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the expression of fictive motion in French and - LaTTiCe
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1. Ia Copula e g English Tamil Ib Locative Existential verb e g Japanese Yukatek 2 The cup is on the table ENG Type II Postural verbs 3 6 verbs e g Dutch Arrernte 3 De fles staat op de tafel DUTCH MPI Annual Repport p 68 the bottle stands on the table The bottle is on the table Type III Positional verbs 12 100 dispositional verbs e g Tzeltat Zapotec 4 metzel O ta tz amal te xawin TZELTAL lying on its sidePREP bech bois cat Grinevald forth the cat is lying on its side on the wooden bench A particularly interesting aspect of this typology for our purposes is the distinction between three main types of locative predicates present across languages first copula or general neutral locative verbs second posture verbs and third positional verbs as shown in examples 1 to 4 In this study we will not consider French and Serbian as belonging to one of these types with respect to their Basic Locative Construction Instead our aim is to explore the variability of locative constructions that can appear within a given language More precisely we discuss the role and the importance of different types of locative predicates that can be used in French and Serbian in the expression of static spatial relationships It is well known that in a large majority of languages other constructions are used in addition to the locative predicates mentioned above in descriptions of static location One s
2. Fictive motion 0 5 10 26 Other verbs 9 22 37 5 27 Omission 4 5 96 23 10 96 Table 4 Translation of Serbian posture verbs in French Table 4 shows that Serbian posture verbs appearing with animate Figures are translated in 56 of cases by posture verbs in 17 96 of cases by neutral verbs and in 13 96 of cases by verbs of movement i e by verbs of change of posture e g sit lie Some of these possibilities are illustrated by examples from 19 to 23 19 SR Ponajvise su sedeli ili leZali nemi i bez pokreta Andri Prokleta avlija p 46 FR Le plus souvent ils taient assis ou couch s muets et immobiles p 51 they were sitting or lying 20 SR Jednog jutra stajao sam pored ogledala i cesljao se Andri Jelena p 269 I was standing in front of the mirror FR Par un matin tout ensoleill j tais devant ma glace et je me coiffais quand il me sembla tout 4 coup voir p 223 I was in front of the mirror 21 SR Ona je kao gost u celu sedela i ekala da Sto se iznese jede pije Stankovic p 83 she was sitting at the end of the table FR Telle une invit e elle s asseyait au haut bout de la table et attendait qu on serve les plats et qu on se mette 4 manger a boire p 97 she used to sit at the end of the table 22 SR Sedeo je i glodao Sestolisni tropek Pavi p 26 FR Il tait d j attabl et en train de ro
3. Figure human or animal is sitting standing lying hanging and so on They reflect the sensitivity of languages to the orientation and disposition of the Figure for expressing its location As shown in examples 13 and 14 both French and Serbian employ cardinal posture verbs to localize animate entities 13 SR Putnici su stajali u holu the passengers were standing in the hall 14 FR Le chien est assis devant la maison the dog is sitting in front of the house However we note a contrast between the two languages for expressing the localization of inanimate entities Indeed several studies on posture verbs have shown see Newman 2002 Lemmens 2002a 2002b Grinevald forthcoming that many languages have significantly extended or even grammaticalized the use and the meaning of posture verbs e g DUTCH Er zit geen bier meer in het vat there sits no more beer in the barrel n elk kind zit een leraar in every child sits a teacher see The Location verb project is supported by the French Ministry of Research and is managed by M Lemmens University of Lille III For more details about project see Lemmens forthcoming Lemmens 2002a These verbs have become basic location verbs for describing the location of any entity animate or inanimate They also have a wide range of metaphorical and grammatical uses across languages In the following we take a closer look at the
4. grass 3 2 2 DRAWING A PARALLEL BETWEEN MOTION AND LOCATION HIGH MANNER SALIENT VS LOW MANNER SALIENT LANGUAGES The comparison above shows that an extensive use of posture verbs in Serbian allows the speaker to pay more attention to the manner in which the Figure is positioned in space when localizing it According to M Lemmens see 2002a 2002b posture verbs can be considered as static equivalents of manner of motion verbs Motion Static Location manner of motion manner of location run jump swim walk stand sit lie hang If one assumes that posture verbs are static equivalents of manner of motion verbs then Serbian as a representative of Satellite framed languages seems to be more manner salient than French which makes limited use of posture verbs It thus appears that in the domain of static location as well as in the domain of motion Satellite framed languages pay more attention to the expression of manner than Verb framed languages It also appears that the distinction between high manner salient and low manner salient languages proposed for the domain of motion Slobin 2004 can be applied to the domain of static location 3 3 FICTIVE MOTION We have shown that verbs expressing fictive motion also called abstract or subjective motion can serve to express static location in French and Serbian According to Talmy s definition verbs expressing fictive motion are verbs whose bas
5. 1 CORPUS ANALYSIS We now take a look at the data As will be discussed below the data confirm the observations made above and lead to several other interesting findings We performed a bidirectional analysis of French and Serbian novels by observing how each type of locative predicate is translated in the target language The size and the composition of the corpus are given in Table 3 FRENCH SERBIAN Verb type or Number of Number of Number of Number of translated translated Verb meaning examples examples examples examples Neutral verbs 90 89 Posture verbs 247 245 Change of posture V 93 91 Fictive motion 19 19 Grand Total 652 413 449 445 Table 3 The Size and the Composition of the corpus The translations from French to Serbian show that with animate Figures French posture verbs are most often translated in Serbian by posture verbs On the opposite Serbian posture verbs are not always translated by posture verbs in French because Serbian allows the use of posture verbs with inanimate Figures whereas French generally does not As we will see we found some extensions of the uses of the French verb g sir to lie as to lie in the grave with inanimate Figures Type of predicate in Posture verbs SERBIAN FRENCH translation Animate Figures Inanimate Figures Posture Verbs 56 19 12 5 24 Neutral Verbs 17 20 30 25 Change of posture V 13 21
6. French and Serbian They are listed in Table 1 We call them neutral because they have no particular semantics and they often behave as locative or existential copula Neutral location verbs French Serbian English tre biti be se trouver nalaziti se be located rester ostati stay ilya ima there is Table 1 Neutral location verbs in French and Serbian We wish to stress that in both languages the use of these predicates is equally widespread and that they are capable of expressing location of both animate and inanimate Figures as can be seen in examples 11 and 12 We will use the term Figure for the entity to be located and the term Ground for the reference entity following Talmy s terminology 2000 11 SR Ana njena omiljena stolica je u kuhinji 12 FR Anne sa chaise pr f r e est dans la cuisine Anne her favorite chair is in the kitchen 3 2 POSTURE VERBS Almost all languages have a small set of verbs expressing cardinal positions of the human body sit lie stand as well as kneel squat Posture verbs French Serbian English tre debout stajati stand tre assis sedeti be sitting tre couch le ati be lying tre accroupi u ati squat tre agenouill klecati kneel Table 2 Posture verbs in French and Serbian The main use of these verbs is to describe situations in which some animate
7. The many ways to be located in French and Serbian the role of fictive motion in the expression of static location Dejan Stosic Laure Sarda Grammatica EA 3606 LATTICE UMR 8094 CNRS ENS Universit d Artois Arras Ecole Normale Sup rieure Paris mail stosic ling gmail com mail laure sarda a ens fr ABSTRACT The general aim of this paper is to explore different ways of expressing static location in French and Serbian Both languages use three main types of locative predicates neutral verbs e g FR tre to be posture verbs e g ENG to sit to lie to stand and verbs expressing fictive motion i e verbs whose reference is to motion but which actually describe static situations e g The road descends towards the coast Talmy 2000 In this study based on a large contrastive corpus of expressions of static location in French and Serbian novels we compare the role that these different types of locative predicates play in each language We point out that Serbian uses the posture verbs much more extensively by locating both animate and inanimate Figures and that the limited use of posture verbs in French with only animate Figures makes fictive motion more salient Finally we show how such cross linguistic differences in attention to fictive motion affect human spatial cognition Our analysis adopts the framework of Talmy s typology which opposes Verb framed languages e g French Turkish to Satellite framed language
8. a Pacifiku Beograd Beletra tr Zorica Mi kovi Makine A 1995 Le testament francais Paris Mercure de France Makin A 2001 Francusko zavestanje Beograg Paideia tr Andja Petrovi Perec G 1978 La vie mode d emploi Paris Le livre de poche Perek Z 1997 Zivot uputstvo za upotrebu Beograd Plato tr Svetlana Stojanovic Tournier M 1972 Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique Paris Gallimard Turnije M 1990 Petko ili limbovi Pacifika Novi Sad Bratstvo 1 Jedinstvo tr Gordana Stojkovic Yourcenar M 1968 L oeuvre au noir Pans Gallimard Jursenar M 2000 Crna mena Beograd BMG tr Ivanka Markovic Yourcenar M 1963 Nouvelles orientales Paris Gallimard Jursenar M 1963 Osmeh Kraljevica Marka Beograd Bigz tr Djordje Dimitirijevic SERBIAN NOVELS AND THEIR TRANSLATIONS Andric I 1963 Anikina vremena Jelena Zena koje nema Pripovetke Beograd Prosveta Andritch I 1979 Au temps d Anika Au temps d Anika La soif Paris L Age d Homme tr Anne Yelen et Jean Descat Andri I 2002 L El phant du vizir Paris Le Serpent plumes tr Janine Matillon Andric I 1955 1963 Prokleta avlija Beograd Prosveta Andritch I 1962 La Cour maudite Paris Stock tr Georges Luciani Pavi M 1997 Le chapeau en peau de poisson Monaco Editions du Rocher bilingual edition tr Gojko Luki amp Gabriel Iaculli Stankovi B 1982 Gazda Mlad
9. al differences between two languages sections 3 1 and 3 2 In the last part of the article we tackle the issue of the importance of fictive motion in expressing static location in French and Serbian and show that the limited use of posture verbs in French makes fictive motion more salient Finally we show that such cross linguistic differences in attention to fictive motion can affect human spatial cognition sections 3 3 and 4 1 MANY WAYS TO BE LOCATED ACROSS LANGUAGES DIFFERENT TYPES OF LOCATIVE PREDICATES The most exhaustive inventory of locative predicates across languages can be found in studies on Basic Locative Constructions For example this has been a central topic in much research at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen see MPI Annual Reports 1998 1999 2001 as well as in Grinevald forthcoming and Kopecka 2004 A Basic Locative Construction is the typical construction selected by speakers of a language to answer a where question like Where is the cup MPI Annual Report 1998 ch 7 Relevant research is based on the idea that one can identify a small set of Basic Locative Constructions across languages and argues that all languages fall into one of four types of constructions Typology of locative predication MPI Annual Report 1999 p 63 Type 0 No verb in basic locative construction e g Saliba Austronesian 1 something like cup on the table TypeL Single locative verb
10. e la lampe p 206 a little object was standing in the circle of light 35 SR Nedaleko od Krnojel eve pekarnice malo po strani od glavne ar ije stajala je gazda Nikolina ku a u kojoj je iveo Mihailo Andri Anikina vremena p 80 his house was standing not far from the bakery FR Pas loin de la boulangerie de Kr noy lats un peu hors du centre s levait la maison du gazda Nicola o vivait Mihailo p 78 his house was standing rising up not far from the bakery 36 FR Parcourant l ile en tous sens il finit par d couvrir en effet un quillai dont le tronc terrass sans doute par la foudre ou le vent rampait sur le sol dont il s levait m diocrement en se divisant en deux grosses branches maitresses Tournier p 120 its trunk slithered on the ground SR Prelazeci ostrvo u svim pravcima na kraju je zaista otkrio jedan kilaj ije je stablo bez sumnje oboreno gromom ili vetrom le alo na tlu iz kojeg se malo izdizalo ra vaju i se na dve glavne grane p 82 its trunk was lying on the ground The translation of Serbian posture verbs by fictive motion descriptions in French is possible when the Figure entity is inanimate and when the verb does not involve any change of location There are some exceptions however where the Figure is animate as in example 37 or with manner of motion verbs that lexically involve a change of locatio
11. e term fictive motion construction for sentences including fictive motion and suggests that it may be appropriate to treat it as a subset of a more basic construction Our work here is an attempt to define the place of fictive motion among the other ways of expressing static location in French and Serbian L Talmy 2000 vol I ch 2 distinguishes many kinds of fictive motion with regard to various features In this paper we are concerned with only three of them Talmy 2000 vol I ch 2 distinguishes the following types of fictive motion Orientation Paths e g I The arrow on the signpost pointed toward away from into past the town Radiation Paths e g The sun is shining into the cave onto the back wall of the cave Shadow Paths e g The pillar s shadow fell onto against the wall Sensory Paths e g 7 can hear smell him all the way from where I m standing Pattern Paths e g As I painted the ceiling a line of paint spots slowly progressed across advent paths coextension paths and frame relative paths For this investigation we thus considered a small set of verbs which express motion e g descendre longer change of posture or shape se dresser s allonger s tendre or verbs of appearance e g apparaitre surgir and which are capable of describing fictive motion Table 5 shows a sample of the verbs we studied in both French and Serbian In the same table we indicate certain morphological temporal and aspect
12. en Beograd Nolit Stankovi B 2000 Gazda Mladen Lausanne l Age d homme tr Dejan Babi
13. es in contrast the path component is encoded by various particles or satellites associated with the verb such as prepositions prefixes postpositions etc Examples 7 and 8 illustrate this opposition T FR Jean est entr dans la maison Verb framed language John entered the house 8 ENG John went into the house Satellite framed language This crucial difference in coding the path of motion is accompanied by another interesting difference the manner of motion also a very important component of a motion event is highly codable in Satellite framed languages but not in Verb framed languages 9 ENG John ran into the house Satellite framed language 10 FR Jean est entr dans la maison en courant Verb framed language John entered the house by running In Satellite framed languages the encoding of manner poses no problems because manner can be expressed by the verb for instance go in or run in see example 9 In Verb framed languages the verb is not available because it must encode the path As a consequence the manner of motion is generally optional information as in the French sentence 10 This suggests that the manner of motion is linguistically and cognitively much more salient in Satellite framed languages than in Verb framed languages Thus in the expression of motion one can distinguish between high manner salient and low manner salient languages This distinction betwee
14. exical items in French translations 38 see example 27 as well as many cases of omission 10 24 SR U tankom pepelu leZao je ba en crni pekarski no krvav do drSaka Andri Anikina vremena p 91 FR Dans la cendre l g re gisait le couteau noir du boulanger ensanglant jusqu la poign e p 88 in the ashes was lying a black knife 25 SR Gore u sobi gori mu sve a i le e otvoreni tevteri Stankovi p 71 the accounting books were lying wide open FR La haut dans sa chambre une bougie brilait et les livres de comptes taient grands ouverts p 81 the accounting books were wide open 26 SR Pop Vujadinova sudbina je stajala pred njim prosta a neobjasnjiva neveselo dete usamljen mladi nesre an ovek Andri Anikina vremena p 23 his destiny was standing in front of him FR Son destin se dressait devant lui simple et impr visible un enfant triste un jeune homme solitaire un homme malheureux p 20 his destiny was standing rising in front of him 27 SR Ba ena hartija i raskidan staniol le e u travi i belasaju se poslednjim naporom u sumraku Andri Anikina vremena p 16 papers and leaves are lying scattered on the grass FR Les papiers jet s et les feuilles d tain d chir es trainaient dans l herbe lancant un dernier clat dans le cr puscule p 14 papers and leaves were lying scattered on the
15. ic reference is to motion but which actually describe stationary situations Talmy 2000 vol I ch 2 28 The road descends towards the coast 29 That mountain range goes from Canada to Mexico Talmy 2000 vol I 104 In example 28 the scene is static the road does not move but the motion verb to descend is used for describing it In such a situation there is a mental representation of some entity moving along or over the configuration of the Ground the fictively moving entity can be imagined as being an observer or the focus of one s attention or the object itself In examples 28 and 29 the observer mentally imagines something moving along the road or along the mountain range Many factors can motivate this kind of conceptualization of static scenes but this is not our concern here Fictive motion considered as a cognitive and widespread linguistic phenomenon has been studied by several authors see in particular Talmy 1996 2000 vol 1 ch 2 Matlock 2004 2005 Matlock amp Richardson 2004 Langacker 1986 2000 Matsumoto 1996 However the very importance of fictive motion in the expression of static location across languages has not been studied Up to now there are no studies that try to define cross linguistically the place of fictive motion in the expression of static scenes We believe that verbs expressing fictive motion are worth studying in comparison with other types of locative predicates T Matlock 2004 uses th
16. im sun evim zracima p 165 in front of her was a lake La fen tre de ma chambre donnait sur un immeuble en d molition Un mur couvert de papier peint se dressait au milieu des gravats Makine p 269 a wall was standing up in the middle of the rubble Prozor moje sobe je gledao na neku zgradu u ru evinama Jedan zid oblepljen tapetima stajao je uspravno usred gomile uta p 184 a wall was standing in the middle of the rubble This is not surprising given that both languages have a very rich verbal lexicon capable of describing fictive motion lexical counterparts can easily be found We would like to stress that certain spatial descriptions including posture verbs and inanimate Figures in Serbian are translated into French by fictive motion as in examples 34 and 35 and conversely that French fictive motion descriptions are translated into Serbian by posture verbs see examples 33 and 36 As shown in Table 4 10 of Serbian posture verb descriptions are translated into French by fictive motion 34 SR itaju i u postalji ja sam s asa na as pogledao na nju kako stoji malena a svetla i skladna stvar u krugu svetlosti ispod lampe Andri Zena od slonove kosti p 250 a little object is standing in the circle of light FR Je lisais dans mon lit et de temps autre je jetais un regard la petite chose gracieuse et claire qui se dressait dans le cercle de lumi re d
17. motion in certain languages can in many ways affect human spatial cognition REFERENCES Grinevald C forthc Vers une typologie de l expression de la localisation statique le cas des pr dicats locatifs Actes du colloque de typologie TYPO3 de l association CERLITYP Presses Universitaires du Septentrion Kopecka A 2004 Etude typologique de l expression de l espace localisation et d placement en francais et en polonais PhD Thesis Universit de Lyon 2 Langacker R W 1986 Abstract motion Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society pp 455 471 Langacker R W 2000 Virtual reality Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 29 pp 77 103 Lemmens M 2002a The semantic network of Dutch posture verbs In J Newman ed The Linguistics of Sitting Standing and Lying Amsterdam amp Philadelphia John Benjamins 103 139 Lemmens M 2002b Tracing referent location in oral picture descriptions In A Wilson P Rayson amp T McEnery A Rainbow of Corpora Corpus Linguistics and the Languages of the World M nchen Lincom Europa Lemmens M forthcoming Motion and location toward a cognitive typology Matlock T 2004 The conceptual motivation of fictive motion In G Radden amp K U Panther Eds Studies in linguistic motivation Berlin Mouton de Gruyter pp 221 248 Matlock T 2005 Fictive motion as cognitive simulation Memory amp Cognition Ma
18. n as in the example 36 with ramper slither 37 SR Na samim vratima stoji proto crn i bled u svetlosti lu a koji neko dr i za njim u hodniku Andri Anikina vremena p 71 on the threshold was standing the priest FR Sur le seuil m me se dressait le cur noir et p le sous la lumi re de la torche que quelqu un tenait derri re lui dans le couloir p 69 on the threshold was standing the priest The fact that certain spatial descriptions including posture verbs can be translated by fictive motion is not surprising In an experimental work Matlock amp Richardson 2004 examined whether the use of fictive motion in spatial descriptions influences eye movements and more generally whether this use is associated with a particular conceptual representation The authors compared the eye movements that accompanied fictive motion FM sentences e g The palm trees run along the highway and those that accompanied non fictive motion NFM sentences e g The palm trees are next to the highway In this work Matlock amp Richardson 2004 showed that a all FM and NFM sentences are equally sensible in meaning b all FM and NFM sentences describe comparable information and c all FM and NFM sentences are equally good descriptions of pictures used as stimuli We believe that the same holds true for Serbian sentences with posture verbs and French translations including fictive motion In other words b
19. n Verb framed and Satellite framed languages raises several interesting questions First does this distinction extend to the domain of static location If so how is manner expressed by static location Does the reference to the manner of location in the static domain occur more frequently in Satellite framed languages or in Verb framed languages In order to answer these questions we first present an inventory of locative predicates in French and Serbian then compare the importance of each type of predicate in the expression of static spatial scenes in the two languages The comparison is based on a contrastive corpus of expressions of static locations in French and Serbian novels detailed references are listed at the end of the paper This work is part of the larger Location verb project which focuses on location and posture verbs in many languages and which tries to draw a parallel between motion and location The Location verb project is an essential complement to the existing typological research on motion verbs in the framework of Talmy s typology 3 LOCATIVE PREDICATES IN FRENCH AND SERBIAN In French and Serbian three main types of locative predicates contribute to the expression of static location neutral verbs posture verbs and verbs describing fictive motion In the following we compare the role that these different types of locative predicates play in each language 3 1 NEUTRAL VERBS Neutral verbs are widely used in
20. nger un biscuit hexap tale lorsqu une cr ature apparut p 27 he was already sitting at the table eating a biscuit 23 SR Postave Cekaju Naro ito Mladen stoji nece ni da sedne za sofru a kamoli da jede Stankovi p 84 FR Mladen en particulier n acceptait m me pas de s attabler et encore moins de commencer manger p 99 Mladen particularly didn t even accept to sit at the table much less so to start eating These results also confirm the claim that French often uses neutral verbs even when referring to human beings in one of the three cardinal positions in 17 of cases the French translator has preferred to use a neutral verb such as rester stay se tenir to stay to remain tre to be il y a there is rather than to use a posture verb As suggested by Lemmens forthcoming manner of being positioned in space is not a notion that French speakers care to express even for human posture When occurring with inanimate Figures Serbian posture verbs are most often translated by neutral verbs in 30 of cases and in very few cases by the French posture verb g sir to lie as to lie in the grave Finally a very interesting finding is that 10 of situations described by posture verbs in Serbian are expressed as fictive motion in French see example 26 We present a detailed analysis of this possibility in the following Note also the presence of other l
21. nifestation e g This rock formation occurs appears shows up near volcanoes Access Paths e g The bakery is across the street from the bank Coextension Paths e g The fence goes zigzags descends from the plateau to the valley Our corpus based study shows that fictive motion sentences from one language are generally translated by fictive motion sentences in the other see examples 30 and 31 Type of predicate in FIHyemonou translation FR SR SR FR Fictive motion 70 30 89 31 Neutral Verbs 10 32 Posture Verbs 5 33 Other verbs 5 Omission 10 11 96 Table 6 Translation of fictive motion descriptions from French to Serbian and vice 30 FR SR 31 SR FR 32 FR SR 33 FR SR versa Dehors la route comme tu sais s allonge tout droit entre deux collines tant t montant puis descendant puis montant encore Yourcenar NO p 1242 Napolju se drum kao Sto zna pru a pravo izme u dva brega as navi e as nani e pa onda opet navi e p 115 the road stretches out straight between the hills Podrum se protezao du inom cele ku e Stankovi p 12 La cave s tirait sur toute la longueur de la maison p 13 the cellar stretched out all along the house Un lac rose des premiers rayons s tendait ses pieds Makine p 242 a lake stretched out at her feet Pred njom je bilo jezero ru i asto pod prv
22. ore important than what is suggested by the translation data These observations suggest that to express static location with inanimate Figures French uses either neutral verbs or fictive motion whereas Serbian can also use posture verbs Since French makes limited use of posture verbs it uses fictive motion in reference to some situations described by posture verbs in Serbian Therefore we can conclude that the lack of an extensive use of posture verbs in French makes fictive motion more salient If one now tries to define the place of fictive motion among the other ways of expressing static location in French and Serbian one can say that fictive motion plays a more important role in French than in Serbian possibly because Serbian pays much more attention to the manner of being positioned in space Thus comparing French and Serbian suggests that in high manner salient languages like Serbian fictive motion is less salient rov ERN E Schema 1 Different ways of expressing static location in French and Serbian and their distribution It would be interesting to examine the importance of fictive motion in languages using a wider set of posture or positional verbs If our hypothesis is correct that the extensive use of posture or positional verbs makes fictive motion less salient then this will result in a very limited usage of fictive motion in high manner salient languages 4 CONCLUSION To conclude we ask a few
23. oth types of descriptions are good candidates to express the situation at hand but the former is preferred in Serbian the latter in French Why is that Our corpus is not large enough to answer this question definitively but these preliminary results confirm our intuition that French speakers will preferably use fictive motion in describing certain static spatial scenes that are canonically described by posture verbs in Serbian Moreover in many cases translating French fictive motion descriptions by posture verbs seems to be more natural than translating them by fictive motion see example 38 38 FR Il n eut pas longtemps chercher pour le d couvrir La silhouette du grand m le se dressait comme un rocher au milieu d une houle de ch vres et de chevreaux qui reflu rent en d sordre son approche Tournier p 195 SR Nije ga morao dugo traziti da bi ga otkrio Silueta velikog muZjaka uspravljala se kao stena usred gomile koza i jari a koji su u neredu ustuknuli kada je on pri ao p 131 stajala je stajala je uspravno its silhouette was standing like a rock in the middle of Using the verb uspravljati se is not wrong but the verb stajati would have been better The translator is probably influenced by the source language To avoid this bias it would be interesting to collect data on the basis of visual stimuli in order to obtain comparable data in French and Serbian We believe that the differences would be m
24. possibilities of using posture verbs in French and Serbian First French allows a limited use of posture verbs tre debout to stand tre assis to sit et tre couch to lie since only animate Figures can occur with this type of verb The combination with inanimate Figures is not allowed in French as seen in these examples 15 FR La lampe est debout sur la table La lampe est se trouve sur la table the lamp is standing on the table 16 FR Le livre tait couch sur la table Le livre tait sur la table the book was lying on the table Moreover Lemmens forthcoming argues that French often uses neutral verbs like tre to be or se trouver to be located even when referring to human beings in one of the three cardinal positions be sitting standing or lying In Serbian the use of posture verbs is quite different Indeed Serbian uses posture verbs for both animate and inanimate Figures as we can see in example 17 Moreover Serbian posture verbs have acquired many metaphorical abstract and idiomatic uses 17 SR Marija njenatorba je stajala u holu Mary herbag was standing in the hall We note that Serbian posture verbs do not all have the same behavior unlike the other posture verbs sedeti be sitting only occurs with animate Figures as exemplified in 18 18 SR Marija njenatorba je sedela u dvori tu Mary herbag was sitting in the hall 3 2
25. questions that place this study in a more cognitive perspective One interesting question is whether such cross linguistic differences in attention to fictive motion affect spatial cognition According to Matlock amp Richardson 2004 fictive motion processing includes mentally simulated motion This means that representations underlying fictive motion descriptions are not static as can be expected but rather dynamic People mentally simulate motion when interpreting fictive motion sentences Matlock amp Richardson 2004 argue that fictive motion evokes a dynamic mental simulation and that this simulation determines how the visual system interprets and inspects the world One can now ask what happens when translators use fictive motion instead of posture verbs as we have seen for French and Serbian Even though both types of spatial descriptions convey similar information translating posture verbs by fictive motion considerably changes the conceptual representation of the spatial scene Furthermore since simulating motion is part of fictive motion understanding idem the cognitive processing of fictive motion must be more complex than the cognitive processing of other ways of expressing static spatial scenes We can also ask whether the complexity of this cognitive processing of fictive motion can explain its relatively small share in the expression of static location across languages Hence an extensive use of fictive
26. s e g Serbian English cf Talmy 2000 and discusses the validity of the distinction between high manner salient and low manner salient languages for the domain of static location cf Slobin 2004 By assuming that posture verbs are static equivalents of manner of motion verbs e g to run to walk as suggested by M Lemmens 2002a 2002b forthcoming we argue that in the domain of static location as well as in the domain of motion Satellite framed Languages e g Serbian pay more attention to the expression of manner than Verb framed Languages e g French INTRODUCTION In this paper we discuss different ways of expressing static location in French and Serbian Both languages use several types of locative predicates as well as many kinds of syntactic constructions to describe static spatial relationships We will particularly focus on the semantic nature of verbal components in static spatial descriptions and will compare the importance of different types of locative predicates in the expression of static space in French and Serbian Section 1 presents an inventory of locative predicates across languages In section 2 we define the framework adopted in this study Next we will discuss different types of locative predicates in French and Serbian and examine on the basis of contrastive data their importance in the expression of static location in each of the two languages This comparison reveals some interesting typologic
27. tlock T amp Richardson D C 2004 Do eye movements go with fictive motion Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society Matsumoto Y 1996 Subjective motion and English and Japanese verbs Cognitive Linguistics 7 pp 183 226 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Annual Reports Nijmegen 1998 1999 2001 http www mpi nl world research research html Newman J ed 2002 The Linguistics of Sitting Standing and Lying Amsterdam amp Philadelphia John Benjamins Slobin D I 2003 Language and thought online cognitive consequences of linguistic relativity In D Gentner amp S Goldin Meadow eds Language in mind Advances in the study of language and thought Cambridge MA MIT Press pp 157 192 Slobin D I 2004 The many ways to search for a frog Linguistic typology and the expression of motion events In S Str mqvist amp L Verhoeven eds Relating Events in Narratives Typological and contextual perspectives Mahwah NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates pp 219 257 Talmy L 1996 Fictive motion in language and ception In P Bloom M Peterson L Nadel amp M Garrett Eds Language and Space Cambridge MA MIT press pp 211 276 Talmy L 2000 Toward a Cognitive Semantics Cambridge MA MIT press CORPUS FRENCH NOVELS AND THEIR TRANSLATIONS Duras M 1950 Un barrage contre le Pacifique Paris Gallimard Dira M 1959 Brana n
28. ual properties of verb forms expressing fictive motion Further grammatical and semantic properties of fictive motion constructions are discussed in Matlock 2004 Verb type Sample of studied verbs Tense Aspect Person descendre go down longer go along passer pass grimper climb present imparfait monter go up zigzaguer zigzag ici go penjati se climb spustati se imperfective aspect come down se dresser stand up s lever rise up 3th person s allonger strech out singular change of s tendre extend or posture shape dizati se rise protezati plural se extend izdizati se rise up iriti se be spreading apparaitre appear surgir arise se dresser stand up motion present imparfait imperfective aspect perfect preterit present imparfait appearance pp perfective aspect imperfective aspect pojaviti se appaer iskrsnuti arise Table 5 Sample of fictive motion verbs the floor Frame Relative Motion e g sat in the car and watched the scenery rush past me or I was walking through the woods and this branch that was sticking out hit me Advent Paths a Site arrival e g The beam leans tilts away from the wall active verb form or Termite mounds are scattered strewn spread distributed all over the plain passive verb form b Site ma
29. uch construction is the passive or resultative construction as shown in 5 Di SR Torbe su okacene na zidu FR Les sacs sont accroch s au mur ENG The bags are hanging up on the wall Another possibility is to use fictive motion as shown in example 6 6 SR Put ide du obale FR La route longe la c te ENG The road runs along the coast The importance of fictive motion in expressing static location has not been studied extensively and not at all studied in a crosslinguistic or typological perspective see however Matsumoto 1996 In this article we attempt to define the importance of fictive motion in the expression of static location in French and Serbian 2 COMPARING FRENCH AND SERBIAN IN THE FRAMEWORK OF TALMY S TYPOLOGY TALMY 2000 It is particularly interesting to compare French and Serbian because they are representatives of two different groups of languages according to Talmy s typology which we adopt here As is well known Talmy 2000 opposes Verb framed languages such as French Turkish Japanese Basque and Hebrew to Satellite framed languages such as Serbian English Dutch Finnish and Hungarian cf Talmy 2000 Slobin 2004 This typological distinction reflects two ways to encode change of location i e the path of motion cf Slobin 2003 The path is the essential component of a motion event In Verb framed languages the path of motion is encoded by the verb In Satellite framed languag
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