Cognitive and Lexical Characteristics of Motion in Liquid Medium:AQUA-motionverbs in Typologically Different Languages

• Authors: Hanna Batoréo
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In the present paper we survey the verbs speakers use most frequently to encode the movement of a non-liquid Figure in or on a liquid Ground (AQUA-motion verbs). Our main data come from European Portuguese (EP) (cf. Batoréo, 2007, in press; Batoréo et al., 2007; Casadinho, 2007), and our results are mainly based on non-elicited data from electronically available language corpora of native EP speakers and contrasted with traditional Portuguese dictionary data (cf. Majsak, 2007). The EP results obtained are discussed within a lexical field AQUA-motion, as presented and characterized in Lander, Maisak, & Rakhilina (2005) and Majsak & Rahilina (2003, 2007) as well as discussed for some particular languages in Arad (2007) and Divjak & Lemmens (2007). They are approached also within a broader context of the typology of lexicalization patterns in the sense of Talmy 1985, 2000 (cf. Batoréo, 2000 for EP). The tri-partition proposed for the AQUA-motion field by distinguishing Sailing, Swimming and Floating verbs will be revisited. Approaching both physical and metaphorical meanings in EP, the contrasts discussed are between the Floating verbs ‘flutuar’ vs. ‘boiar’ and the swimming one ‘nadar’, as well as the rich SAILING area with its prototypical verb ‘navegar’. The basic parameters to be discussed are: (i) the nature of the moving figure, (ii) the nature of motion (passive vs. active, directed vs. non-directed, motion and containment), (iii) the nature of the metaphorical projection (e.g. AERO-motion and abstract domains), proving that languages may differ in predictable ways not only in grammar but also in lexicon.

Keywords

EN

AQUA-motion verbs; European Portuguese corpora; typology of lexicalization patterns; metaphorical projection

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Psychology of Language and Communication
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 3-15

Dates

published

2008-01-01

online

2009-01-13

Contributors

author

Hanna Batoréo

• Open University at Lisbon

References

• Arad, M. (2007). Some aspects of the Hebrew verb saxah (swim). In T. A. Majsak, E. V Rahilina (Eds.), Glagoly dviženiâ v vode: leksičeskaâ tipologiâ (pp. 498-508). Moskva: Indrik.
• Atkins, S. & Fillmore, Ch. (2000). Describing polysemy: the case of crawl. In Y. Ravin & C. Leacock (Eds.), Polysemy: Linguistic and Computational Approaches (pp. 91-110). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Batoréo, H. J. (2000). Expressão do espaço no Portuguěs Europeu: contributo psicolinguístico para o estudo da linguagem e cognição. PhD Dissertation. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
• Batoréo, H. J. (2007). Lexical typology of AQUA-motion lexicon: The case of European Portuguese. Paper presented at the 10th International Cognitive Linguistic Congress, Kraków, 15-20 July, 2007.
• Batoréo, H. J. (in press a). "Quando os portugueses correm, os polacos nadam?". Domínio de movimento em água (AQUA- motion) em Portuguěs Europeue Polaco: Contribuição para Tipologia Lexical. Paper presented at the Diálogos com a Lusofonia Symposium, Warsaw, December 2007. Diacrítica.
• Batoréo, H. J. (in press b). Expressão do Movimento em Água (AQUA-motion) em Portuguěs Europeu: Contribuição para tipologia lexical. Revista de Linguística da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
• Batoréo, H. J., Pires, A., Macedo, I., & Casadinho, M. (2007). "Claro como água!" - Contribuição para a tipologia lexical dos verbos de movimento em água (AQUA- motion). Textos seleccionados do XXII Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, 2007, 127-140.
• Bybee, J. (1985). Morphology: A Study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Bybee, J., Perkins, R., & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Casadinho, M. M. (2007). "Navegar é preciso!" Os verbos de movimento AQUA-motion do tipo NAVEGAR. Aspectos linguísticos, cognitivos e traductológicos. MA dissertation. Lisboa: Universidade Aberta.
• Divjak, D. & Lemmens, M. (2007). Lexical conflation patterns in Dutch AQUA-motion verbs. In T. A. Majsak, E. V Rahilina (Eds.), Glagoly dviženiâ v vode: leksičeskaâ tipologiâ (pp. 152-174). Moskva: Indrik.
• Koch, P. (2001). Lexical typology from a cognitive point of view. In M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher, & W. Raible (Eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook (pp. 1142-1178). Berlin: de Gruyter.
• Lander, Y., Maisak, T. A., & Rakhilina, E. V. (2005). Motion in a liquid medium (AQUA-motion): towards lexical typology. Paper presented at the 21st Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Trondheim, June 1-4, 2005.
• Lander, Y., Maisak, T. A., & Rakhilina, E. V (in press). Domains of aqua-motion: a case study in lexical typology. In E. van der Zee & M. Dimitrova-Vulchanova (Eds.), Motion encoding in language and space. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Majsak, T. A. (2007). Glagoly peremešeniâ v vode v portugal'skom âzyke. In T. A. Majsak, E. V Rahilina (Eds.), Glagoly dviženiâ v vode: leksičeskaâ tipologiâ (pp. 198-230). Moskva: Indrik.
• Majsak, T. A. & Rahilina, E. V. (2003). Tipologiâ sistem glagol'noj leksiki: dviženie v vode. In Grammatičeskie kategorii: ierarhii, svâzi, vzaimodejstvie. Materialy meždunarodnoj naučnoj konferencii, St. Petersburg, 22-24.11.2003 (pp. 89-91). St. Petersburg: ILS RAS.
• Majsak, T. A. & Rahilina, E. V. (2007). Glagoly dviženiâ i nahoždeniâ v vode: leksičeskie sistemy i semantičeskie parametry. In T. A. Majsak, E. V Rahilina (Eds.), Glagoly dviženiâ v vode: leksičeskaâ tipologiâ (pp. 27-75). Moskva: Indrik.
• Newman, J. (Ed.) (1997). The linguistics of giving. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Newman, J. (Ed.) (2002). The linguistics of sitting, standing, and lying. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Pires, A. (2007). "Como peixe na água!" Contribuição para a tipologia lexical dos verbos de movimento em água (Aqua-motion) do tipo FLUTUAR. Retrieved from
• Prokofieva, I. A. (2007). Peremescenije v vode I peremiscenije vody: flagoly płynąć/pływać (plyt'/plavat') v polskom jazyke. In T. A. Majsak, E. V Rahilina (Eds.), Glagoly dviženiâ v vode: leksičeskaâ tipologiâ (pp. 305-314). Moskva: Indrik.
• Talmy, L. (1975). Semantics and syntax of motion. In J. P. Kimball (Ed.), Syntax and semantics.Vol. 4 (pp. 181-238). New York: Academic Press.
• Talmy, L. (1983). How languag structures space. In H. L. Pick Jr. & L. P. Acredolo (Eds.), Spatial orientation: Theory, research and application (pp. 225-282). New York: Plenum Press.
• Talmy, L. (1985). Lexicalisation patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol. III, Grammatica categories and the lexicon (pp. 57-149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
• Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mounton de Gruyter.
• Wierzbicka, A. (1992). Semantics, culture and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10057-008-0006-x