(In press) “Linguistic Typology in Motion Events: Path and Manner”.

Anuario del Seminario de

Filología Vasca ‘Julio de Urquijo’. International Journal of Basque Linguistics and Phylology.

LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY IN MOTION EVENTS: PATH AND MANNER

Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

Pagazaurtundua, 3 - 2D.

E-48980 Santurtzi. Bizkaia.

Tlfnoa: 658713224

E-posta: iraidei@euskalnet.net
 Linguistic typology in motion events: Path and Manner*

IRAIDE IBARRETXE-ANTUÑANO

University of Deusto – University of the Basque Country

In each language only a part of the complete

concept that we have in mind is expressed, and

each language has a peculiar tendency to select

this or that aspect of the mental image which is

conveyed by the expression of the thought (Boas,

1911/1966: 38-39)

Abstract

Motion events are situations “containing movement or the maintenance of a

stationary location” (Talmy 1985: 85). In the last twenty years there has been an

increasing interest in the research of motion events. Much of this interest has arisen

from the seminal work of Len Talmy and his lexicalisation patterns (1985, 1991,

2000), and that of Dan Slobin and his ‘Thinking for speaking’ hypothesis (1987, 1991,

1996a,b, 1997, 2000). In this paper we are going to analyse and compare motion

events in three different languages: English, Spanish and Basque. Our goal is to

compare these data under a critical eye so that we can (i) discuss the importance of

the differences and similarities that exist in the expression of motion in these

languages with respect to our language use, (ii) test the validity of Talmy’s

typological dichotomy.

2
1. Introduction

Motion events are situations “containing movement or the maintenance of a

stationary location” (Talmy 1985: 85). Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) typology divides

languages into satellite-framed and verb-framed languages. The former expresses the

semantic components of the motion event, Motion and Manner, conflated in the verb,

and the Path in a satellite. The latter conflates Motion and Path in the verb, and

expresses Manner in a separate expression. Slobin’s (1987, 1991, 1996a,b, 1997,

2000) ‘Thinking for speaking’ hypothesis applies this dichotomy to narrative and the

issue of linguistic relativity. He argues that “lexicalisation patterns have consequences

for the ways in which speakers focus on these components separately and in

interaction, as reflected both in the lexical choice and the syntax of narrative

discourse” (1997: 439).

Taking Talmy’s and Slobin’s ideas as our theoretical basis, in this paper we

are going to analyse and compare motion events in three different languages: English,

Spanish and Basque. These languages are a good choice for comparison because they

are different and similar at the same time. They are different because they belong to

different language families –two Indo-European, Germanic (English) and Romance

(Spanish), one non-Indo-European (Basque)-, but they are also similar because they

share a Western cultural background, and in the case of Basque and Spanish a several-

century-old contact. They are different because their lexicalisation patterns are not the

same –English is satellite-framed, and Basque and Spanish verb-framed- but, as we

shall see, there are also similarities among them, especially with respect to path and

manner.

3
 Our data come from previous analyses of motion events in the Frog stories

(Berman and Slobin 1994). These are a collection of elicited narratives based on a

wordless picture book, Frog where are you? (Mayer 1969), that tells the story of a

boy who, together his dog, goes in search of his lost pet frog. The method for data

gathering is very simple. The informant is told that s/he has to tell a story about a boy,

a dog, and a frog. S/he is shown the book and allowed to look through the pictures.

Then, s/he is asked to tell the story to the researcher who records or videotapes it. The

informant follows the book picture by picture. English and Spanish data are mainly

drawn from Slobin’s work, especially his 1996a paper ‘Two ways to travel’. Basque

data are taken from Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2002, forthcoming) 1 .

The main aim of this paper is not to show and discuss new data in reference to

motion events –as we have just said, the data that we use are ‘borrowed’ from

previous analyses. Our goal is to compare these data under a critical eye so that we

can (i) discuss the importance of the differences and similarities that exist in the

expression of motion in these languages with respect to our language use, (ii) test the

validity of Talmy’s typological dichotomy.

2. Motion events and Language Typology

Leonard Talmy describes a motion event as a situation “containing movement

or maintenance of a stationary location” (1985: 61). According to this author, motion

events are analysable into a set of six basic semantic elements or components, the first

four constituting the central or ‘internal components’ while the last two are associated

or ‘external co-event components’. These are: (i) ‘Figure’: the moving object; (ii)

‘Ground’: entity or entities that the Figure is moving in relation to; (iii) ‘Path’: the

course followed (and trajectory) of the Figure; (iv) ‘Motion’: the presence of motion

4
per se; (v) ‘Manner’: the way in which motion is performed; and (vi) ‘Cause’: what

originates the motion itself. Let us illustrate each of these components with some of

Talmy’s classical examples (1985: 61):

(1) The pencil rolled off the table

Figure Motion Path Ground

Manner

(2) The pencil blew off the table

Figure Motion Path Ground

Cause

In both cases the pencil plays the role of the Figure and the table that of the

Ground which in these examples also expresses source of movement. The particle off

functions as the Path. The verbs roll and blew express the Motion component. In

addition, roll in (1) offers information about the Manner of motion, and blew in (2)

about the Cause of motion.

Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000) proposes that languages can be grouped together on

the basis of how they encode the core information of a specific semantic domain onto

syntactical and lexical structures. There are two distinct groups: those that allocate

information in the verb and those that do so in some other elements called

‘satellites’ 2 .

5
 In the case of motion events, from the six meaning components that play a role

in the conceptual structure of a motion event, Talmy suggests that the basic

information is precisely the motion of an entity along a path in a specified direction.

In languages like German, the verb does not encode this information. Instead,

it usually expresses the act of motion itself conflated with information about manner,

that is, information about the way in which motion is performed. For example, verbs

like rennen ‘run’, springen ‘jump’, krabbeln ‘crawl’. Path information is usually

expressed in satellites such as (r)aus ‘out’, (r)ein ‘into’, (r)unter ‘down’, as in rennen

raus ‘run out’.

Languages like French follow the opposite strategy. Here, the core information

is not expressed in a separate element but usually conflated with the verb, e.g.

descendre ‘go down’, entrer ‘go in’. The encoding of manner is an optional choice in

French, and thus, it is expressed in a separate element, e.g. entrer en courant ‘go in

running’. Languages like German are called ‘satellite-framed languages’, and

languages like French are called ‘verb-framed languages’.

According to Talmy, languages can be classified into these two lexicalisation

types on the basis of their ‘characteristic expression of motion’. By ‘characteristic’,

Talmy (1985: 62; 2000b: 27) means that “(1) it is colloquial in style, rather than

literary, stilted, and so on; (2) it is frequent in occurrence in speech, rather than only

occasional; (3) it is pervasive, rather than limited –that is, a wide range of semantic

notions are expressed in this type”.

In the case of the languages under investigation in this paper, previous

analyses 3 on their ‘characteristic expression of motion’ would place English as

satellite-framed, and Spanish and Basque as verb-framed, as illustrated in (3), (4), and

6
(5), respectively. The Path component is in bold and the Manner of motion is

underlined.

(3a) The dog tumbles out of the window [B-S-94]

(3b) An owl flew out of the hole in the tree [S-00]

(4a) Del agujero salió un buho [S-00]

of.the hole exited an owl

‘An own went out of the hole’

(4b) El perro salió corriendo [S-91]

the dog exited running

‘The dog ran out’

(5a) eta ontzitikan atera intzan [IA-02]

and jar:ABL:LOC exit:PERF inten.aux

‘And [the frog] went out of the jar’

(5b) eta erlauntzatik erle guztiak irten ziren hegaka [IA-02]

and beehive:ABS bee all:ABS:DET:PL exit:PERF aux flying

‘And all the bees flied out from the beehive’

As it is characteristic of satellite-framed languages, the core information of the

motion event is expressed outside the verb, in a satellite, the particle out in (3),

7
whereas the verb conflates motion and manner as in the verbs fly and tumble. In the

frog stories, Slobin (1996a) reports that there are 123 different types of combinations

between verbs and satellites.

The lexicalisation pattern of verb-framed languages, on the other hand,

follows the opposite strategy. The core information of the motion event is lexicalised

in the verb. Thus, the verbs in these sentences, salir, irten and atera ‘exit’, convey

both motion and path (outwards). In cases where the motion event also includes the

semantic component of Manner this is usually expressed outside the verb, in a

separate expression, a gerund in Spanish –corriendo ‘running’- and an adverb in

Basque –hegaka ‘flying’- as we can see in (4b) and (5b) respectively. The information

that these manner expressions add to the whole motion event is quite varied. It can

refer to the following:

(i) Motor pattern, e.g. Sp. corriendo ‘running’, rodando ‘rolling’, Bq.

arinka ‘running’, arrastaka ‘dragging’, taka-taka ‘small steps’.

(ii) Rate or speed of motion, e.g. Sp. de repente ‘suddenly’, a toda prisa

‘fast’, Bq. bizkor ‘quickly’, ziztu bizian ‘fast’.

(iii) Means of transport, e.g. Bq. oinez ‘on foot’.

(iv) Protagonist’s inner state 4 , e.g. Sp. asustado ‘scared’, enfadado ‘angry’,

Bq. txintxo-txintxo ‘well-behaved’, zain-zain ‘watchful’.

8
 As we can see from these examples, not only the information conveyed in

these expressions is diverse, but also the grammatical category of these ‘separate

expressions’. Adverbs (bizkor ‘quickly’), adjectives (asustado ‘scared’), gerunds

(corriendo ‘running’), prepositional phrases (a toda prisa ‘fast’), and even sound

symbolic expressions 5 (taka taka ‘small steps’) are used in this slot.

3. Thinking for speaking: language typologies in our language use

The typological differences across languages described in the previous section

show that languages have different syntactical-semantic preferences when they want

to talk about motion. The detailed description of these preferences in several

languages is an interesting exercise because it contributes to what authors such as

Myhill (1992: 1-2) have called ‘typological discourse analysis’. That it to say, “the

cross-linguistic study of the factors affecting the choice of one construction or another

in a given language, taking the surrounding discourse context into consideration as

having a crucial effect on this choice”.

However, these language-specific patterns are not only important for their

typological discourse implications –how speakers of different languages narrate the

same story-, but also for their cognitive implications. As Berman and Slobin (1994:

612) argue, these discourse differences “suggest that the native language directs one’s

attention, while speaking, to particular ways of filtering and packaging information”.

With this idea in mind, Slobin (1987, 1991, 1996a,b, 1997, 2000) has put forward

what he calls the ‘thinking for speaking’ hypothesis, a modified 6 version of the

classical Sapir-Whorf debate on linguistic relativity in the first half of the twentieth

century (Sapir 1924, Whorf 1940) based on psycholinguistic and typological research.

Slobin himself explains the core motivation for this hypothesis in the following way:

9
 The expression of experience in linguistic terms constitutes thinking

for speaking – a special form of thought that is mobilised for communication.

… We encounter the contents of the mind in a special way when they are

being accessed for use. That is, the activity of thinking takes on a particular

quality when it is employed in the activity of speaking. In the evanescent time

frame of constructing utterances in discourse one fits one’s thoughts into

available linguistic frames. ‘Thinking for speaking’ involves picking those

characteristics of objects and events that (a) fit some conceptualisation of the

event, and (b) are readily encodable in the language (Slobin 1991: 12)

In other words, experience cannot be verbalised without having taken a

specific perspective influenced, if not determined, by the typological characteristics

and lexicalisation pattern of a given language. What we experience/perceive might be

the same event but the way we choose to talk about it seems to be different across

languages.

This is why for Slobin (1996a), any event (in our case, a motion event) can be

described in terms of two different cognitive frames. On the one hand, that which

refers to the actual event or experience that we want to describe (the translational

motion from one place to another), and on the other, the tools provided to and

constraints imposed on speakers in expressing that event in a particular language.

What he calls a ‘discourse frame’ and a ‘typological frame’, respectively.

If Slobin’s hypothesis is right, then, these differences within the typological

frame have to be readily present if we analyse the same type of event in different

languages. As we said in the previous section, satellite-framed languages and verb-

10
framed languages differ in the way they lexicalise the motion semantic components of

path and manner. S-languages 7 encode some change of location in a particular manner

leaving it to satellites (particles and prepositions) to encode directionality, whereas V-

languages do exactly the opposite. But, how can we empirically show their

differences?

In his 1996a paper, Slobin proposes a series of ‘hints’ or areas where these

differences among S-languages and V-languages become clear. I have organised them

in terms of three proposals. Let us define each of them:

VERBS: number, expressiveness, and frequency of mention of lexical items

for manner description.
PROPOSAL 1: V-languages have fewer items than S-languages

PHRASES & JOURNEYS: Elaboration of ground descriptions.

PROPOSAL 2: V-languages have less frequent and elaborated
ground descriptions than S-languages.

RHETORICAL STYLE: description of motion vs. scene setting

PROPOSAL 3: V-languages devote less narrative attention to
dynamics of movement and more to scene setting than S-languages

In the following section, I will provide a detailed description of each of these

proposals based on both Slobin’s own work and results from English and Spanish

11
(Slobin 1996a, 1997) and my own results from Basque (Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2002,

forthcoming). The results of such a description will be discussed in the last section of

this paper with respect to the validity of language typologies.

4. Testing Slobin’s proposals in English, Spanish, and Basque frog stories.

4.1. Proposal 1: Verbs.

The first step that Slobin takes in his analysis of the typological frame of

motion events is to look at the entire collection of motion verbs, both self and caused

movement, used in the frog stories.

(6a) English verbs [S-96]

Buck, bump, buzz, carry, chase, climb, come, crawl, creep, depart, drop,

dump, escape, fall, float, fly, follow, get, go, head, hide, hop, jump, know,

land, leave, limp, make-fall, move, plummet, pop, push, race, rush, run, slip,

splash, splat, sneak, swim, swoop, take, throw, tip, tumble, walk, wander

(6b) Spanish verbs [S-96]

Acercarse ‘approach’, alcanzar ‘reach’, arrojar ‘throw’, bajar(se) ‘descend’,

caer(se) ‘fall’, correr ‘run’, dar-un-empujón ‘push’, dar-un-salto ‘jump’,

entrar ‘enter’, escapar ‘escape’, hacer caer ‘make fall’, huir ‘flee’, ir(se) ‘go’,

llegar ‘arrive’, llevar(se) ‘carry’, marchar(se) ‘go’, meterse ‘insert oneself’,

nadar ‘swim’, perseguir ‘chase’, ponerse ‘put oneself’, regresar ‘return’,

sacarse ‘remove oneself, exit’, salir ‘exit’, saltar ‘jump’, subir(se) ‘ascend’,

12
 tirar ‘throw’, traspasar ‘go over’, venir ‘come’, volar(se) ‘fly’, volver(se)

‘return’.

(6c) Basque verbs

Abiatu ‘set off’, agertu ‘appear, turn up’, ailegatu ‘arrive’, airatu ‘fly’, alde

egin ‘leave’, aldendu ‘leave, move away’, altxatu ‘raise, get up’, astindu

‘shake’, ateatu ‘go out the door’, atera ‘go/take out’, atzera egin ‘go

backwards’, aurreratu ‘go forward’, azaldu ‘turn up, appear’, bidali ‘send

off’, bota ‘throw’, bueltatu ‘return’, desagertu ‘disappear’, eragin ‘cause to do

something, move’, erakarri ‘cause to bring’, eraman ‘carry’, erori ‘fall’,

eskapatu ‘flee’, eskumarantz egin ‘go towards the right’, eten egin ‘stop’,

etorri ‘come’, frenatu ‘brake, stop’, gelditu ‘stop’ (remain), gora egin ‘go up’,

heldu ‘arrive’, hurbildu ‘approach’, ibili ‘walk’, igo ‘go up’, ihes egin

‘escape’, inguratu ‘go around, get close’, iritsi ‘arrive’, irriste egin ‘slide,

slid’, irten ‘go/take out’, itzuli ‘return’, jarraitu ‘follow to’, jarri ‘put in’, jausi

‘fall’, jo ‘set off, head’, joan ‘go’, kanpora egin ‘go outside’, kendu ‘remove’,

korrika egin ‘run’, lurreratu ‘go down’, makurtu ‘bend’, montatu ‘mount’,

mugitu ‘move’, oheratu ‘go to bed’, pasatu ‘go beyond, pass’, paseatu ‘stroll’,

saltatu ‘jump’, salto egin ‘jump’, sartu ‘enter/put inside’, segitu ‘follow’,

zutitu ‘stand up’.

If we compare the total number of the verbs listed under (6), we see that

Basque has the highest number of verb types with 58, followed by English with 47,

and then, Spanish with only 27. But, why are these numbers so different?

13
 I think there are two independent but related explanations. On the one hand,

the fact that Basque has a much higher number of verb types in comparison with

English and Spanish is due to the possibilities and resources that this language has for

vocabulary creation and extension. In this list, we can observe the following ones:

(i) conflation of path with motion as typically from verb-framed

languages, e.g. igo ‘ascend’, sartu ‘enter’

(ii) locative noun and the verb egin ‘make’, e.g. alde egin ‘leave’

(iii) locative noun together with an allative or directional allative case, and

a verb like egin ‘make’, e.g. gora egin ‘go up (above-all-make)’, eskuma-rantz egin

‘go right (right-dir.all-make)’

(iv) locative noun with allative and a verbal suffix, e.g. lurre-ra-tu ‘go

down (ground-all-suf)’, aurre-ra-tu ‘go forward (front-all-suf)

(v) Romance loans, e.g. ailegatu ‘arrive’, bueltatu ‘return’

(vi) Pairs of synonyms, e.g. iritsi and heldu ‘arrive’ 8

The possibility of using these strategies for conveying this type of verbs

allows the lexicon to be very rich. For instance, if we wanted to say ‘go out’ in

Basque, the lexicon would give us the opportunity to choose among four different

possibilities: atera, irten, kanpo-ra egin, and kanpo-ra-tu, plus an English like

construction with the locative noun (kanpo ‘outside’) with the allative and the verb

joan ‘go’, i.e. kanpo-ra joan ‘go outside’ 9 .

This strategy does not only concern path verbs but also manner verbs. For

instance, ‘jumping’ has two different verbs in the list above saltatu, and salto egin. In

the first case, the verb is formed with a verbal suffix –tu, whereas the other case is

14
created by combining the verb egin ‘make’ with a nominal indicating the kind of

action performed (‘jumping’), a complex predicate.

If we had to list the verbs not just by the different lexical items that we find in

these stories but by their different meaning, the Basque list will contain 41 different

items instead of the 58 we mention above. A number lower than that of English verbs

but still higher than that of Spanish verbs.

According to Slobin, another reason for these differences in the number of

verb types can be found in the possibility of motion and manner conflation in the verb

in satellite-framed languages. In his own words:

It is as if the availability of the combined slot for MOTION and

MANNER in S-languages has encouraged speakers to elaborate the entries in

this slot. There is no additional “cost” to adding richer manner expressions,

since the slot must be filled by some verb or other in order for a syntactically

complete sentence to be produced. By contrast, the optional slot for MANNER

expression in a V-language has some “cost”, in that it adds an element or

phrase to the sentence. Thus it is retained for situations in which manner is

truly at issue –because it is unexpected or unusual (Slobin 2000: 113)

This statement is supported by the data in (6). There are 31 different types in

the English list above, that is, a 65% of the total number. The percentage of manner of

motion verbs in both Spanish and Basque is indeed much lower. Spanish has nine

types (30%) and Basque eleven types 10 (23%).

But the difference between these languages not only lies on the number of

verb types, but also on the expressiveness of such verbs. Slobin argues that manner

15
verbs in S-languages are more expressive than those in V-languages. Once again, the

data confirm this possibility. Spanish and Basque manner of motion verbs are all first-

tier verbs, i.e. neutral and everyday verbs such as running (correr, korrika egin) or

jumping (saltar, salto egin), whereas in English, manner of motion verbs are very

detailed and described very specific movements (plummet, splat, swoop).

In sum, Slobin’s first proposal is supported by the data. S-languages do seem

to have a more expressive and higher number of manner of motion verbs with respect

to V-languages.

4.2. Proposal 2: Phrases and Journeys: elaboration of ground.

The second proposal concerns the elaboration of ground, that is to say, the

description of source, medium, milestone, and goal. Slobin proposes that V-languages

have less frequent and elaborated ground descriptions than S-languages. In order to

test this proposal, Slobin focuses his analysis on ground phrases on the one hand, and

on journeys on the other. Let us have a look at these two elements.

4.2.1. Phrases

One of the problems when comparing and contrasting English, Spanish and

Basque motion events is that what is expressed by one single expression in one

language requires or is equivalent to more than one in the other language. This is the

case of the Spanish verb caer(se) (and Basque erori). As Slobin notices, the verb

caer(se) has two translations in English: fell and fell down. The important factor at

issue in this case is not the translation per se, but the fact that English offers two

somehow different possibilities. The first one is the use of a ‘bare’ verb, i.e. a verb

that “provides no elaboration of path beyond the inherent directionality of the verb

16
itself” (Slobin 1996a: 200). The second one is the use of a motion verb plus additional

path information in the satellite.

The first possibility is obviously the most common choice in V-languages (or

at least in Spanish, as we will show later), the information about the path is already

given in the verb so there is no need to add an ‘extra’ particle like down in order to

convey this information. This particle is, however, compulsory in S-languages since

that is the ‘slot’ reserved for path information.

If we were going to test Proposal 2 on the basis of these data, that is, on the

basis of bare verb usage, we would find that the descriptions of ground are much

richer in S-languages than in V-languages. This is indeed what Slobin finds in the data

from downward motion descriptions in the Spanish and English Frog stories 11 . But to

some extend, these data are misleading.

As Slobin points out, if we had two groups on the basis of bare verb usage, it

would imply that verbs with descriptions of path such as down or in the water were

considered as belonging to the same group, the non-bare verb group. However, as we

can see from these expressions, the information they convey is not the same, whereas

down refers to downward movement, in the water gives us more explicit information

about the ground (goal). The other difference is that the downward information in

down is already expressed in the verb caer(se), while in the water needs to be

expressed in a separate expression in Spanish as well –en el agua.

In order to solve this problem, Slobin (1996a: 201) proposes to analyse the

elaboration of ground in terms of ‘Minus-ground clauses’ and ‘Plus-ground clauses’.

The former include bare verbs and verbs with satellites indicating direction of

movement. The latter have in addition one or more phrases encoding source and/or

17
goal. Table 1 summarises the percentages of minus- and plus-ground clauses in

English, Spanish and Basque.

INSERT TABLE 1 AROUND HERE

The use of minus-ground clauses in English is very low, only an 18%, in

contrast with that of plus-ground clauses, an 82%. Spanish shows a more balanced

use, a 37% for minus-ground and a 63% for plus-ground. So far, these figures support

Proposal 2. However, if we look at Basque percentages we will see that they do not

correspond to what Slobin reports as the general tendency for V-languages. The use of

minus-ground clauses in Basque is very low, an 11%; in fact, it is even lower than that

of English. The use of plus-ground clauses, on the other hand, is high, an 88%. What

is more, the type of motion verb it occurs with does not condition this pervasive

description of ground. As Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2002) reports neutral verbs like joan

‘go’, path verbs like jausi ‘fall’, and manner verbs like salto egin ‘jump’ appear with

ground descriptions.

4.2.2. Journeys

After the analysis of clauses, Slobin examines a more realistic narrative

description of motion that includes more than just source and goal. As he argues,

narrators in real narratives “need not limit a path description to a single verb and its

adjuncts […] [they] may present a series of linked paths or a path with way-stations”

(1996a: 202). In order to do so, he proposes a new ‘unit of analysis’, what he calls, a

‘complex path’ or ‘journey’, i.e. an extended path that includes milestones or

subgoals, situated in a medium.

18
 In the case of English, narrators seem to mention several pieces of information

about the ground as illustrated in example (7).

(7) He starts running and he tips him off over a cliff into the water [S-96]

In (7), there is information about the milestone (over a cliff) and the goal of

motion (into the pond). These two pieces of information are attached to one single

verb.

For V-languages, on the other hand, Slobin reports that there is a tendency to

limit the description of ground to one piece of information only, and that examples

such as (8), where both source and goal are expressed appended to one verb 12 , are

quite rare in Spanish.

(8) El perro… hace un movimiento tal que se precipita al suelo, desde la

ventana

the dog makes one movement such that it.refl plummets to.the ground

from the window

‘The dog… makes a movement such that he plummets to the ground,

from the window’

Although the one-ground-element-per-verb limitation seems to be true for

Spanish, what we find in descriptions of the same scene by Basque narrators

contradicts this tendency. Let us look at examples (9) and (10).

(9) Bapatean Txuri txakurra leihotik behera joan zan [IA-02]

19
 suddenly txuri dog:ABS window:ABL below:ALL go:PERF aux

‘Suddenly, Txuri the dog went down from the window’

(10) danak amildegitikan behera erori zian ibai batera [IA-02]

all.ABS cliff:ABL:LOC below:ALL fall:PERF aux river one:ALL

‘All of them fell from the cliff down into the river’

In (9) there are two pieces of information: a source lehiotik ‘from the window’

and a directional goal behera ‘down (below.all)’. In (10) there are three: a source

amildegitikan ‘from the cliff’, a directional goal behera ‘down (below.all)’, and

another goal ibai batera ‘to a river’. Both examples illustrate the clause-compacting

strategy that Slobin mentions for English. This type of sentences are very common

and natural in Basque, thus there are not exceptions as it was the case in Spanish.

In fact, it has been suggested that the use of source and goal of a translational

motion in the same clause as in lehiotik behera and amildegitikan behera is a

pervasive tendency in Basque. Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2002, forthcoming) proposes that

these sentences are cases of what she calls the ‘Complete Path construction’ 13 . In this

context, construction is understood in terms of Fillmore and Kay’s (1996) and

Goldberg’s (1996) ‘Construction Grammar’, that is to say, basic units of language that

carry meaning independently of the words in the sentence. This author argues that this

construction 14 is

used in those cases when the path is ‘delimited’, i.e. the location of

both source and goal is conceptualised as a fixed point in space, and as a result

the distance between them (path) is viewed as a restricted, delimited trajectory

20
 between these two fixed points. The focus of a CP construction, however, is

not on either the source or the goal, but on the path delimited by them, the full

trajectory defined by these two points

The CP construction, therefore, seems to add further support to the fact that

path elaboration in Basque does not correspond to that of a typical V-language such as

Spanish.

Slobin’s analysis does not stop here, at the description of complex paths. As he

argues, languages may differ in the way they structure complex paths –as we have just

seen clause-compacting is common in English and Basque, but rare in Spanish-, but

we also need to look at the content of the narration, at what is narrated, and see

whether speakers of these languages have the same degree of event granularity, the

same degree of detailed description for the same event.

In order to test this possibility, Slobin chooses the ‘deer scene’ in the Frog

stories (see Appendix for the scene pictures). This is a very rich and complex scene

that depicts how boy and dog fall from the cliff. It has six different narrative

segments:

(i) deer starts to run

(ii) deer runs, carrying the boy

(iii) deer stops at the cliff

(iv) deer throws the boy (off the antlers/down)

(v) boy and dog fall

(vi) boy and dog land in water

21
 The goal of this test is to see whether narrators that do not use a detailed

description of ground elements ‘compensate’ it by using other strategies. The fact that

a language like Spanish does not use clause-compacting does not mean that it cannot

show the same degree of event granularity, this language might use separate clauses

but offer the same information in the end. Therefore, we need to see how many of the

six segments in the deer scene are mentioned in these languages. The results are

summarised in Table 2:

INSERT TALBE 2 AROUND HERE

In the case of English and Basque almost all the narrators provide three or

more segments, a 100% in English and a 93% in Basque. These high percentages

contrast with those in Spanish, where only a 75% of the narrators do so. On the basis

of these figures we can conclude that:

(i) there is a direct correlation between ground description and event

granularity. Languages with a high degree of ‘ground-plus clauses’ seem to

analyse events in more components than languages with a low degree of

‘ground-plus clauses’; 15

(ii) the low use of ground clauses is not compensated “by means of a

series of separate action clauses that analyse a journey into its components”

(Slobin 1996a: 203-4).

4.3. Proposal 3: Rhetorical style

22
 The last proposal deals with the rhetorical style that speakers from these

languages employ in the narration of these events. As Slobin points out, despite

possible differences in the higher or lower degree of elaboration and description of the

ground, English, Basque and Spanish narrations ‘tell the same story’. Slobin argues

that this can be explained on the basis of how much narrative attention speakers

devote to movement and setting.

He proposes that S-languages allocate more attention to the description of

movement rather than to that of the physical setting in which the action takes place.

This is due to the rich means that this type of languages has to describe path, to the

“availability of verbs of motion (often conflated with manner) that can readily be

associated with satellites and locative prepositional phrases to trace out detailed paths

in relation to ground elements” (Slobin 1996a: 205). On the other hand, V-languages

constrained by their typological characteristics take the opposite choice: they leave the

path to be inferred and focus on the description of the setting. Let us look at examples

(11), and (12).

(10) The deer stops abruptly, which causes the boy to lose his balance and

fall with the dog down into the stream [S-96]

(12) caen en la laguna […] que estaba debajo de ese precipicio [A20a] 16

fall in the pond that was below of that cliff

‘They fall into the pond, which was below that cliff’

In the English example (11), as predicted by Slobin, the location of the river

under the place where the deer stops, i.e. the cliff, is inferred by the trajectory

23
described in fall…down into the stream. 17 This becomes very evident if we compare

(11) with the Spanish description of the same event in (12). Here, the speaker

explicitly describes the position of the pond with respect to the cliff estaba debajo de

ese precipicio ‘under that cliff’. But what happens in Basque?

As a V-language, Basque should also focus on the physical description of the

setting rather than on the dynamics of movement, but if we take into account that the

description of path is more similar to S-languages, then we could expect it to behave

like English. In fact, this is what we find in the data. An 80% of Basque speakers

follow the S-language strategy, that is, the setting information –the location of the

river below the cliff- is inferred in the description of the trajectory, adjoined to the

verb of motion –from the cliff fall down into the river- as illustrated in (13).

(13) danak amildegitikan behera erori zian ibai batera [IA-02]

all.ABS cliff:ABL:LOC below:ALL fall:PERF aux river one:ALL

‘All of them fell from the cliff down into the river’

However, we also find examples with a combination of both static information

about the physical setting and dynamic information about the trajectory as in (14).

(14) eta gure Andoni eta txakurra amildegitik behera erori ziren, baina

amildegiaren azpian erreka zegoen zorionez eta ez zitzaien ezer

gertatu [B20I]

24
 and our andoni and our dog:ABS cliff:ABL:LOC below:ALL fall:PERF aux

fall:PERF but cliff:POSS below:LOC river:ABS was fortunately and neg

aux nothing happen

‘And our Andoni [boy] and the dog fell down from the cliff, but

fortunately, there was a river under the cliff, and nothing happened to

them’

Although both techniques are combined in this example, it is important to

point out that the static description does not occur on its own as it was the Spanish

case. It comes after the complete path description, amildegitik behera ‘down from the

cliff’, which already presupposes where the river is located.

5. So now, what we do with these contrastive data? A few conclusions…

One of the main goals of this paper was the comparison of three different

languages, English, Spanish, and Basque, with respect to their lexicalisation of motion

events. Following Talmy’s definition of a ‘characteristic expression of motion’,

English was classified as an S-language, and Spanish and Basque as V-languages. As

we saw in the examples analysed in Section 1, English expresses manner and motion

conflated in the verbs fly and tumble and path in the satellite out. Spanish and Basque,

on the other hand, convey path and motion conflated in the verbs salir, irten and atera

‘exit’ and manner in a different expression, a gerund corriendo ‘running’ and an

adverb hegaka ‘flying’.

However, in order to prove that these languages belong to one group or the

other we need more empirical data, more evidence that supports this classification.

When we talk about motion we do not just utter one single sentence, a sentence that

25
includes all the key features of this typology, that is, path and manner. In a normal

everyday situation, we talk about motion within a discourse context, in an

environment where we do not need to mention everything. It is only in this way that

we can really see how languages deal with motion.

In order to do so, we have analysed motion events from the Frog Stories in

these three languages using Slobin’s work in this area. This author argues that an

experience cannot be verbalised without having taken a specific perspective

influenced, if not determined, by the typological characteristics and lexicalisation

patterns of a given language. In other words, the typological characteristics of S- and

V-languages drive speakers of these languages to talk about motion in a certain way.

In order to test this ‘Thinking for speaking’ hypothesis, Slobin gives us a

number of areas where these typological characteristics may show up. We organised

them in terms of three different proposals. The results are summarised in Table 3.

INSERT TABLE 3 AROUND HERE

With respect to the first proposal –number, expressiveness, and frequency of

mention of lexical items for manner description- these languages behave as predicted.

English, an S-language, has more items than Spanish and Basque, both V-languages.

Unfortunately this is as good as it gets; the results from the rest of the proposals do

not correspond to the predictions.

In general, we could say that Basque does not behave as a typical V-language

like Spanish in the elaboration and description of path. Basque fails all the predictions

related to this motion component for V-languages. In fact, if we closely look at the

results in Table 3, Basque seems to be more similar to English, that is, to an S-

language rather than to Spanish with respect to the elaboration of path.

26
 Proposal two predicted that V-languages had less frequent and elaborated

ground description than S-languages. This is indeed what we have for English and

Spanish. English rarely uses a motion verb with no elaboration of ground, and what is

more, there is usually more than just one ground piece of information per motion

event. Spanish, on the other hand, prefers verbs with no elaboration of ground, and in

case the verb does have some ground description, this is usually restricted to one piece

of information. But when we look at Basque, the situation is strikingly different.

Instead of complying with the results from Spanish, Basque goes the opposite way.

Verbs do appear with plus-ground clauses; in fact, the percentages are even more

dramatic than those in English are. There is only an 11% of minus-ground verb

occurrences. The description of ground is not restricted to one piece of information

either. The use of source and goal with the same verb is not rare as in Spanish, but

very common and natural as the Complete Path construction attests. Further support

that confirms that Basque is very sensitive to path description comes from the analysis

of event granularity in the deer scene. Out of the six segments that form this scene a

93% of Basque speakers mention more than three of them. This percentage coincides

with that of English but not with that of Spanish (75%).

Finally, results from Proposal 3 –rhetorical style in these narratives- once

again situate Basque closer to English than Spanish. According to this proposal, S-

languages tend to focus more on the dynamics of movement than on the physical

description of the setting, the technique followed by V-languages. All of Basque

narrators describe the path trajectory in more or less detail, whereas the physical

setting is only mentioned occasionally and usually after the trajectory has already

been established. This shows that Basque speakers are more sensitive to the dynamics

of movement than Spanish speakers are at least in these narratives. However, the fact

27
that some of them offer some static description for the same scenes makes us wonder

whether this is just an exception to the rule or common practice. This is a very

important question that needs further research because it might have important

consequences for Slobin’s third proposal. If the static description is not just an

exception, it will mean that Basque speakers focus their narrative attention not only

on the dynamics of movement but also on the static description of the setting. Slobin

offers us a choice between one strategy or the other, but what the Basque data seem to

indicate is that both strategies are alright, one (dynamic) is preferred over the other

(static), but both of them are used to some extent.

In sum, English, Basque and Spanish behave as predicted by Slobin with

respect to the semantic component of Manner (Proposal 1) but not in relation with the

semantic component of Path (Proposals 2, 3, and 4). Although Basque and Spanish

are both V-languages, the former shows a strong and pervasive tendency to elaborate

and describe the Path more often and in much more detail than the latter.

After having revised Slobin’s proposals in relation to these three languages,

the last question that we need to answer is the following: what consequences do these

data bring to Talmy’s two-way typology?

Strictly speaking, Slobin’s proposals and the results that we have obtained

from this contrastive analysis would not necessarily affect the validity of Talmy’s

binary typology. This is based on the way these languages lexicalise the core

information of a specific domain, in our case the Path component, and not on how

detailed these components are elaborated in narrative discourse.

However, the fact that languages can vary so much within the same

typological group is an issue that we cannot ignore, that we cannot take for granted

for two main reasons. Firstly, it shows us the possible shortcomings of a broad

28
typological classification such as Talmy’s to accommodate existing intra-typological

variation. Secondly, it raises a fundamental question about the distinction between the

uses of a typology to contrast languages versus accounting for the ways in which

particular semantic domains receive expression in connected discourse.

In conclusion, the results from this contrastive analysis of motion events in

English, Spanish, and Basque do not cast doubt on Talmy’s typology; rather, they add

nuances –especially with regard to applications of the typology to analyses of

discourse- that should be taken into account if we want to offer a full description of

how motion events are expressed both cross-linguistically and within a language.

References

Ameka, F.K. and J. Essegbey, In press, “Serialising languages: satellite-framed, verb-

framed or neither”, In L. Hyman and I. Maddieson (eds.), African

Comparative and Historical Linguistics (Proceedings of the 32th Annual

Conference on African Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, March

2001), Lawrenceville, NJ, Africa World Press.

Berman, R. A., & D. I. Slobin, 1994, Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic,

developmental study, Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Boas, F., 1911, “Introduction”, Handbook of American Indian Languages, Bulletin

40, Part I, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, DC, Government

Printing Office. (Reprinted in F. Boas. 1966, Introduction to Handbook of

American Indian Languages, Edited by P. Holder, Lincoln, University of

Nebraska Press).

29
Etxepare, E., In press, “Valency and argument structure in the Basque verb”, In J.I.

Hualde and J. Ortiz de Urbina (eds.), A Grammar of Basque, Amsterdam and

Philadelphia, John Benjamins.

Fillmore, C. and P. Kay, 1995, Construction Grammar, Stanford, CSLI Publications.

Garai, K. and I. Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 2002, “From X to Y: the ‘Complete Path’

construction in Basque”, Odense Working Papers in Language and

Communication 23: 289-311.

Goldberg, A., 1995, Constructions. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument

Structure, Chicago, Chicago University Press.

Hamano, S., 1998, The Sound-Symbolic System of Japanese, Stanford, CLSI

Publications.

Hinton, L., Nichols, J., & J. Ohala, 1994, Sound Symbolism, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press.

Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., 2002, “Motion events in Basque narratives”, In S. Stromqvist,

and L. Verhoeven (eds.), Relating Events in Narrative: Typological and

contextual perspectives, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., forthcoming, “Basque: Verb-framed or Satellite-framed?”,

Linguistic Typology.

Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., In preparation, Tipi-tapa, Tipi-tapa Korrika!!! Motion and

Sound Symbolism in Basque.

Mayer, M., 1969, Frog, where are you?, New York, Dial Press.

Myhill, J., 1992, Typological discourse analysis: Quantitative approaches to the study

of linguistic function, Oxford, Blackwell.

30
Sapir, E., [1924] 1958, Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and

Personality, ed. by D.G. Mandelbaum, Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of

California Press.

Slobin, D. I., 1987, “Thinking for Speaking”, Proceedings of the Thirteenth Meeting

of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, Berkeley, Berkeley Linguistics Society,

335-345.

Slobin, D. I., 1991, “Learning to think for speaking: Native language, cognition, and

rhetorical style”, Pragmatics 1, 7-26.

Slobin, D. I., 1996a, “From ‘thought and language’ to ‘thinking for speaking’”, In J. J.

Gumperz and S. C. Levinson (eds.) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity,

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 195-217.

Slobin, D. I., 1996b, “Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish”,

In M. Shibatani & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Essays in semantics, Oxford,

Oxford University Press, 195-317.

Slobin, D. I., 1997, “Mind, code, and text”, In J. Bybee, J. Haiman, & S. A.

Thompson (Eds.), Essays on language function and language type: Dedicated

to T. Givón, Amsterdam/Phildaelphia, John Benjamins, 437-467.

Slobin, D. I., 2000, “Verbalized events: A dynamic approach to linguistic relativity

and determinism”, In S. Niemeier & R. Dirven (Eds.), Evidence for linguistic

relativity, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, 107-138.

Talmy, L., 1985, “Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms”, In T.

Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and semantic description. Vol. 3:

Grammatical categories and the lexicon. Cambridge, Cambridge University

Press, 36-149.

31
Talmy, L., 1991, “Path to realization: A typology of event conflation”, Proceedings of

the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 480-519.

Talmy, L., 2000, Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Voeltz, F.K.E. and C. Kilian-Hatz, 2001, Ideophones, Amsterdam and Philadelphia,

John Benjamins.

Whorf, B. L. [1940] 1956, Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of

Benjamin Lee Whorf, ed. by J. B. Carroll. New York, Technology Press of

M.I.T. and John Wiley & Sons.

Zlatev, J. and P. Yangklang, 2002, “A third way to travel: The place of Thai (and

other serial verb languages) in motion event typology”, In S. Stromqvist, and

L. Verhoeven (eds.) Relating Events in Narrative: Typological and contextual

perspectives, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum.

32
 90 88
82
80

70
63
60

50
%
40 37 Minus-ground
30 Plus-ground
20 18
10
11
0
English Spanish Basque
Frog Stories

Table 1: Minus- and plus-ground clauses in English, Spanish, and Basque.

33
 Language 3 or more segments
English 100%
Spanish 75%
Basque 93%

Table 2: Event granularity in the ‘deer’ scene

34
Proposals ENGLISH SPANISH BASQUE
1. VERBS = = =
total 47 types 30 types 63 types

≠
manner 65% 30% 23%
2a. PHRASES = =
minus-ground 18% 37% 11%

≠
plus-ground 82% 63% 88%
2b. JOURNEYS = =
complex path several one several

≠
event granularity < 3 100% 75% 93%
4. RHETORICAL STYLE = =
setting inferred described usually inferred
path described inferred described

Table 3: Results from the comparison of English, Spanish and Basque motion events

35
Appendix 1: The ‘Deer scene’ in Frog where are you? (Mayer 1969)

36
*
This research is supported by Grant BFI01.429.E from the Basque Country Government's Department

of Education, Universities, and Research. I would also like to acknowledge the support and help I

received from the International Computer Science Institute, the Institute of Human Development at UC

Berkeley, and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. Part of the research reported

here was carried out while I was a research fellow in the Department of Linguistics at the University of

California, Berkeley.
1
Examples taken from these studies are always marked with a reference in square brackets. References

are abbreviated in the following way: author’s initials and year of publication, e.g. [S-96] stands for

Slobin 1996a, [B-S-94] for Berman and Slobin 1994, [IA-02] for Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2002.
2
A ‘satellite’ is defined as “the grammatical category of any constituent other than a noun-phrase or

prepositional phrase complement that is in a sister relation to the verb root. [It] can be either a bound

affix or a free word” (Talmy, 2000: 102).

3
For a more detailed discussion of the characteristic expression of motion in English and Spanish, see
Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000) and in Basque see Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2002, forthcoming).
4
It might be argued that the protagonist’s inner state is not strictly a type of Manner of motion since it

only reflects the psychological state or attitude of the Figure (person that moves) and can be also

applied to other domains apart from that of motion. However, we think that it is a key factor in the

characterisation of this type of events. In the examples that we discuss in this section, all what we have

is a set of different adverbials or adjectives that lexicalise these inner states, but we need to take into

account that some motion verbs do include this component in their semantics. See for instance, the

English verbs wander or strut, or the Spanish deambular ‘saunter’. These verbs, apart from other

Manner of motion details, include information about the protagonist’s inner state in their semantics –

wander and deambular tell us that the Figure is walking without any special purpose, not only that,

deambular also suggests that the Figure is absentminded; strut refers to walking but in a stiff, self-

satisfied way.
5
The use of sound symbolic expressions for describing manner of motion seems to be a common

practice in languages with sound symbolic systems (see Hamano 1998, Hinton et al. 1994, Voeltz and

Kilian-Hatz 2001). Basque is among those languages and thus, there are several sound symbolic

37
expressions (taka taka ‘small steps’, tirriki tarraka ‘dragging’) and words of sound symbolic origin

(irristatu ‘slide’) in this area (Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2002, in prep).

6
Modified because its main goal is not to prove the effects of grammar on worldview or nonlinguistic

behaviour, but to show the way in which speakers of a language organise their thinking in accordance

to the linguistic tools offered by their native language.

7
From now onwards we will follow Slobin’s abbreviations for satellite-framed languages (S-

languages) and verb-framed languages (V-languages).

8
As Etxepare (in press, ch. 4.1) points out it is interesting to notice that some of these pairs of verbs are

only synonyms if they are used as intransitive predicates. If we use them transitively, these are no

longer synonyms, iritsi would mean ‘reach’, and heldu ‘grab’ (ailegatu would not accept the transitive

construction).
9
The reader should bear in mind that we are exclusively referring here to the intransitive physical

meaning of these verbs, i.e. go out from a physical place, and not to other possible metaphorical

extensions that these verbs may convey as well. In most contexts, these exiting verbs can function as

synonyms when describing an exiting event but, of course, as it happens in all cases of synonymy, their

equivalence is restricted and constrained by different dialectal and contextual factors.

10
Nine if we only count those with a different meaning (21%).
11
The percentage of bare verbs in English adult narratives is a 15% while in Spanish adult narratives is

a 63%. These figures are even more dramatic in children. English pre-schoolers offer a 16% versus a

56% of their Spanish colleagues; English nine-year-olds, a 13% vs. Spanish ones, a 54%.
12
Although Slobin does not mention this issue, I think it is important to point out the structure and

order of these two ground elements. First of all, there is a pause (,) that breaks into two units the

description, and secondly, the order of these elements is somehow ‘inverted’: the goal of motion is

mention before the source of motion. Despite the fact that there is only one verb in this sentence, I

think the two elements do not form a conceptual unit as the English example (or the Basque one in (7)),

but two units, the second with an elliptical verb.

13
The CP construction is defined as “the tendency to linguistically express in the same clause both the

source and the goal of a translational motion, even in cases where one of the components is pleonastic”

(Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2002)

38
14
As shown in Garai and Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2002), this construction is not restricted to physical

motion contexts. It is used in non-physical motion, and even metaphorical, cases such as argitik ilunera

(light.abl dark.all) ‘all day’, hitzetik hortzera (word.abl tooth.all) ‘suddenly’.

15
Data from Thai (Zlatev and Yangklang 2002) and Ewe (Ameka and Essegbey in press) further

supports this hypothesis.

16
In Slobin (1996a) the examples that illustrate this point are all drawn from the children’s data. Since

we are only discussing the Frog stories in relation with adult data I have taken this example from the

adult speakers in the same Spanish corpus compiled by Aurora Bocaz in Argentina. I like to thank Dan

Slobin for giving me access to these data.

17
This is even clearer in example (5) where the speaker says over the cliff into the river describing the

whole trajectory from source to goal.

39