A contrastive study of Germanic satellite-framed languages: The role of prepositions, postpositions and morphosyntactic case-marking

De Knop, Sabine;Gallez, Françoise
(2023) International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC16) — Location: Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (7.August.2023)

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Dutch, English and German belong to the class of Germanic languages which, in typological terms, have been defined as satellite-framed languages (Slobin 2006, 2017; Talmy 2000, 2017). They express the path of motion preferably with satellites and the manner dimension in the main verb. Although these three languages belong to the same typological class, they differ in the way in which they realize these dimensions. With examples from the Sketchengine (https://www.sketchengine.eu/) our study aims to propose a more fine-grained description of the three Germanic languages and to show how expressions of motion and location are further dependent on morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors. More specifically, we will show how English has the possibility to make a difference between motion along a path and location simply with the use of different prepositions like in, on (location) vs. into, onto (motion along a path), e.g. (1) He is in the room/on the mountain vs. (2) He runs into the room/upon the mountain. By contrast, German does not use different prepositions for motion vs. location, as exemplified by the same sentences (1a) Er ist in dem Zimmer/auf dem Berg (location) vs. (2a) Er läuft in das Zimmer/auf den Berg (motion). Still, the difference between both events is expressed, but by means of morpho-syntactic case-marking after the two-way prepositions, i.e. with the dative case for location (see 1a) and the accusative case for motion (see 2a). Dutch does not have case-marking but uses prepositions for location and postpositions with the same form as the prepositions for motion along a path, e.g. (1b) Hij is in de kamer/op de berg vs. (2b) Hij loopt de kamer in/de berg op (Draye 1992; Leys 2014; Van Belle 2016). This last construction in Dutch (2b) has a German equivalent with the use of so-called anadeictic particles (Ágel 2017). A literal translation of (2b) in German could be (2c) Er geht in das Zimmer hinein (lit. ‘He goes into the room into’). The presentation will further zoom in onto so-called German ‘verbless directives’ (Jacobs 2008), e.g. (3) Ab ins Bett (lit. ‘off to bed’) or (4) rauf auf den Berg (lit. ‘upon on the mountain’), which are common in oral German speech but hardly used in English or Dutch. Verbless directives constitute the prototypical instantiation of the satellite-framed pattern as they only consist of a nominal phrase with satellites and without a verb. This is only possible because of the complex intertwining of case-marking in German and the broad variety of prepositions and (deictic) particles for the expression of motion, e.g. (4) rauf[DEICTIC PART.] auf[PREP] den[ACCUS.] Berg. From a pragmatic point of view they express directives and are often accompanied by gestures. This brief introduction demonstrates that the three Germanic languages realize the satellite-framed pattern in different ways and to varying degrees, depending on the distribution of the motion expression on various factors and the more or less rich or poor morpho-syntactic and semantic possibilities in each language (compare Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2017). We will go more deeply into these factors which have been neglected in typological research. Literature Ágel, Vilmos (2017), Grammatische Textanalyse - Textglieder, Satzglieder, Wortgruppen-glieder. Berlin: de Gruyter. Draye, Luk (1992), Zum Trajektiv. Ein Kapitel aus einer kognitiv orientierten niederländisch-deutschen Grammatik. Leuvense Bijdragen 81: 163-203. Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide (2017), Introduction. Motion and semantic typology: A hot old topic with exciting caveats. In Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano (eds.), Motion and Space across Languages, 13–36. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jacobs, Joachim (2008), Wozu Konstruktionen? Linguistische Berichte 213: 3-44. Leys, Odo (2014), Nog eens de trajectconstructies van het type ‘de trap op’. In Van de Velde, Freek, Hans Smessaert, Frank Van Eynde & Sara Verbrugge (eds.), Patroon en argument. Een dubbelfeestbundel bij het emeritaat van William Van Belle en Joop van der Horst, 129-141. Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven. Slobin, Dan I. (2006), What makes manner of motion salient? Explorations in linguistic typology, discourse, and cognition. In Hickmann, Maya & Stéphane Robert (eds.), Space in languages: Linguistic systems and cognitive categories, 59-81. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Slobin, Dan I. (2017), Typologies and language use. In Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide (ed.), Motion and Space across Languages, 419‒445. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Talmy, Leonard (2000), Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Talmy, Leonard (2017), Foreword: Past, present and future of motion research. In Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano (eds.), Motion and Space across Languages, 1-12. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Van Belle, William (2016), Postpositie of partikel en de trajectief. Leuvense Bijdragen 99: 29–37.
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De Knop, S., & Gallez, F. (2023). A contrastive study of Germanic satellite-framed languages: The role of prepositions, postpositions and morphosyntactic case-marking. International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC16), Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/164112