Transcript 2007 - SugarTexts

From “Motion Events” to(wards) a
Semantics of Relocation
Viktor Smith
[email protected]
Copenhagen Business School
Center of Language, Cognition and Mentality
First Conference of the Swedish Association for Language and Cognition
Lund, November 29th – December 1st, 2007
Motion Event Research
…in the Talmy-Slobin tradition
Primary focus:
Conceptualization, lexicalization, and verbalization of motion in terms
of “moving, or being moved, from Loc1 to Loc2”
Suggested terms:
Relocation  Relocation Verbs
Smith (2003: 71ff; 2005)
Yet: Generally accepted terms and
definitions still lack in mainstream motion
event research
Some standard assumptions
 The cognitive variables involved appear to be universal
 The linguistic means available for communicating their
products display profound and systematic crosslinguistic
differences
Example:
Danish
French
hunden gik ind (ud etc…)
le chien
fisken svømmede ind (ud etc…)
le poisson
fuglen fløj ind (ud etc…)
l’oiseau
bilen kørte ind (ud etc…)
la voiture
skibet sejlede ind (ud etc…)
le navire
est entré (sorti(e))
The key typology

Manner or: S(atellite-framed) languages
e.g. Danish, Swedish, English, German, Russian, Chinese
versus

Path or: V(erb-framed) languages
e.g. French, Italian, Spanish, Modern Greek,Turkish, Japanese
Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000); Slobin (1996a/b, 2004a/b);
Mora Gutiérrez (2001); Berthele (2004).
Growth points for continued research
• Refining and differentiating the typological description
of particular languages
• Assessing the impact of typological differences on
crosslinguistic communication and translation
• The language  worldview & “thinking for speaking” dimensions
Aims of this presentation
Improving the theoretical tools and metalanguage
for capturing the semantic variables of interest by:
• Providing a firmer basis for distinguishing between
(a) motion in general
(b) going from Loc1 to Loc2  relocation
Aliases: motion events, translocation, displacement; directed
motion, change of location, etc. …yet the terminology remains
tentative and vague
• Specifying the intuitively attractive but vaguely
specified “primitives” known as Path and Manner
Attempted synthesis
The analysis of the “cognitive anatomy” of motion
events offered by Talmy (2000: 51ff)
as extended by…
…the principles of situation and verb classification suggested
by Durst-Andersen offering an additional differentiation of the
cognitive variables involved (1992; 2000; 2002)
while…

further clarifying the impact of pre-linguistic visual cognition

specifically addressing the variables of
(a) simple motion vs. Loc1  Loc2
(b) Path and Manner
Basic assumptions and prerequisites

The semantic modeling
must incorporate insights on pre-linguistic visual cognition

Figure/ground segmentation
is a key variable in humans’ conceptualization of
the real-world situations of interest
See e.g. Palmer (1999: 281f) for a general overview

“Delay-and-compare” processing
is basic to any form of motion detection
See Borst (2000) for a condensed introduction
But: The relevant processing may be performed on two distinct
cognitive levels. See Blaser & Sperling (in press) for a polemic but highly
illustrative discussion
….and possibly in different parts of the human brain
Dodge & Lakoff (2005)
Talmyan basics (2000:25f)
I. (Main) Motion Event

Figure
 Ground
 Path
 Motion (in terms of either Motion or Locatedness (i.e. non-motion))
II. Co-event definable in terms of Manner or Cause
Pre-view of suggested adjustments:
Inserting an additional level of analysis:
 2 types of simple situations definable in terms of Figure, Ground, and
“simple” Motion or Locatedness only  I and II above
 Additional level: 1 complex situation given by observed or expected
interdependencies between the simple ones
 Path and Relocation are variables on this level only
A cross-linguistic ontology and verb classification
In continuation of Durst-Andersen (1992, 2000, 2002);
Durst-Andersen & Herslund (1996)
Conceptualization and lexicalization of real-world situations

states: stable figure on stable ground
state verbs (lie, stand, resemble, etc.)

activities: unstable figure on stable ground or vice versa
activity verbs (dance, wave, shiver, carry, flow, etc.)

actions: mental constructs linking together a certain activity
(in that case conceived as a process) and a certain state
(in that case conceived as an event)
action verbs (put, arrive, kill, show, etc.)
The meta-language of relocation
Actions in which the change of state is definable in terms
of spatial relationships (location) alone
 Relocation processes and events
As rendered linguistically by:
Location-based action verbs
 or in short: Relocation verbs
(Alternative categories Possession-based, Experience-based,
and Qualification-based action verbs)
Applying action verbs to real-world situations
In actual communication, action verbs will be referring to either:

an activity, presenting it as a process:
She is just putting the cake on the table
or

a (change of) state, presenting it as an event:
Who put that cake on my table?
NB! The semantics of simplex action verbs leaves the process
underdetermined (“whatever it takes”), while specifying the event
only
The semantics of putting
TELICITY
Ground-situations
to put
Groundpropositions
X DO SOMETHING
logically entails
Y IS WITH X (Loc1)
IMPLICATION
Y IS ON Z (Loc2)
A related point made on pre-linguistic visual cognition
“Time and space provide contrasting perspectives on events. A temporal
perspective highlights the sequence of transition, the dynamic changes
from segment to segment, things in motion. A spatial perspective
highlights the sequence of states, the static spatial configuration, things
caught still. Capturing the temporal and spatial at once seems elusive;
like waves and particles, the dynamic and the static appear to
complement each other.”
Zacks & Tversky (2001: 19, my italics)
The present approach is an attempt to embrace
“wawes” and “particles” within the same model
Applying the framework
Specifying the Path/Manner distinction
Path verbs are:
Manner verbs are:
• Activity oriented (whether or not the
activity is presented as part of an
action, i.e. as a process)
• (Change of) State oriented
• Specify certain properties of either the
figure, the ground and/or the
interrelations between them
• For transitive verbs: The Agent’s
interaction with the figure and/or
ground, given these properties, can also
be part of the semantics
• Specify certain properties of either the
initial location, Loc1, the consequent
location, Loc2, and/or the interrelation
between them
• (the figure being a variable only in
terms of its presence/absence on these
locations, i.e. grounds).
Example for illustration: What goes on in a beet sugar factory?
Focus of the SugarTexts Project at CBS revolving around a multilingual
corpus of authentic step-by-step descriptions of the processing of sugar
beets into refined white sugar in a sugar factory, as found in textbooks,
technical research reports, information folders, encyclopedias, sales
material, on websites, etc.
That is:
Spontaneous verbalizations of uniform extralinguistic scenarios
containing a wide variety of relocation processes and events in
terms of both Path and Manner of motion
See Smith (in press) for an updated review…
The perceived extra-linguistic reality
What we see...
But how is it conceptualized
and verbalized?
The SugarWorld Ontology
WASHING
beets
DIFFUSION
SLICING
cosettes
PURIFICATION
crude juice
thin juice
EVAPORATION
soil
pulp
filter cake
CENTRIFUGATION
sugar crystals
CRYSTALLIZATION
massecuite
molasses
steam
thick juice
steam
The Ontology content

Actions involving a change of location in terms of presence or absence
of a Figure on a particular Ground (Location)
may be further specified linguistically in terms of Loc1  Loc2
 Path verbs (simple or complex)
arrive, enter, etc.

Activities involving unstable Figure-Ground relationships on one and
the same Ground (Location)
may be further specified linguistically in terms of Figure  Ground
interaction and compatibility (+ impact of Agent, for transitive verbs)
 Manner verbs
roll, soak, throw, etc.
Pinpointing the standard typology
Continuing Herslund’s exemplification (1998:8-9)
Typical Path language – French
Typical Manner language – Danish
MANNER
PATH
MANNER
PATH
marcher  ‘walk’
courir  ‘run’
flâner  ‘stroll’
ramper  ‘crawl’
aller  ‘go’
entrer  ‘enter’
venir  ‘come’
sortir  ‘exit’
gå  ‘walk’
løbe  ‘run’
spadsere  ’stroll’
kravle  ’crawl’
ind  ‘in
ud  ‘out’
op  ’up’
ned  ’down’
simple activity verbs
simple action verbs
= relocation verbs
complex (phrasal) action
= relocation verbs
simple activity verbs verbs
with obligatory Manner
component
The borderland between lexicon and syntax in S-languages
And hence “distributed semantics” in the sense of Sinha & Kuteva (1995)
Why is “Satellite № 1” is different?
… as stressed but not fully explained by Talmy (2000:106 f.)
Examples:
English: She ran out of the kitchen up to the
bedroom... etc. (infinitive: run out)
 German: infinitive: herauslaufen  finite form: ...lief ...heraus
 Russian: infinitive: выбежать  … finite form: выбежала
The first satellite/prefix “does the trick” = shifts the semantics from
activity to action and hence relocation.  word-forming function, revealed
by prefix vs. free particle status in e.g. German and Russian
Actions, satellites, and verb aspect
In Russian, the prefix is both a Path and an Aspect marker
… and only action verbs form aspect pairs
For details, see e.g. Durst-Andersen (1992)
Examples: Насос качал медленно но надежно
 ’The pump pumped slowly but reliably’
Насос перекачал воду в бак
 ’The pump pumped (over) the water into the tank’
Насос перекачивал воду в бак
 ’The pump was pumping (over) the water into the tank’
This can hardly be coincidental or irrelevant to understanding the
mechanisms in play in other satellite-framed languages!
Extending the verb (and situation)
classification beyond “pure” relocation
Examples:
Relocation + Position on Loc1 or Loc2  Positioning verbs
English: Put the bottle on the table
Put the book on the table
versus
Danish: Stille flasken på bordet
Lægge bogen på boret
Relocation + Qualification
English: deliver, steal, etc. (+ similar
verbs in other languages)
To sum up:
o Simple motion (activities) and relocation (actions)
rely on fundamentally different cognitive representations conflated and
combined differently in different languages, but should not be confused
o Path
is a property of actions and hence Relocation “par excellence”
o Manner
is a property of activities (though it may also be conflated as a
processes-specifying element in complex (phrasal) action verbs in
S-languages)
So much for the descriptive tools
Where they might prove their worth is in providing a more
stringent metalanguage for future investigations into the
typological, communicative, and cognitive dimensions
outlined initially… The SugarTexts being one context for
doing so.
Thank you for your attention
Selective bibliography
Berman R.A. & Slobin D.I., eds. (1994). Relating events in narratives. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Berthele, R. (2004): The typology of motion and posture verbs: A variationist account. In: B. Kortmann, ed. Dialectology
Meets Typology. Dialect Grammar from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin & New York, 93-126.
Blaser, E. & Sperling, G. (in press) When is motion motion? Perception.
Borst, A. (2000). Models of motion detection. In: Nature Neuroscience 3, 1168.
Borst, A & Egelhaaf, M. (1989) Principles of visual motion detection. Trends Neurosci 12, 297-306
Durst-Andersen, P. (2002). Russian and English as two distinct subtypes of accusative languages, Scando-Slavica Tomus 48.
Durst-Andersen, P. (2000). The English progressive as picture description. In: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 32, 45-103.
Durst-Andersen, P. (1992). Mental grammar. Russian aspect and related issues. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, Inc.
Durst-Andersen, P. & Herslund M. (1996). The syntax of Danish verbs. Lexical and syntactic transitivity. In: Content,
expression, and structure. Studies in Danish functional grammar. In: H. Engberg-Pedersen et al., eds.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 65-102.
Dodge, E. & Lakoff, G. (2005). On the neural basis of image schemas. In: B. Hampe, ed. From perception to meaning: Image
schemas in cognitive linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Ettin, T. (2007). Relokation i en endo- / exocentrisk kontekst. En analyse af relokationsbegivenheder i danske og italienske
SugarTexts med henblik på udformningen af en oversættelsesstrategi.[Relocation in an endo- / exocentric context. An
analysis of relocation events in Danish and Italian SugarTexts as a basis for formulationg a translation strategy]. Master
Thesis. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School.
Fong, V. & Poulin, C. (1998). Locating linguistic variation in semantic templates. In: J.-P. Koenig, ed. Discourse and cognition.
Bridging the gap. Stanford, California: CSLI Publications, 29-39.
Gennari, S. P.; Sloman, S. A.; Malt, B. C. & Fitch, W. T. (2002). Motion events in language and cognition. In: Cognition 83 (1),
49-79.
Herslund, M. (1998). Typologi, leksikalisering og oversættelse. [Typology, lexicalization, and translation]. Lingvistisk
Oversættelse. Copenhagen Working Papers in LSP 3. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School, 7-12.
Herslund, M. (2000). Tipologia grammaticale e tipologia lessicale. In: I. Korzen & C. Marello, eds. Argomenti per una
linguistica della traduzione. Notes pour une linguistique de la traducion. On linguistic aspects of translation. Gli
argomenti umani 4. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 11-18.
Selective bibliography
Herslund, M. & Baron, I. (2003) Language as world view. Endocentric and exocentric representations of reality. In: I. Baron,
ed. Language and culture. Copenhagen Studies in Languages 29, 29-42.
Ibarretxe Antuñano, I. (2004). Language typologies in our language use: The case of Basque motion events in adult oral
narratives. Cognitive Linguistics 3, 317-349.
Jakobson, R. (1959). On linguistic aspects of translation. In R. A. Brower, ed. On translation, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 232-239.
Korzen, I. (2005). Lingue endocentriche e lingue esocentriche: lseeico, testo e pensiero. In: I. Korzen & P. D’Achille, eds.
Tipologia linguistica e società. Considerazioni inter- e intralinguistiche. Firenze: Franco Cesati Editore, 31-54.
Mora Gutiérrez, J. P. M. (2001). Directed motion in English and Spanish. In: Estudios de Lingüística Española 11.
Nørgaard, K.; Nielsen, L. Ø. B. (20079: Model for dansk-fransk terminologisk vidensformidling inden for sukkerproduktion. [A
model of Danish-French knowledge transfer in the field of sugar manufacturing]. Master Thesis. Copenhagen:
Copenhagen Business School.
Ozol, S. (2004). Fra sukkerroe til sukkerskål: Onomasiologisk undersøgelse af danske og russiske relokationsverber baseret på
SugarTexts. [From sugar beet to sugar pot: An onomasiological study of Danish and Russian relocation verbs based on
SugarTexts.] Master’s Thesis. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School.
Palmer, S. E. (1999) Vision science. Photons to phenomenology. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Papafragou, A.; Massey, C. & Gleitman, L. (2001). Motion events in language and cognition. In: Proceedings of the 25th
Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Papafragou, A.; Massey, C. & Gleitman, L. (2002). Shake, rattle ‘n’ roll: the representation of motion in language and
cognition. In:: Cognition 84, 189-219.
Plungjan, V. A. (2002). O specifike vyraženija imennych prostranstvennych charakteristik v glagole: kategorija glagol´noj
orientacii. In: V. A. Plugjan, ed. Grammatikalizacija prostranstvennych značenij. Moscow: Russkie slovari, 57-98.
Rojo, A. & Valenzuela, J. (2001) ”How to say things with words: Ways of saying in English and Spanish”. In: Meta, XLVI, 3
467-477.
Skytte, G.; Korzen, I.; Polito P. & Strudsholm, E., eds. (1999). Strutturazione testuale in italiano e in daneses. Copenhagen:
Museum Tusculanum Press.
Sinha, C. & Kuteva, T. (1995) Distributed spatial semantics. In: Nordic Journal of Linguistics 18, 167-199.
Selective bibliography
Slobin, D. (2004a). The many ways to search for a frog: Linguistic typology and the expression of motion events. In: S. Strömquist
& L. Verhoeven, eds. Relating events in narrative: Typological contextual perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Slobin, D. (2004b). Relating narrative events in translation. In: D. Ravid & H. B. Shyldkrot, eds. Perspectives on language and
language development: Essays in honor of Ruth A. Berman. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Slobin, D. (1996a). Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In: Grammatical constructions: Their form and
meaning. M. Shibatani & S. Tompson, eds. Oxford: University Press, 195-219.
Slobin, D. (1996b). From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking”. In: J. J. Gumperz & S. C. Levinson, eds. Rethinking
linguistic relativity. Cambridge: University Press.
Smith, V. (in press). SugarTexts. Telling the SugarStory in 6 Indo-European angauages: What may and what must be conveyed?
Proceedings of Lingue e culture europee: Tipologie a confronto, Cagliari, November 13-14, 2007.
Smith, V (2005a). Modeling the semantics of relocation: For SugarTexts and beyond. Proceedings of the 7th International
conference on Terminology and Knowledge Engineering. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School.
Smith, V. (2005b). Motion at the sugar factory: Is Russian a genuine MANNER language? In: K. Ahmad; M. Rogers, eds.
Proceedings of the 14th European Symposium on Language for Special Purposes .Communication, culture, knowledge.
Surrey: University of Surrey, 77-84.
Smith, V. (2003). Talking about motion in Danish, French, and Russian: Some implications for LSP in theory and practice. In: LSP
& Professional Communication 2, 66-90.
Smith, V. (2000). On the contrastive study of lexicalization patterns for translation purposes: some reflections on the levels of
analysis. In: I. Korzen & C. Marello, eds. Argomenti per una linguistica della traduzione. Notes pour une linguistique de la
traducion. On linguistic aspects of translation. Gli argomenti umani 4. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 19-42.
Strömqvist, S.; Verhoeven, L., eds. (2004). Relating events in narrative: Typological contextual perspectives. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Talmy, Leonard (2000). Towards a cognitive semantics: Volume 2: Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Talmy, L. (1985). Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In: T. Shopen, ed. Language typology and syntactic
description, Vol. III. Grammatical categories and the lexicon.Cambridge: University Press, 57-149.
Tesnière, L. 1976 [1959]. Éléments de syntaxe structurale. IIième édition. Paris: Klincksieck.
Selective bibliography
Tøgersen, M. (2007). Når ord taler: Terminologisk undersøgelse af udvalgte begreber i danske og tyske SugarTexts – med
særlig fokus på leksikaliseringsforskelle. [When words talk: A terminological investigation on selected concepts in
Danish and German SugarTexts with a special focus on lexicalization differences]. Master Thesis. Copenhagen:
Copenhagen Business School.
Zacks, J. M. & Tversky, B. (2001). Event structure in perception and cognition. In: Psychological Bulletin 1, 3-21.
Zlatev, J.; David, C. & Blomberg, J. (submitted). Translocation, language and the categorization of experience.
Zlatev, J & Yangklang, P (2004). A third way to travel, the place of Thai (and other serial verb languages) in motion event
typology. In: S. Strömqvist & L. Verhoeven, eds. Relating events in narrative: Typological contextual perspectives.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Zlatev, J. & David, C. (2004). Three ways to travel: Motion events in French, Swedish and Thai. In: A. Soares da Silva, A.
Torres & M. Gonçalves, eds. Linguagem, Cultura e Cognição: Estudos de Linguística Cognitiva, eds., Coimbra:
Almedina.