Lexical typology and translation (I) The “frog story” [Mayer, Marcel (1969). Frog, where are you?

Marcel (1969). Frog, where are you? Dial Press,

New York]

Typology: classification of languages into types

Lexical: how human beings encode the extra-linguistic reality into the
lexicon of a language

The owl’s exit in languages using path verbs:

Spanish: Sale un buho [=exits an owl]
Turkish: Oradan bir baykuş çıkıyor [=From there an owl exits]
Manner of motion verbs
Hebrew: Yaca mitox haxor yanšuf [=Exits from-inside the-hole owl]
DO NOT TREAD, MOSEY, HOP, STEP,
TIPTOE, MEANDER, CREEP, PRANCE, STRIDE,
The owl’s exit using manner-of-motion verbs:
TRUDGE, MARCH, STOMP, TODDLE, JUMP,
OR WALK ON THE PLANTS.
English: An owl popped out.
Russian: Tam vyskočila sova [=There out-jumped owl]
San Diego Zoo Mandarin Chinese: Fei1-chu1 yi1 zhi1 mao1 tou2 ying [=Fly out one owl]
San Diego wild animal park
Some languages with low manner salience in frog stories
Romance: French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
Semitic: Arabic, Hebrew
Turkic: Turkish
The child hopped down the hallway
Some languages with high manner salience in frog stories
Germanic: Dutch, English, German, Icelandic, Swedish
[The child went down the hallway] WITH-THE-MANNER-OF [the Slavic: Polish, Russian
child hopped] Sino-Tibetan: Mandarin Chinese

Talmy’s lexical typology

Life in a manner-salient world
1
[Talmy, Leonard (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. II Typology Satellites
and process in concept structuring. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA]
The satellite expresses:
a. the path in an event of motion
Eng. The ball rolled in
The rock rolled/bounced down the hill. b. the aspect in an event of temporal contouring
MOTION+MANNER PATH They talked on
c. the correlation in an event of action correlating
It. She sang along
Entrò in casa correndo d. the fulfilment or confirmation in an event of realization
PATH VERB MANNER The police hunted the fugitive down

Satellite-framed languages: manner is expressed in the main verb Some examples of English satellites
run in (V=do the action of the verb)
tiptoe in
over ‘V again/anew’
Verb-framed languages: manner is expressed in constructions associated When it got to the end, the record started over from the
with the main verb beginning.
enter running
enter on the tips of the toe on ‘continue Ving without stopping’
The past, if it lives on in their minds, cannot be irretrievable.
(lit. transl.)

Examples of motion events away ‘continue Ving (with dedication)’

The BA students worked away on their papers.
“… and then you clambered up on the platform …”
OED clamber: To climb by catching hold with hands and feet; to climb with ‘feel free to embark on and continue Ving’
difficulty and effort. - Would you like me to read you some of my poetry?
- Read away!
“… and we all dove under the table …”
OED dive: To dart suddenly down or into some place or passage. along ‘proceed together in the process of Ving’
We were singing along when he barged in.
“… as you trudge to work to support them …”
off ‘V all in sequence / progressively’
OED trudge: In addition to the idea of effort, it also conveys the idea of the I checked off the names on the list.
repeated lifting of feet and legs while moving through something (snow,
mud) that tends to hold them down. up ‘V all the way into a different (also a non integral) state’
The dog chewed the mat up in 20 minutes.

back ‘V in reciprocation for being Ved’

2
 He had teased her, so she teased him back. Example: A Berkeley teacher shows children how to do a lot of different
walks

Consequences “Hop on one foot – forward, backward”

“Let’s prance: lift up those knees!”
Granularity of semantic space “Do a stomp walk. I wanna hear your feet – big, heavy feet”
“Tiptoe. Shh! Don’t let your heels touch”
 Languages differ in how finely they divide up the domain of manner
of movement Consequences in texts
 Therefore learners face different tasks in constructing mental
representations of manner of movement In Hi-M languages

Actual motion is made vivid:

ENGLISH: walk, stroll, pace
Yesterday’s aftershock was big enough to send frightened people
SPANISH: pasear
scurrying out of their homes.
OED scurry: to go hastily or move very rapidly.
OED stroll: to walk in a careless or leisurely fashion as inclination directs;
often simply to take a walk.
The moving figure is evaluated:
OED pace: to move with measured or regular steps. Also: to move in this
Striding through the library, Dr. Thomason shook each hand.
way as an expression of anxiety, frustration, etc. (usually with an adverb
OED stride: to walk with long or extended steps, often with implication
phrase, as in to pace up and down).
of haste or impetuosity or exuberant vigour, or of haughtiness or
arrogance.
Users of Hi-M languages
Consequences for translation
 Tend to include manner of motion in event description
 The perspective of the target language dominates
 Make reference to manner of motion in everyday conversations  The dominance of the target language is most evident when
 Can rapidly access a large lexicon of manner-of-motion verbs source language and target language represent opposite types

Consequences for acquisition

 Children are trained by their language to attend to particular event

dimensions