Intratypological differences in three Romance languages: Same family, different paths

Hijazo-Gascón, Alberto; Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide

doi:10.1075/hcp.41.02hij

In:Variation and Change in the Encoding of Motion Events
Edited by Juliana Goschler and Anatol Stefanowitsch
[Human Cognitive Processing 41] 2013
► pp. 39–54

Get fulltext from our e-platform

Download Book PDF

Same family, different paths

Intratypological differences in three Romance languages

Alberto Hijazo-Gascón

Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

Published online: 14 November 2013

https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.41.02hij

This chapter examines the intratypological variation that exists in verbframed Romance languages with respect to the semantic component of Path. Based on contrastive elicited data from the Frog stories in French, Italian, and Spanish, it is shown that Italian speakers, contrary to what is expected in verb-framed languages and to what Spanish and French speakers do, offer detailed descriptions of Path, prefer Plus-ground verb constructions and mention more than one Path element per verb. These results not only support the presence of intratypological variation in languages within the same genetic family – an underexplored area – but also confirm the existence of a cline of Path salience. Italian, Spanish, and French are undoubtedly verbframed languages, but they occupy different positions on this cline. Italian is a high-path salient language whereas Spanish and even more French are lowpath salient languages.

Keywords: intratypological differences, motion, path, Romance languages

Cited by (29)

Cited by 29 other publications

Order by:

Feist, Michele I. & Paula Cifuentes-Férez

2025. Thinking-for-audio-describing: an English-Spanish corpus-based study and some didactic applications. Perspectives ► pp. 1 ff.

Michelotti, Anna, Ioli Baroncini & Helen Engemann

2025. Linguistic variation in the interpretation and production of Italian motion event constructions in younger and older adults: evidence for language change?. Language and Cognition 17

Molés-Cases, Teresa & Rosa Alonso

2025. Audio description across languages: motion and streaming services. Perspectives ► pp. 1 ff.

Moura, Heronides

2025. Telicidade, trajetória e <i>phrasal verbs</i> no português brasileiro. Cadernos de Estudos Linguísticos 67 ► pp. e025029 ff.

Wiesinger, Evelyn

2025. Language contact and creolization. In Constructions in Contact 3 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 40], ► pp. 111 ff.

Menete, Sérgio N. & Guiying Jiang

2024. Another member out of the family: the description of manner of gait in Changana verbs of motion. Folia Linguistica 58:2 ► pp. 401 ff.

Anastasio, Simona

2023. Motion event construal in L2 French and Italian: from acquisitional perspectives to pedagogical implications. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 61:1 ► pp. 37 ff.

Anastasio, Simona

2023. L’ESPRESSIONE DEL MOVIMENTO DA PARTE DI APPRENDENTI D’ITALIANO L2 CON L1 FRANCESE E INGLESE: INCROCIO TRA FATTORI TIPOLOGICI E COGNITIVI. Italiano LinguaDue 15:2 ► pp. 1 ff.

Lewandowski, Wojciech & Şeyda Özçalışkan

2023. Running across the mind or across the park: does speech about physical and metaphorical motion go hand in hand?. Cognitive Linguistics 34:3-4 ► pp. 411 ff.

Taremaa, Piia & Anetta Kopecka

2023. Manner of motion in Estonian. Studies in Language 47:1 ► pp. 32 ff.

Filipović, Luna

2022. The tale of two countries. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 24:2 ► pp. 254 ff.

Tusun, Alimujiang & Henriëtte Hendriks

2022. Caused motion events in Modern Uyghur: a typological perspective. Linguistics 60:5 ► pp. 1663 ff.

Torres-Martínez, Sergio

2021. The cognition of caused-motion events in Spanish and German: AnAgentive Cognitive Construction Grammaranalysis. Australian Journal of Linguistics 41:1 ► pp. 33 ff.

Anastasio, Simona & Sandra Benazzo

2020. L’expression du déplacement en italien et français L2 : influence translinguistique vs tendances communes. Discours :26

Buoniconto, Alfonsina

2020. Constructional Meaning and Knowledge-Driven Interpretation of Motion Events. Gestalt Theory 42:1 ► pp. 31 ff.

Irsara, Martina & Ulrike Domahs

2020. The Use of the Verb Run in English Learner-Narratives An Analysis of Verb Constructions Influenced by Different L1s . EL.LE :1

Matsumoto, Yo

2020. Neutral and specialized path coding. In Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions [Human Cognitive Processing, 69], ► pp. 281 ff.

Matsumoto, Yo & Kazuhiro Kawachi

2020. Motion event descriptions in broader perspective. In Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions [Human Cognitive Processing, 69], ► pp. 1 ff.

Muñoz, Meritxell & Teresa Cadierno

2019. Mr Bean exits the garage driving or does he drive out of the garage? Bidirectional transfer in the expression of Path. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 57:1 ► pp. 45 ff.

Fibigerova, Katerina & Michèle Guidetti

2018. The impact of language on gesture in descriptions of voluntary motion in Czech and French adults and children. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 9:1 ► pp. 101 ff.

Fibigerová, Kateřina & Michèle Guidetti

2019. Structure of French expression of motion. In The Semantics of Dynamic Space in French [Human Cognitive Processing, 66], ► pp. 290 ff.

Fagard, Benjamin, Dejan Stosic & Massimo Cerruti

2017. Within-type variation in Satellite-framed languages: The case of Serbian. STUF - Language Typology and Universals 70:4 ► pp. 637 ff.

Hijazo-Gascón, Alberto

2017. Motion event contrasts in Romance languages. In Motion and Space across Languages [Human Cognitive Processing, 59], ► pp. 301 ff.

Hijazo-Gascón, Alberto

2018. Acquisition of motion events in L2 Spanish by German, French and Italian speakers. The Language Learning Journal 46:3 ► pp. 241 ff.

Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide, Alberto Hijazo-Gascón & María-Teresa Moret-Oliver

2017. The importance of minority languages in motion event typology. In Motion and Space across Languages [Human Cognitive Processing, 59], ► pp. 123 ff.

Soroli, Efstathia & Annemarie Verkerk

2017. Motion events in Greek. CogniTextes :Volume 15

Stam, Gale

2015. Changes in Thinking for Speaking: A Longitudinal Case Study. The Modern Language Journal 99:S1 ► pp. 83 ff.

Stam, Gale

2017. Verb-framed, satellite-framed or in between?. In Motion and Space across Languages [Human Cognitive Processing, 59], ► pp. 329 ff.

[no author supplied]

2015. Cognitive Linguistics and Lexical Change [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 331],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.