info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Christine Lamarre, « The encoding of motion events in Chinese: The issue of directional verb compounds », HAL-SHS : linguistique, ID : 10670/1.neky3z
This paper is a first attempt to apply Talmy’s views on the typology of motion events (see for instance Talmy 2000) to Chinese directional verb compounds. It first introduces Talmy’s components of a motion event such as Path and Satellites, and illustrates some of the relations observed in Chinese Directional verb compounds between the co-event and the motion event. The paper then discusses the correlation between causation and agentivity on one hand, and the prevalent pattern used to encode motion events in Chinese. As Chinese widely uses path verbs to encode autonomous (self-agentive) motion events controlled by the Figure, it cannot be considered as a canonical Satellite-framed language. However, causative (agentive) motion events typically combine a Manner Verb and a Path Satellite, the way Satellite-framed languages do, we therefore argue that it is more appropriate to consider that Chinese exhibits what Talmy calls a “split system”, and that the patterns used to encode motion events depend on features such as agentivity and causation. The paper also compares Chinese with French and Japanese concerning the manner component, to provide miscellaneous but converging evidence that Chinese exhibits several features of a typical Satellite-framed language. Other issues discussed here include the use of “dummy” manner verbs, the tendency to encode the manner of motion even when it does not provide any relevant information (ex. “walk”), the encoding of motion events in non-standard varieties of Chinese, and mention the hypothesis of a shift form a verb-framed to a Satellite-framed language.