5 Break it like this: Manner in causative change-of-state events
Abstract
Manner of action is expressed differently across languages, both with regard to how it is expressed (e.g., verbs, adverbs, prepositional phrases. . .) and how frequently speakers include it in everyday speech. The literature has shown that manner encoding correlates with linguistic typology (e.g., studies on motion events such as Talmy 1985) and that in verbs manner often contrasts with result in a privative opposition (see Beavers and Koontz-Garboden 2020 and Levin and Rappaport-Hovav 2012, who show that manner and result cannot be expressed by the same verb root). In this study, we report the results of a video description task involving causative breaking events with data from native speakers of two Germanic languages (English and Swedish) and one Romance language (Italian). The data is analysed qualitatively so as to go beyond the simple manner-result dichotomy. The results of the study allow the identification of the most frequent manner expressions and manifest a continuum between manner and neighbouring concepts (e.g., neutral contact or instrument) regarding how they are expressed (e.g., as a verb, such as ‘to hammer’, or in a prepositional phrase, such as ‘with a hammer’). The study also shows that, despite Italian and English sentence structure being closer to one another, the two Germanic languages still expressed manner more frequently than did the Romance language.
Abstract
Manner of action is expressed differently across languages, both with regard to how it is expressed (e.g., verbs, adverbs, prepositional phrases. . .) and how frequently speakers include it in everyday speech. The literature has shown that manner encoding correlates with linguistic typology (e.g., studies on motion events such as Talmy 1985) and that in verbs manner often contrasts with result in a privative opposition (see Beavers and Koontz-Garboden 2020 and Levin and Rappaport-Hovav 2012, who show that manner and result cannot be expressed by the same verb root). In this study, we report the results of a video description task involving causative breaking events with data from native speakers of two Germanic languages (English and Swedish) and one Romance language (Italian). The data is analysed qualitatively so as to go beyond the simple manner-result dichotomy. The results of the study allow the identification of the most frequent manner expressions and manifest a continuum between manner and neighbouring concepts (e.g., neutral contact or instrument) regarding how they are expressed (e.g., as a verb, such as ‘to hammer’, or in a prepositional phrase, such as ‘with a hammer’). The study also shows that, despite Italian and English sentence structure being closer to one another, the two Germanic languages still expressed manner more frequently than did the Romance language.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- List of contributors VII
- 1 Introduction 1
-
Part I: Demonstratives: A basic strategy
- 2 The concept of manner and its encoding: A view from the periphery 61
-
Part II: Canonical strategies in European languages: Verbs, adverbs and adverbials
- 3 The grammatical status of manner elements within the English adverb class 87
- 4 The notion of manner in Romance (and English): Caught between the adjectival and circumstantial poles of modification 111
- 5 Break it like this: Manner in causative change-of-state events 135
- 6 Manner in the way construction and the reaction object construction 163
-
Part III: Looking beyond Europe: Alternative strategies
- 7 Manner orientation and levels of predication 191
- 8 On the limits of contact in inducing change: A corpus-based study of manner expression strategies in the emergence period of Modern Hebrew 223
- 9 Structural positions, particles, and focal stress dictate functions and interpretations of Japanese manner adverbs 245
- 10 Being a Regular Verb and a Manner Adverbial Simultaneously: 273
- 11 How it looks/sounds/feels or how I see/hear/feel it: Lexico-syntax and pragmatics of onomatopoeic manner expressions in Japanese, Korean, and Ainu 301
- Index
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- List of contributors VII
- 1 Introduction 1
-
Part I: Demonstratives: A basic strategy
- 2 The concept of manner and its encoding: A view from the periphery 61
-
Part II: Canonical strategies in European languages: Verbs, adverbs and adverbials
- 3 The grammatical status of manner elements within the English adverb class 87
- 4 The notion of manner in Romance (and English): Caught between the adjectival and circumstantial poles of modification 111
- 5 Break it like this: Manner in causative change-of-state events 135
- 6 Manner in the way construction and the reaction object construction 163
-
Part III: Looking beyond Europe: Alternative strategies
- 7 Manner orientation and levels of predication 191
- 8 On the limits of contact in inducing change: A corpus-based study of manner expression strategies in the emergence period of Modern Hebrew 223
- 9 Structural positions, particles, and focal stress dictate functions and interpretations of Japanese manner adverbs 245
- 10 Being a Regular Verb and a Manner Adverbial Simultaneously: 273
- 11 How it looks/sounds/feels or how I see/hear/feel it: Lexico-syntax and pragmatics of onomatopoeic manner expressions in Japanese, Korean, and Ainu 301
- Index
