Within-type variation in Satellite-framed languages: The case of Serbian

Abstract

After a wealth of studies on motion event descriptions, it seems hard to say something new: the Verb-framed/Satellite-framed typology proposed by Talmy has spawned a long debate. Among other things, previous work has shown within-type variation for one of the two language types defined by Talmy, namely Verb-framed languages. In this paper, we address this debate, showing within-type variation for the other type, Satellite-framed languages, with new data elicited from native speakers of Serbian. In order to do so, we compare it with five other languages, from three Indo-European language families (Romance, Germanic and Slavic). Our data show that Serbian is a particularly interesting case, since it is structurally Satellite-framed, but behaves like Verb-framed languages in that speakers do not always express manner and path jointly (i.e. manner in the verb and path in the satellite), as expected on the basis of Talmy’s typology. The main result of our paper is thus that there is a good deal of within-type variation for both language types identified by Talmy.

Goal prevalence and situation types: An empirical analysis of differences in Greek and German motion event descriptions

“…Additionally, Greek speakers tend to produce either path-only or manneronly sentences (N gr =166 versus N ger =14, χ 2 (1) = 231.6 p < .001). Both results confirm Fagard, Stosic and Cerruti's (2017) hypothesis. Finally, when Greek speakers express both manner and path, they use two strategies equally frequently: either they encode both in one clause (see example ( 16)) or they split the two types of information into two clauses (see example ( 11)).…”

“…In this Section, we will analyse the verbalization data with respect to the distribution of the different meaning components involved in a motion event across the clause. For this purpose, all data were coded according to whether the description included: only the manner of motion (M); only the path (P); both manner and path in a single clause (MP); both manner and path in more than one clauses which were either juxtaposed or coordinated (M/P); some other information not related to a motion event (∅) (see Fagard, Stosic and Cerruti 2017;Soroli and Verkerk 2017). Following Fagard, Stosic and Cerruti (2017: 649), we hypothesize that German being a S-framed language will bundle manner and path in a single sentence ([MP] type), while Greek as a V-framed language will either omit manner or path ([M] and [P] types or will distribute the information on manner and path over different clauses.…”

Språk i skola, på fritid och i arbetsliv: Aktuella arenor för svensk forskning inom tillämpad språkvetenskap

“…In the context of the current study, a child who is simultaneously exposed to a variable or skewed input for four languages with typological differences may face challenges when constructing form-meaning pairings for voluntary motion events in each language. Talmy (1991Talmy ( , 2000aTalmy ( , 2000b) developed a typological framework that predicts that certain linguistic structures may have consequences for the semantic distinctions that a speaker makes (see also Fagard et al, 2017). According to this framework, languages fall into two broad typological categories: satellite-framed languages (slanguages) and verb-framed languages (v-languages).…”

“…In s-languages, voluntary motion is typically expressed by a construction consisting of a main verb encoding manner of motion and an optional satellite (a particle or preposition) encoding path. A satellite leaves the verb free to express only manner (Fagard et al, 2017;Hickmann et al, 2008Hickmann et al, , 2018Talmy, 2000b). How English, Russian and Swedish express manner through a main verb (bold) and path through a satellite (underlined) is shown in (2a-c):…”

Speed as a dimension of manner in Estonian frog stories

“…Aske 1989, Choi & Bowerman 1991, Slobin 1996, but they soon triggered an avalanche of studies focusing on the fine-grained differences between and within languages in their lexical choices when expressing motion in relation to their main profile of lexicalisation patterns (e.g. Berthele 2004, Slobin 2004, Zlatev & Yangklang 2004, Filipović 2007, Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2009, Goschler & Stefanowitsch 2013, Fagard et al 2017. Recently, more and more in-depth analyses have been conducted on the dimensions of motion descriptions that go beyond the general categories of path and manner (e.g.…”