Differential encoding of motion events

2. What is a directed motion event?
a situation in which an entity
moves with regards to a
reference point following a
trajectory
Real
movement
Fictive
movement

3. Why focus on directed motion events?
This semantic domain is
habitually encoded by by special
lexical and syntactic selections in
English and Spanish.
English and Spanish seem to be
subjective orientations to the world of
humand experience differing in terms
of:the presence/absence of certain
constructions and the way of allocating
resources to the same event

4. Leonard Tamy is very well-known for his work within the framework of
cognitive semantics, an area of cognitive linguistics, or, more specifically, in
a field which he calls conceptual semantics.
Let’s listen to his answer to the question : “What does cognitive semantics
consist in?” This was the first question he was made at an interview
uploaded in YouTube by the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZFUEO45WnE

5. ABSTRACT COMPONENTS OF MOTION EVENTS
4 OBLIGATORY COMPONENTS
MOVEMENT
FIGURE: the entity that moves
PATH: the trayectory followed by the FIGURE
GROUND: the point of reference
2 OPTIONAL COMPONENTS
(one or the other)
MANNER : the way in which the FIGURE moves
CAUSE: the instrument or force that makes the FIGURE move in a
certain way

6. LEXICALIZATION
PATTERNS and
LANGUAGE
TYPES
FIGURE-TYPE
LANGUAGES (e.g.
Navajo and most northern Hokan
languages) characteristically lexicalize in
the V the figure that moves (move +
figure).
PATH-
TYPE
LANGUAGES
(Romance, Semitic
& Turkic languages )
characteristically
lexicalize in the V
the path (move +
path)
MANNER
-TYPE
LANGUAGES
(e.g. English, Germanic,
Slavik, & Finno-Ugric)
tend to lexicalize in the
V the manner/ cause of
the motion (move +
manner/ cause).

7. • Example from English
[The drunkard] [ staggered] [ into] [ the house].
FIGURE MOVE + MANNER PATH GROUND
• Example from Spanish
[La botella ] [ cruzó] [ el canal] (flotando)
FIGURE MOVE +PATH GROUND (MANNER)

8. AN EXAMPLE OF THE CONTRAST BETWEEN ENGLISH AND SPANISH
EXPLAINED BY TALMY HIMSELF
T = TRAYECTORIA verb = MOVEMENT + PATH
M = MANERA verb = MOVIEMENT + PATH
Preposition =PATH
(gerund) = MANNER
The symbols and colours above are intended to help you analyze the example.
In an interview, and when answering the third question, Talmy referred to the example below, Click here to listen to his
explanation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZFUEO45WnE.
SPANISH
(the prototype of PATH-TYPE
LANGAUGES)
ENGLISH
(the prototype of MANNER-TYPE
LANGUAGES)
La botella entró a la cueva (flotando)
T T M
The bottle floated into the cave.
M T

9. FICTIVE MOTION and VISUAL MOTION
WHAT IS MEANT BY FICTIVE MOTION?
• Motion with no physical occurrence
• Linguistic instances like look + path-describing forms are conceptualized within Talmy’s (Talmy,
2000.a) account of the cognitive representation of non-veridical phenomena as the fictive motion of
something intangible emerging from a source (98-118).
• In visual motion, one of the types of fictive motion, there are two entities, the Experiencer and the
Experienced, and something intangible moving in a straight path, the line of sight, between two
entities in one direction or another. In the case of the agentive verb of vision, look, we are
concerned with the Experiencer as Source emitting a probe that moves from the Experiencer to the
Experienced and detects it upon encounters with it (115). In the corresponding schema, presented
in the quotation below and illustrated by example (3), sight is treated as a probing system that
emanates from an is projected forth by a viewer so as to detect some object at a distance.
• Here the conceptualization appears to be that the Agent volitionally projects his line of sight as a
aprobe from himself as Source along the Path specified by the preposition relative to the Reference
Object. (Ibid.: 116)
I looked into/towards/past/away from the valley.(116)

10. Daniel Slobin works in the field of psycholinguistics, and in his works he shows the importance of
interlinguistic comparison to the study of language acquisition and psychology in general (Slobin,
2003, 2004).
If you click here, you will see the text of an interview in which Slobin explains what his main
resear interest is http://www.ub.edu/web/ub/es/menu_eines/noticies/2010/entrevistes/danslobin.html

11. SLOBIN’S APPROACH TO TALMY’S
TYPOLOGY FROM THE PATH ANGLE
Verb-framed languages/V-languages,
e.g. Spanish,
• path conflates with motion
Satellite-framed languages/S-
languages, e.g. English
• path occurs as a satellite (a particle or a P).

12. Slobin:
• examines data from novels, short stories,
newspapers and others sources
• reports findings on the degree of granularity of an
event description, that is, how many sub-trajectories
combine into an overall trajectory and the tightness
of packaging.

13. examines data from novels, short stories,
newspapers and others sources
reports findings on the degree of granularity of
an event description, that is, how many sub-
trajectories combine into an overall trajectory
and the tightness of packaging.

14. Rich use of a large number of lexically specific verbs encoding
manner of motion
Event broken up into larger number of components
Several path elements stacked with single V to achieve high degree
of tightness of packaging in single clause + many grounds may be
used
Example: There is in the Midlands a single-line tramway system which boldly leaves the country town and
plunges off into the black, industrial countryside, up hill and down dale, through the long ugly villages of
workmen’s houses, over canals and railways, past churches perched high and nobly over the smoke and
shadows, through stark, grimy cold little market-places, tilting away in a rush past cinemas and shops down to
the hollow where the collieries are, then up again, past a little rural church, under the ash trees, on in a rush to a
terminus ... (D. H. Lawrence, England, my England)

15. • separate direction Vs such as salir/exit, entrar/enter,
atravesar/cross, subir/ascend, bajar/descend used wherever
path is telic (bounded) or change of path direction occurs
because change of path is boundary-crossing (atravesó el
bosque/he went through the forest) or moving with relation to
earth’s gravity (as in subió la montaña/he went up the hill)
• use of series of separate clauses to express complex paths
 few clauses with direction Vs and very seldom motion V with
more than one ground
 ground information provided in scene-setting descriptions of
terrain; “implicit descriptions of direction of motion”

16. English
• Look occurs in same types of frames
as motion Vs.but but with realworld
constraints on the extent of visual
paths in comparison with physical
paths.( Slobin, 2003.b: 10)
• Constructions include:
 several grounds on the way to
goal
 boundary-crossing and gravity-
centered segments in a single
clause or gapped construction
•
Spanish
 no set of specialized Vs for visual paths,
conflating look + path, comparable to
physical path Vs (e.g.entrar/enter)
 simple directional expressions with one
ground (very seldom two)
 only explicit boundary-crossing situation
found by Slobin with mirar: looking
through a window
 no series of path segments following
mirar
 preferred means of describing Visual Paths
in Spanish (fairly complex trajectories)
Subject: mirada V: path (move + path)
Subject: Experiencer V: path (move + path)
instrumental adjunct: PP con la mirada

17. Some Conclusions on Differential Encoding of Visual
Paths in English and Spanish Narrative Styles
Tendencies in English
• availability of Ps and particles denoting moving, bounded and boundary-crossing
trajectories
• great precision in descriptions of trajectories (stacking of path elements)
• information about grounds generally in NPs objects to Ps denoting path
Tendencies in Spanish
• Spanish speakers do not use all the combinatorial possibilities of mirar + PPs
allowed by their grammar
• expressions denoting trajectory of gaze are less specific, e.g. use of general Ps
• use of Vs of directed motion when path of gaze is important
• number of ground elements and separate clauses to describe trajectory
limited by stylistic preferences
• path generally left to be inferred from descriptions of settings

18. The activity of thinking takes on a particular quality when it is employed
in the activity of speaking. In the evanescent time frame of constructing
utterances in discourse one fits one’s thoughts into available linguistic
forms. A particular utterance is never a direct reflection of objective or
perceived reality or of an inevitable and universal mental representation
of a situation. This is evident within any given language, because the
same situation can be described in different ways; and it is evident across
languages because each language provides a limited set of options for the
grammatical encoding of characteristics of objects and events. “Thinking
for speaking” involves picking those characteristics of objects and events
that (a) fit some conceptualization of the event, and (b) are readily
encodable in the language. (Slobin, 1987, p. 435) (Slobin, 2003, p. 157)