HUMAN LOCOMOTION VERBS IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH (original) (raw)
Related papers
Human Locomotion Verbs in English and Spanish, IJES, 2007
2007
A vast amount of research has been carried out inspired by the motion event typology established by , that of, verb-framed and satellite-framed languages. However, hardly any research has been devoted to either deeply analyse motion verb lexicons or to explore manner-of-motion verb granularity between languages typologically different or similar (cf. Slobin, 2003. This paper concentrates on an important subdomain of motion, i.e., human locomotion, and examines the way Spanish and English lexicalise it in verbs. The first part of the paper focuses on the semantics of human locomotion verbs with special attention to the sort of fine-grained manner information that each language encodes. In the second part, an empirical study on how Spanish and English monolinguals categorise human locomotion verbs into three motor pattern categories (Walk -Run -Jump) is reported.
An experimental investigation into English and Spanish human locomotion verbs, 2009
2009
PAULA CIFUENTES FÉREZ expresar en sus verbos de movimiento distintos modos de andar, que de correr o de saltar. Además, el segundo estudio sugiere que (a) la mayoría de los verbos de movimiento humano se refi eren a una única manera de andar, de correr o de saltar; (b) que unos pocos verbos no parecen pertenecer a ningún patrón motor específi co (p.ej., verbos que denotan movimiento obstruido como el verbo inglés trip 'tropezar' y tropezar); y, por último, (c) que hay varios verbos que parecen ser buenos ejemplos de más de un patrón motor (p.ej., corretear es un buen ejemplo de andar y correr, rush 'ir deprisa', scoot 'largarse' y skitter 'moverse deprisa y con ligereza' son buenos ejemplos de andar y correr). Palabras clave: movimiento, desplazamiento humano, manera de movimiento, patrón motor, inglés, castellano Abstract In this paper, I present my experimental research on the subdomain of human locomotion. This subdomain may be structured, at least, around three motor patterns: walk, run and jump. This research addresses the question of whether both languages organise their human locomotion verb lexicons in the same way, specifi cally, whether they have more walking verbs over running and jumping verbs as it has been noted in a contrastive semantic analysis of English and Spanish motion verbs carried out by the author of this paper. To test this, two experiments were performed. In the fi rst experiment (the Free Verb Listing task), English and Spanish native speakers were asked to list verbs of walking, of running and of jumping within one minute time limit. In the second one (the Rating task), I gave English and Spanish native speakers a list of verbs (108 for English and 54 for Spanish) to rate in terms of the three basic motor patterns. I conclude that despite the fact that English possesses a greater number of manner verbs which pertain to human locomotion, both languages seem to follow the same pattern in the organisation of their lexicons; English and Spanish have more verbs depicting ways of walking than ways of running and jumping. Moreover, my data from the second study suggests that (a) most of verbs given to be rated are good ways/kinds of one of the motor patterns, (b) a few of them are not good ways/kinds of any (e.g., 95 AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION INTO ENGLISH AND SPANISH... verbs denoting obstructed motion such as trip and Spanish tropezar 'to trip'; verbs encoding playful motion such as frolic and gambol), and (c) some verbs seem to be good ways/kinds of two superordinate categories (e.g., rush, scoot, skitter are good examples of walking and running; prance is a good example of walking and jumping; corretear 'to run about in a playful way' is a good example of walking and running).
The semantics of the English and the Spanish motion verb lexicons, RCL, 2010
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.
On the Semantics of English Verbs of Locomotion
2005
The paper shows that directionality of motion does not have an additive status and that the sparsity of information about the manner of motion is related to the obligatory presence of a directional goal of motion.
2022. The interaction of motion event (sub)components in Spanish motion verbs
Spanish, as a Romance language, can be considered a verb-framed language in Talmy's (1985, 1991) framework or a head path-coding language in Matsumoto's (2003, 2020, this volume) terminology. This means that the information related to the Path of motion is usually encoded in the main verb. Following Talmy's (2000) framework, the semantic component of Path covers three subcomponents: Vector that includes different types of trajectories-source, goals, etc., Conformation or the shape or geometric complex of Path, and Deictic or the motion to/from speaker and addressee). These subcomponents are illustrated in examples (1-3) respectively. (1) Vector El chico entra en la tienda Lit. 'The boy enters in the shop' (2) Conformation El chico rodea la casa Lit. 'The boy goes.around the house' (3) Deixis El chico viene del colegio Lit. 'The boy comes of-the school' Other authors, however, argue that these subcomponents may be worth analyzing separately given their own role in the configuration of the motion event in some languages. Deixis is such an element. Matsumoto (this volume) summarises some of the reasons why Deixis should be considered a different semantic component. First, it is always lexicalised even in languages with poor path verb repertoires. Second, it often has its own independent morphosyntactic slot (e.g. certain position in a serial verb, specific affix, etc.). Third, the use of Path and Deixis across languages does not always correlate; that is, when comparing two languages, for example, they might behave similarly with respect to Path but they might not do so in the case of Deixis, or vice versa 1. As far as Spanish is concerned, Deixis does not have a special encoding slot different from any of the slots or resources available to codify information about other semantic components. In other words, Deixis can be expressed in main verbs such as 1 In order to avoid ambiguity in the use of the term Path (Talmy's view or Matsumoto's view), this paper will treat Path and Deixis as separate elements, unless specifically stated.
Contrastive semantics of human locomotion verbs
Review of Cognitive Linguistics
This paper is a contribution to a hitherto unexplored area in English-Czech contrastive semantics. It examines differences in the construal of walking, the most prototypical type of human locomotion. Based on the data from InterCorp, a synchronic parallel translation corpus, it presents a cognitive oriented analysis of the semantics of English walk and its nearest Czech counterparts, i.e. jít and kráčet. Despite their apparent commonalities, the verbs in question do not construe walking in the same way. In contrast to jít, the construal of a motion situation in walk and kráčet involves focus on leg movements and bodily position, amounting to a marked segmentation of the motion into individual quanta. Focus on leg movements and verticality of the body is even more pronounced in kráčet, which can then serve an evaluative function; such a possibility is not open for walk. Walk thus occupies an intermediate position between the two verbs.
Epos : Revista de filología, 1999
1 =" th^ rro8 §-lineiiÍ8tic differences between En-In this paper I attempt ,o analyse he ero-ün^ .^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ gUsh and Spanish motion verb. from ^^''^¡''l^¿^^^_ I" "rder to do so, I shaU üghtonthedifficul,iestheypo.etotheSpan.sh.ra"sl^t^^^ _^ ^^^^^^^ foUow Langacker'.-^"-¿^ ,^1'Le. I differ fro. these authors in event-frame analysis (1985, 1988, IVV ; ^ j^d i" James (1980) may promy beUef thatthenewCo"trasnveA.a|y^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ ve fruitful as a methodological tool. Ihereiore, analysis of verbs of movement in EngUsh and bpanisn.
«The Mental Lexicon: A Contrastive Analysis of Motion Verbs in English and Spanish»
2020
This paper presents a theoretical approximation to the mental organization of language and therefore, to the existence of a mental lexicon where the lexical items of a language are stored and organized into semantic networks. These will be illustrated using a sample selection of motion verbs and making a contrastive analysis comparing the way English and Spanish shape these associations in a different way.
Manners of human gait: A crosslinguistic event-naming study
Crosslinguistic studies of expressions of motion events have found that Talmy’s binary typology of verb-framed and satellite-framed languages is reflected in language use. In particular, Manner of motion is relatively more elaborated in satellite-framed languages (e.g., in narrative, picture description, conversation, translation). The present research builds on previous controlled studies of the domain of human motion by eliciting descriptions of a wide range of manners of walking and running filmed in natural circumstances. Descriptions were elicited from speakers of two satellite-framed languages (English, Polish) and three verb-framed languages (French, Spanish, Basque). The sampling of events in this study resulted in four major semantic clusters for these five languages: walking, running, non-canonical gaits (divided into bounce-and-recoil and syncopated movements), and quadrupedal movement (crawling). Counts of verb types found a broad tendency for satellite-framed languages to show greater lexical diversity, along with substantial within group variation. Going beyond most earlier studies, we also examined extended descriptions of manner of movement, isolating types of manner. The following categories of manner were identified and compared: attitude of actor, rate, effort, posture, and motor patterns of legs and feet. Satellite-framed speakers tended to elaborate expressive manner verbs, whereas verb-framed speakers used modification to add manner to neutral motion verbs.