling to hope’). The teaching of German motion events with their case-alternation can be facilitated by an approach which deals with language-specific concepts, visualisation and metaphor. The visual representation of concrete motion events and its exploitation for non-prototypical motion events can make the whole learning task of German far more transparent and thus may help motivate the understanding of metaphorical motion events. Psychologically, this visual approach is based on Paivio’s (2001) ‘dual coding’ hypothesis, which maintains that verbal and visual learning strategies are strongly intertwined. The assumption underlying this research is that visual support may reinforce the intake and use of the accusative in abstract motion expressions. In order to show the underlying motion the teacher of German can invite the learner to visualise how the motion is taking place. The visual support may also offer the basis for a potential link with the underlying conceptual metaphor ABSTRACT ACTIVITY IS MOTION. In the metaphorisation process any process of change can be seen in terms of the motion schema. Spatial distinctions such as those between containers and surfaces will also be extended to more abstract areas of experience, especially in the context of situations describing abstract changes. Here one of the main learning problems for the learner is to find out whether the abstract goal is conceptualized as a container, a surface or still another basic spatial relation. In the example Einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr the new year is seen as a container into which someone slides on New Year’s eve. References De Knop, Sabine and René Dirven (2008) Motion and location events in German, French and English: A typological, contrastive and pedagogical approach. In Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar: A Volume in Honour of René Dirven, Sabine De Knop and Teun De Rycker (eds.), 298-327. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Matlock, Teenie (2004a) Fictive motion as cognitive simulation. In Memory and Cognition 32(8): 1389–1400. Matlock, Teenie (2004b) The conceptual motivation of fictive motion. In Studies in Linguistic Motivation, Günter Radden and Klaus-Uwe Panther (eds.), 221–248. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Paivio, Allan (2001) Mental Representations: A Dual Coding Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, Michael B. (1995) Semantic motivation vs. arbitrariness in grammar: Toward a more general account of the DAT/ACC contrast with two-way prepositions. In Insights in Germanic Linguistics: Methodology and Transition, Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr. (eds.), 293–323. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Slobin, Dan I. (1996) Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In Grammatical Constructions: Their Form and Meaning, Masayoshi Shibatani and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), 195–220. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Slobin, Dan I. (2000) Verbalized events: A dynamic approach to linguistic relativity and determinism. In Evidence for Linguistic Relativity, Susanne Niemeier and René Dirven (eds.), 107–138. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Talmy, Leonhard (1985) Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol. 3: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, Timothy Shopen (ed.), 57–149. New York: Cambridge University Press. Talmy, Leonhard (1991) Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 480–519.
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De Knop, S. (2008). Conceptualisation and case-marking of abstract motion events in German or why do Germans wish “einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr” on New Year’s eve? Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kognitive Linguistik (DGKL), Thème: „Converging Evidence“;, Universität Leipzig. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/190113