The expression of caused motion events in Chinese and in English: Some typological issues

Abstract

The domain of space presents some interesting properties. On the one hand, spatial understanding by human beings is said to be universal and to share the same biological heritage; one the other hand, the linguistic systems encoding spatial knowledge vary strikingly. This paradox raises fundamental questions, including for language typology. In this context, the present study examines adults' expression of caused motion events in Chinese versus English in the frameworks proposed by Talmy, Toward a cognitive semantics, vol. 2: Typology and process in concept structuring, MIT Press, 2000 (i.e., verb-framed versus satellite-framed) and Slobin, The many ways to search for a frog: linguistic typology and the expression of motion events, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004 (i.e., equipollently framed) regarding the expression of spatial information across languages. The results of a cartoon-based production task reveal that, although both languages tend to express equally frequently the same set of semantic components for motion (Path, Manner, Cause, etc.), Chinese greatly differs from English in terms of where this information is encoded and how it is distributed across utterances. On the basis of these findings, it is suggested that it is better to understand Chinese on its own merits: this language shows both satellite- and verb-framing properties, thus demonstrating a “parallel” system.