No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.
Edward Sapir
How do we talk about the events we perceive? Leonard Talmy´s cognitive-semantic model of motion encoding indicates that motion is encoded in certain lexical items. Talmy makes a distinction between two kinds of motion verbs:
- ‘path-verbs’ (or ‘direction verbs’), which only encode information about the direction of the motion.
Examples: enter, exit, descend/betreten, verlassen, hinabsteigen (DE)
- ‘manner-verbs’, in which the manner-of motion information is encoded.
Example: strut, bounce, slide, stroll/sich brüsten, hüpfen, gleiten, bummeln (DE)
Furthermore, Talmy distinguishes between Manner languages (e.g. English, German, Russian, Chinese), where the manner of motion is typically encoded in the main verb and the path in a variety of other devices, such as particles (out), adpositions (into the room), verb prefixes (e.g., German raus- ‘out’; cf. raus-rennen ‘run out’), etc., and Path languages (e.g. Greek, French, Spanish, Turkish, japanese), which typically code path in the verb (cf. Greek vjeno ‘exit’, beno ‘enter’, ftano ‘arrive/reach’, aneveno ‘ascend’, diashizo ‘cross’), and manner in adverbials (trehontas ‘running’, me ta podia ‘on foot’, grigora ‘quickly’). Manner languages are characterised by large and often growing manner verb vocabularies, whereas in Path languages, manner is less salient. For the verb-framed languages in particular, Talmy points out that:
If Manner […] is expressed in the same sentence, it must be as an independent, usually adverbial or gerundive type constituent. In many languages – for example Spanish – such a constituent can be stylistically awkward, so that information about Manner or Cause is often either established in the surrounding discourse or omitted altogether. In any case, it is not indicated in the verb root itself.[1]
These cross-linguistic differences have been confirmed in psycholinguistic studies of motion with both adults and children. Motion descriptions produced by children and adults in two typologically distinct languages, Greek and English, confirm an asymmetry between those. As originally indicated by Talmy (1975), English includes a large inventory of manner verbs (strut, bounce, slide, stroll, sashay, etc.) which can be freely combined with adverbs, particles or prepositional phrases encoding trajectory information (away, into the forest, upwards, etc.). English path verbs (enter, exit, descend, etc.) are fewer in number and more restricted in distribution. By contrast, a language like Greek mostly expresses motion information in path verbs (beno ‘enter’, vjeno ‘exit’, perno ‘cross’, pao ‘go’, etc.) combined with prepositional phrases or adverbials which further specify path (sto spiti ‘into the house’, makria ‘away’, etc.). Even though ordinary manner of motion verbs exist in Greek (sernome ‘crawl’, perpato ‘walk’, peto ‘fly’, etc.), their distribution is more restricted than in English.
Thus Greek, unlike English, lacks the option of linguistically packaging complex motion events in the compact way given in English. Let’s see an example:
Helen flew to London:
In such cases, Greek can encode manner-of-motion information in modifiers (‘Helen
went to London by plane’) or separate clauses (‘Helen took a plane and went to London’) but speakers often opt to omit mention of manner altogether.
I Eleni pige sto Londino:
‘the-Helen went to London’
Speakers of Greek might be less likely to include manner-of motion information if it is inferable from other aspects of the linguistic description or the extra-linguistic knowledge of the hearer. For instance, a speaker who knows that Helen (who lives in Greece) is planning to visit London can safely say Helen will go to London and let the hearer infer that she will use the normal way of flying. If Helen decided to travel by ship instead, the speaker might be more likely to describe this event by mentioning the manner in her description. By contrast, differences in inferability of manner should not affect verbal descriptions of motion in English, where manner is usually already encoded in the verb. Slobin (1996) has called this language-specific mobilisation of linguistic resources ‘thinking for speaking‘. In the case of motion, this means that manner components are in differential states of conceptual readiness in the minds of speakers of Manner vs. Path languages, immediately prior to verbalisation.
What does this discussion about differences in perspective mean for foreign language students? It is widely accepted that aspects of our mother tongue are anchored in our perception and way of thinking. Language is not a neutral system. On the contrary; it shows preferences for specific grammatical structures. This clearly indicates that students of a foreign language have to face a very specific challenge: to identify the different perspective strategies, to adopt them and reorganise therefore their way of thinking; in other words, their mother tongue-influenced thinking for speaking.
Cognitive flexibility, the understanding and adoption of the foreign language´s structure, perspective and thinking for speaking are the key factors to achieve a native-like foreign language level.
[1] Talmy, Leonard (1985): Lexikalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms.In: Shopen, T. (Hrsg.): Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. 3, Grammatical categories and the lexicon, University Press, Cambridge 1985, S. 69.
Article written by Katerina Karavasili, translator and master´s student of German as a foreign language- TermCoord communication team
Sources
Papafragou, A., Massey, C., & Gleitman, L.. When English proposes what Greek presupposes: The cross-linguistic encoding of motion events. Cognition 98: B75-87, 2006
Papafragou, Anna, & Selimis, Stathis. Event categorisation and language: A cross-linguistic study of motion. Language and Cognitive Processes 25: 224-260, 2010, S.72
Talmy, Leonard: Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. II. The MIT Press, Cambridge/London 2000
Talmy, Leonard (1985): Lexikalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In: Shopen, T. (Hrsg.): Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. 3, Grammatical categories and the lexicon, University Press, Cambridge 1985, S. 69.