Same family, different paths
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Alberto Hijazo-Gascón
Abstract
This chapter examines the intratypological variation that exists in verbframed Romance languages with respect to the semantic component of Path. Based on contrastive elicited data from the Frog stories in French, Italian, and Spanish, it is shown that Italian speakers, contrary to what is expected in verb-framed languages and to what Spanish and French speakers do, offer detailed descriptions of Path, prefer Plus-ground verb constructions and mention more than one Path element per verb. These results not only support the presence of intratypological variation in languages within the same genetic family – an underexplored area – but also confirm the existence of a cline of Path salience. Italian, Spanish, and French are undoubtedly verbframed languages, but they occupy different positions on this cline. Italian is a high-path salient language whereas Spanish and even more French are lowpath salient languages.
Abstract
This chapter examines the intratypological variation that exists in verbframed Romance languages with respect to the semantic component of Path. Based on contrastive elicited data from the Frog stories in French, Italian, and Spanish, it is shown that Italian speakers, contrary to what is expected in verb-framed languages and to what Spanish and French speakers do, offer detailed descriptions of Path, prefer Plus-ground verb constructions and mention more than one Path element per verb. These results not only support the presence of intratypological variation in languages within the same genetic family – an underexplored area – but also confirm the existence of a cline of Path salience. Italian, Spanish, and French are undoubtedly verbframed languages, but they occupy different positions on this cline. Italian is a high-path salient language whereas Spanish and even more French are lowpath salient languages.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Editors and contributors vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction: Beyond typology 1
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Part I. Variation
- Typology as a continuum 17
- Same family, different paths 39
- Disentangling manner and path 55
- The encoding of motion events 77
- Motion events in Turkish-German contact varieties 115
- Variation in the categorization of motion events by Danish, German, Turkish, and L2 Danish speakers 133
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Part II. Change
- Describing motion events in Old and Modern French 163
- Lexical splits in the encoding of motion events from Archaic to Classical Greek 185
- Caused-motion verbs in the Middle English intransitive motion construction 203
- Variation and change in English path verbs and constructions: Usage patterns and conceptual structure 223
- Author index 245
- Language index 247
- Subject index 249
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Editors and contributors vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction: Beyond typology 1
-
Part I. Variation
- Typology as a continuum 17
- Same family, different paths 39
- Disentangling manner and path 55
- The encoding of motion events 77
- Motion events in Turkish-German contact varieties 115
- Variation in the categorization of motion events by Danish, German, Turkish, and L2 Danish speakers 133
-
Part II. Change
- Describing motion events in Old and Modern French 163
- Lexical splits in the encoding of motion events from Archaic to Classical Greek 185
- Caused-motion verbs in the Middle English intransitive motion construction 203
- Variation and change in English path verbs and constructions: Usage patterns and conceptual structure 223
- Author index 245
- Language index 247
- Subject index 249
