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In:Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions
Edited by Yo Matsumoto and Kazuhiro Kawachi
[Human Cognitive Processing 69] 2020
► pp. 235–280

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Chapter 8
Looking into visual motion expressions in Dutch, English, and French

How languages stick to well-trodden typological paths

 | University of Lille
Published online: 11 August 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.69.08cap
Abstract
This study investigates visual motion expressions in Dutch, English, and French. As a translation corpus, I use Roald Dahl’s children’s book The Witches, which abounds in staring and peeping events, and its Dutch and French translations. Based on the hypothesis that languages’ constructional repertoires for physical motion are exploited for visual motion, one can predict, correctly, that Dutch uses its syntactically wide variety of path complement types in the domain of visual motion. It is tempting to assume that French, lacking looking verbs expressing path, would lose its generally verb-framed nature in visual motion descriptions. However, French appears to preserve some of its typological identity, by using causative path verbs such as lever ‘raise’ combined with an object meaning ‘one’s eyes/gaze’. In keeping with its verb-framed nature, French uses fewer visual path complements than Dutch and English, but it does have, and frequently uses, manner-of-vision expressions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What is visual motion, and how fictive is it?
  • 3.Hypotheses and predictions
    • 3.1Rationale
    • 3.2Specific hypotheses and predictions
    • 3.3Interim summary
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1The corpus
    • 4.2Data
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Visual motion in Dutch: Parallels with physical motion
    • 5.2Path of vision in French: Still some verb-framing devices
    • 5.3Manner-of-vision verbs and verb-external paths of vision: Partially confirmed typology-based predictions
      • 5.3.1Availability of manner-of-vision verbs
      • 5.3.2Frequency and complexity of paths of vision
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
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