The expression of voluntary and caused motion events in Chinese and in English : typological and developmental perspectives
Human spatial understanding is said to be universal and shares the same biological heritage across individuals; on the other, the linguistic systems encoding spatial knowledge vary strikingly. This paradox raises fundamental questions for general issues of (a) language typology and (b) first language acquisition. The present study investigates the expression of voluntary and caused motion events in space by Chinese and English native speakers, across ages, in cartoon-based production tasks. Typologically, it examines the particular properties of Chinese in comparison to English in frameworks proposed by Talmy (2000) (i.e. verb-framed vs. satellite-framed) and Slobin (2004) (i.e. equipollently-framed) for the expression of spatial information across languages. Results reveal Chinese differs from English in terms of how semantic components for motion (Path, Manner, Cause, etc) are selected, encoded and distributed across an utterance, on the basis of which it is suggested that, contrary to the traditional classification of both English and Chinese as being unequivocally satellite-framed, it is more accurate to describe Chinese as an âequipollentâ language standing midway along a verb-framed/satellite-framed
Ji, Y.
The expression of voluntary and caused motion events in Chinese and in English : typological and developmental perspectives. Human spatial understanding is said to be universal and shares the same biological heritage across individuals; on the other, the linguistic systems encoding spatial knowledge vary strikingly. This paradox raises fundamental questions for general issues of (a) language typology and (b) first language acquisition. The present study investigates the expression of voluntary and caused motion events in space by Chinese and English native speakers, across ages, in cartoon-based production tasks. Typologically, it examines the particular properties of Chinese in comparison to English in frameworks proposed by Talmy (2000) (i.e. verb-framed vs. satellite-framed) and Slobin (2004) (i.e. equipollently-framed) for the expression of spatial information across languages. Results reveal Chinese differs from English in terms of how semantic components for motion (Path, Manner, Cause, etc) are selected, encoded and distributed across an utterance, on the basis of which it is suggested that, contrary to the traditional classification of both English and Chinese as being unequivocally satellite-framed, it is more accurate to describe Chinese as an âequipollentâ language standing midway along a verb-framed/satellite-framed
expression voluntary cause motion_event chinese_english typological developmental perspective human spatial say universal share biological heritage across individual linguistic system encode spatial knowledge vary strikingly paradox raise fundamental_question general issue language typology first_language_acquisition present_study_investigate expression voluntary cause motion_event space chinese_english native_speaker across age based production_task typologically examines particular property chinese comparison_english framework propose talmy verb framed satellite framed framed expression spatial information across_language reveal chinese differs english term semantic component motion path manner cause etc select encode distribute_across utterance basis suggest contrary_traditional classification english_chinese satellite framed accurate describe chinese language standing along verb framed satellite framed