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Article published In: Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 21:2 (2023) ► pp.377–410

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Separation events in Mandarin, Russian and Korean

A crosslinguistic event-categorization study

 | University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
 | Beihang University
 | Beihang University
 | Minzu Normal University of Xingyi
Published online: 14 March 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00143.du
Abstract
Crosslinguistic studies on motion events have revealed that S-languages demonstrate finer-grained lexical categories than V-languages in representing motion manners/gaits. But these studies were restricted to the semantic domain of motion events and confined to a limited number of S- or V- languages. In this paper, we further investigate whether the association between lexical diversity and language typology is manifest in a similar way in the semantic domain of separation events by focusing on Mandarin, Russian and Korean. Our results suggest that: (1) Separation expressions support the diversity-typology correlation proved in motion expressions because the two S-languages Mandarin and Russian demonstrate richer lexical diversity than the V-language Korean; (2) It is further pointed out that apart from language typology, lexical diversity is influenced by multiple factors including lexical resources, conceptual salience, event construal, and event type; (3) Though typologically different, these three languages, in their lexical naming of separation events, are constrained by the biomechanical structure and follow the principle of prototypicality. Overall, this study opens up a new crosslinguistic perspective by showing how lexical diversity is typologically and linguistically driven.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.State of art
    • 2.1Motion event categorization
    • 2.2Separation event categorization
    • 2.3Motion-separation comparison
    • 2.4Mandarin, Russian and Korean
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Coding scheme
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Lexical diversity
    • 4.2Beyond S-/V- typology
      • 4.2.1Lexical resource
      • 4.2.2Conceptual salience
      • 4.2.3Event construal
      • 4.2.4Event type
    • 4.3Structural constraints and event categorization
    • 4.4The continuum of event categorization
  • 5.Conclusions and implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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