Semantics of French Direct Transitive Motion Verbs

Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, 2006

This paper attempts to decompose the Motion event into such elements as Figure, Path, Vector, and Ground based upon Talmy's framework, which makes it possible to formally analyze and compare the lexical semantics of the deictic motion verbs within and across languages. It is shown that the difference in interpretations of the Path is attributable to the lexical specifications of both deictic motion verbs and locative phrases. It is argued that deictic motion verbs can be lexically specified for the entailment of arrival only if they express the Path eventually directed to the deictic center. A formal analysis is given based upon the HPSG framework in order to identify the elements of a Motion event contributed by each element of a verb phrase, and to determine the compositional fashion in which they are combined to give the interpretation of the verb phrase as a whole.

The Construal of Spatial Meaning, 2013

Setting the scene-the cognitive semiotics of motion The present paper argues that the lexico-grammar of spatial Motion (as a supercategory for dynamic movement and static location, cf. Talmy 1985) cannot be understood except as an integral part of the semiotic triad of reality, mind, and language. M otion in language should thus be explained on the basis of the (Gestaltist) psychology of motion in perception, in that language 'structures' the mind's construction of motion in reality. Accordingly, the typology of motion verbs is based on an experientially founded typology of motional situations in mind. A mental motional situation is perceptual, or 'pictorial': Human beings perceive motional situations in reality by forming (concrete) 'pictures' of them with diverse figureground constellations-and recognize them as belonging to different categories (according to stored percepts). There are two kinds of picture, viz. static, or 'stable', and dynamic, or 'unstable', roughly according as the figure is static or dynamic. Furthermore, we seem to be able to construct only one situational picture at a time. A single situational picture is a simple mental Situation-a stable picture is a 'state', and an unstable picture an 'activity'. So far the notion of M otion has been Perceptual. Now, it goes without saying that the 'mentality' of Situations involves much more than simple perceptual Situations, in that situations may be conceived of as possibly integrated with one another into 'complex' Situations. A "snapshot" of what at first sight might seem to be only a state or an activity may thus show out to be the endpoint or the starting point "window", respectively, on an integrated, complex Situation involving an Activity and a State, what will be called an Action. In the first case, the State in focus would be preceded by a causal Activity; in the second case the Activity in focus would be succeeded by a resultant State, in the normal course of events. The connection between the two simple Situations in a complex actional Situation is a general relation of telicity, the causal Activity tending to actually eventuate in the resultant State. The state-focused Action will be termed an Event, whereas an activity-focused Action will be termed a Process. Illustrating this, we may conceive of a scenario where I am sitting alone in the drawing room, then leave for the kitchen and come back, and lo and behold, you are sitting there! This may be conceived of as a M otion Situation, viz. a M otion Event, where you are sitting here as a result of your, say, returning home from work, and I may second it by the utterance Nå, du er kommet hjem fra arbejde 'oh, you've come home from work'. In this case the motion for me was only conceptual, in that I didn't see, or otherwise witness it, but only inferred it. We may thus talk about Conceptual motion in such cases. When now turning to language (as a system) and the typology of motion verbs in the mental lexicon, we must add the Sign Vehicle, i.e. the phonological expression, as a representation of Percean Firstness. The linguistic Sign Object (Secondness) and Sign Interpretant (Thirdness) then recall the mental perceptual and conceptual structures, respectively, just mentioned. So the sign contents are twofold , the linguistic cognitive-semantic domain being bipartitioned into an (abstract) perception-based 'imaginal' representation (cf. Spatial Structure in Jackendoff 2002) and an (abstract) conception-based 'ideational' representation (cf. Conceptual Structure in Jackendoff 2002). 1. Background, aims, and scope 1.1 Lexicalization typology M otion event research has grown into a well-established and highly productive field. Its theoretical cornerstone are the classic studies by Talmy (1975, 1985; for further refinements, see 2000: 25ff.), supplemented by works primarily by Slobin (e.g. 1996a/b; 2004a/b), but also by others (for an overview, see M ora Gutiérrez 2001). Despite the overwhelming amount of specific works within motion event research and despite the seemingly growing awareness of the need for a more fine-grained, less schematic approach than the Talmy-Slobin framework, the core assumptions and variables of the framework nevertheless are still upheld. Talmy's basic assumption is that even though people's pre-linguistic conceptualization of e.g. a directed M otion Situation appears to be universal-involving the same fundamental components to be lexicalized (apart from Figure and Ground, Motion itself, Manner of M otion, or Cause, and Path (i.e. trajectory), the ways of linguistically lexicalizing it in different languages are not the same because not all the components are able to be colexicalized in the same (verbal) morpheme in a major lexicalization system (Talmy 1985: 76): apart from cases where only M otion is lexicalized in the verb, as in English move, either the M anner component co-lexicalizes with the M otion component in the verb, leaving the Path behind to be lexicalized in a so-called Satellite, as in M anner languages, or it is the Path component that is lexically 'incorporated' into the verb, in so-called verb-framed or Path languages, whereby the M anner component becomes secondary, left for optional expression in a con-verb or adverb. Thus, we have a nice binary typology of major lexicalization patterns, and derivatively of languages, in that it is assumed that at least most languages fit into one of these types:  Manner (or, satellite-framed) languages, like e.g., Danish, Swedish, English, German, Russian, and Chinese, where only the Manner of motion is lexicalized in the verb root together with M otion, while the direction or Path of motion is explicated elsewhere when

2019

Why and how study fictive motion in French? Fictive motion has been put to the fore by cognitive linguistics studies in English (Langacker, 1986; Talmy, 1983), but stative uses of motion verbs had been previously documented, including in French, by researchers from other schools of thought (e.g. Boons et al. 1976). In all cases, no systematic study of the phenomenon was undertaken, and very little explanation of the semantic mechanisms at play was proposed (notable exceptions were Honda, 1994, and Matsumoto, 1996). In order to give a wide and unbiased perspective on the phenomenon in French, a corpus has been constituted (Cappelli, 2013) by projecting a list of 521 verbs on 68 texts from the database Frantext (ATILF, 1998-2019). These 521 verbs have been analysed and classified with the concepts developed by Boons (1987) and Aurnague (2011). This allowed to show significant discrepancies in the distribution of motion predicates between factual and fictive uses. At a general level, the less dynamic verbs have a more important weight in fictive motion uses than in factual ones. A finer level of analysis of the discrepancies between categories reveals some of the semantic features (including functional properties as identified by Vandeloise 1986, 2003) that enable fictive motion uses, e.g. minimal coverage, or link between containment and perception. The nature of the entities involved also contrasts with the widely promoted idea that targets (located entities) in fictive motion sentences are elongated, or at least long enough to trigger the need for a sequential scanning of the object. The manner and path conditions established by Matsumoto (1996) will be examined in detail, which will show the importance of force dynamics, intrinsic vertical orientation (Emirkanian, 2008) and formal continuity of the motion predicate. Finally, some features of the discursive context of fictive motion predicates will be presented, as the corpus allowed to investigate a supra-sentential dimension. Nominal sentences, tense switching (between past and present), preposed adverbials, “locative inversion” (or postposed subject) regularly co-occur with fictive motion predicates. Fictive motion is probably itself a major feature of descriptions, involving a stative lexical aspect of motion verbs, while factual motion uses are soliciting the three other Vendlerian modes (Le Pesant, 2012). Hence, the study of this alleged non-literal use of motion verbs might be crucial for a full understanding of “motion verbs” semantics.

Journal of Semantics, 1995

In this paper we offer a semantic study of motion verbs and motion verb complexes determined by motion verbs and spatial prepositional phrase adjuncts. We propose a classification of motion verbs and of motion verb complexes. Unlike other semantic or syntactic studies, we build up the spatiotemporal semantic properties of motion verb complexes compositionally, on the basis of its semantic properties, the verbs and their arguments and adjuncts. We show how to combine this lexical information with discourse information to determine the spatiotemporal structure of texts and to help with lexical disambiguation.

seminal work has engendered a great deal of research and debate in the literature on motion event descriptions over the last decades. Despite the vast amount of research on the linguistic expression of motion events, the fact that motion verb roots might encode information apart from Path and Manner of motion is often overlooked. The present paper addresses the semantics of 376 English and 257 Spanish motion verbs by exploring the general conflations which are conveyed by these verbs. In this regard, both crosslinguistic similarities and differences will be pointed out. My research concludes that path-conflating and manner-conflating verbs amount to the largest part of their lexicons but that other minor patterns such as ground conflations, in contradiction to Talmy's speculations on the lack of ground-conflating verbs, are present as well. Taken as a whole, this paper provides a rich and detailed account on the semantic nature of the English and the Spanish motion verb lexicons, and emerges as a helpful reference for researchers in this field.

Pragmatics & Cognition, 1995

This paper focuses on a distinction between two kinds of information in verb meanings: a highly structured, templatic part of the meaning, based on aspectual properties of the verb, and a part of the meaning which contributes to filling gaps in the templatic information. The two kinds of information d@er in the nature and degree of connections to encyclopedic world knowledge. This demarcation between the two kinds of information is related to the semantics/ pragmatics distinction, and may be clearly articulated using Krifka 's (1 992) formalization of a homomorphism from objects to events. Motion verbs, for which the concept of distance plays a crucial role in the gap-filling information, are shown to be special in a number of ways, due to the special properties of distance as encoded in the world knowledge of the speaker. The possible universality of these findings is also discussed.

Journal of Universal Language

This is a semantic study of causative movement verbs that have been organized into two main groups consisting of similar and contrasting features. This analysis contradicts Van Valin & LaPolla (1997) and other authors working within the Role and Reference Grammar theoretical framework such as Jolly (1991, 1993), who defends the view that causative movement verbs only respond to one Aktionsart type (that is, to one type of mode of action): causative accomplishment verbs. I demonstrate that there are also * This paper was funded through the research project ANGI2005/14 (CAR). I would like to acknowledge the merits of my colleague and friend Rubén Fernández Caro, "a man from the Middle Ages". He gave me the passion for medieval literature and languages and helped me discover the fascinating world found in Tolkien's stories and languages, and especially in Quenya. This paper could have never been written without such underlying motivation.

Verbs in Fictive Motion, Lodz University Press, e-BOOK, 2018

This book presents a corpus-based study of verbs used in expressions of fictive motion, which refers to the cognitive-linguistic phenomenon of describing material objects incapable of movement in terms of motion over their configuration in space. The study focuses specifically on the category of coextension paths, which are used to describe the form, orientation, or location of a spatially extended object in terms of a path over the object’s extent. The analysis, carried out using the British National Corpus, indicates that in English only a fraction of motion verbs are used consistently to express coextension paths, and that some of them are used for this purpose far more systematically than others. A holographic image of structuring coextension paths that emerges from the linguistic data indicates that whereas directional motion verbs tend to be used in fictive motion to express bounded paths, directions, and routes, verbs of motion manner are employed to specify shapes constituting subjective counterparts of spatial contours of actual motion. Moreover, depending on the particular use and the wider linguistic context, certain coextension path expressions can be interpreted as a result of conceptual blending, which fuses multiple facets of motion via a common communicative platform established dynamically in discourse. From the perspective of the analysis, these interpretations are not mutually irreconcilable. The evocation of a particular conceptualization triggered by the semantic attributes conflated in a verb and its satellites is likely to depend not only on individual comprehension strategies, but also on the degree of cultural-linguistic conventionalization of certain fictive motion patterns established through processes of language acquisition and social transfer.

Aurnague, M. & Stosic, D. (éds), The Semantics of Dynamic Space in French. Descriptive, experimental and formal studies on motion expression. Book series Human Cognitive Processing: Cognitive Foundations of Language Structure and Use. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2019

This chapter deals with the syntactic status of locative constituents combining with motion verbs in French. It aims at answering the following questions: are locative PPs arguments or adjuncts? To which extent does the semantic structure of motion verbs determine the obligatory or optional presence of locative constituent? In the first part of the chapter, I discuss the general assumption that Manner and Path cannot be encoded in the same verb. This restriction intersects with the two-way typological division between Verb framed languages and Satellite framed languages. As an alternative view of motion description, I present the classification criteria, proposed by Aurnague (2011), which provides new tools to rethink motion beyond the classical opposition between Manner and Path. Relying on a corpus study, I systematically apply a series of syntactic tests to the main classes of motion verbs. I show that locative PPs are tied to the verb to several degrees and that the semantic structure of verbs strongly impacts their syntactic properties.

Pragmatics &# 38; Cognition, 1995

This paper focuses on a distinction between two kinds of information in verb meanings: a highly structured, templatic part of the meaning, based on aspectual properties of the verb, and a part of the meaning which contributes to filling gaps in the templatic information. The two kinds of information d@er in the nature and degree of connections to encyclopedic world knowledge. This demarcation between the two kinds of information is related to the semantics/ pragmatics distinction, and may be clearly articulated using Krifka 's (1 992) formalization of a homomorphism from objects to events. Motion verbs, for which the concept of distance plays a crucial role in the gap-filling information, are shown to be special in a number of ways, due to the special properties of distance as encoded in the world knowledge of the speaker. The possible universality of these findings is also discussed.