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Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions
Human languages exhibit fascinating commonalities and variations in the ways they describe motion events. In this volume, the contributors present their research results concerning motion event descriptions in the languages that they investigate. The volume features new proposals based on a broad range of data involving different kinds of motion events previously understudied, such as caused motion (e.g., kick a ball across) and even visual motion (e.g., look into a hole). Special attention is also paid to deixis, a hitherto neglected aspect of motion event descriptions. A wide range of languages is examined, including those spoken in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The results provide new insights into the patterns languages deploy to represent motion events. This volume will appeal to anyone interested in language universals and typology, as well as the relationship between language and thought.
[Human Cognitive Processing, 69] 2020. vii, 324 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 29 July 2020
Published online on 29 July 2020
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction. Motion event descriptions in broader perspectiveYo Matsumoto and Kazuhiro Kawachi | pp. 1–22
- Part I. Path and Deixis in individual languages
- Chapter 1. Distinct coding of Deixis and Path in Kathmandu NewarIkuko Matsuse | pp. 25–40
- Chapter 2. Patterns of deictic expressions in Hungarian motion event descriptionsKiyoko Eguchi | pp. 41–62
- Chapter 3. Patterns of path encoding in GermanBirgitta Meex | pp. 63–104
- Chapter 4. Syntactic and semantic structures of Thai motion expressionsKiyoko Takahashi | pp. 105–140
- Part II. Crosslinguistic and theoretical studies
- Chapter 5. A fine-grained analysis of manner salience: Experimental evidence from Japanese and EnglishKimi Akita and Yo Matsumoto | pp. 143–180
- Chapter 6. Attraction of attention in perceived motion events weighed against typology and cognitive cost: An experimental study of FrenchTakahiro Morita | pp. 181–204
- Chapter 7. Should Talmy’s motion typology be expanded to visual motion? An investigation into expressions of motion, agentive motion, and visual motion in Sidaama (Sidamo)Kazuhiro Kawachi | pp. 205–234
- Chapter 8. Looking into visual motion expressions in Dutch, English, and French: How languages stick to well-trodden typological pathsBert Cappelle | pp. 235–280
- Chapter 9. Neutral and specialized path coding: Toward a new typology of path-coding devices and languagesYo Matsumoto | pp. 281–316
- Name index | pp. 317–318
- Subject index | pp. 319–324
“The inclusion of these varied motion types underscores the necessity of a more flexible and comprehensive typological framework, one that accounts for the intricate ways in which languages conceptualize and encode different kinds of motion. This volume offers many stimulating directions for research and will be of interest to researchers in cognitive linguistics, psychology, and linguistic typology.”
Xinxin Shan, University of South China, in Cognitive Linguistic Studies 12:2 (2025).
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