Naslov
Linguistic typology and verbs of motion: a comparative view of English and Croatian verbs

Autori
Buljan, Gabrijela

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
Cognitive Linguistics between Universality and Variation

Mjesto i datum
Dubrovnik, Hrvatska, 30.09.2008. - 01.10.2008

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
motion verbs; intansitive motion construction; transitive motion construction; English; Croatian

Sažetak
The paper examines a range of Croatian and English verbs used in the intransitive and transitive motion construction in the light of Talmy’ s typology of event structure representation (1985, 2001). More precisely, we will seek to establish how Croatian verbs compare to the English verbs with respect to several parameters and will try to correlate the patterns observed with the different structural make-ups of the two languages: 1) What is the range and combinations of semantic concepts – inherent components of motion events – that are expressed by the verb complex ; how are they formally represented e.g. Croatian verbs characteristically use different prefixes to express the different vector components of the path of motion, often with the same verb root: ot-klizati od nečega – slide away from the Ground object, do- klizati do nečega, - slide to the Ground object pro- klizati (kroz nešto) – slide through a Ground object dividing the labour with the path designating preposition. English verbs use postverbal path satellites (in addition to path designating prepositions) to do the job, e.g. She flew up to the room. 2) Are there types of semantic relationships between motion events and Co-events that are systematically (not) expressed by the Croatian verb root ; is the difference relatable to some subjective idea of the degree of conceptual autonomy/dependence between the two events e.g. where English readily allows different types of Co-events, rather incidental to the motion event, to be expressed by the verb in addition to motion, e.g. concomitance: She wore a green dress to the party, Croatian seems to be less inclined to do so and turns to paraphrase in the form of prepositional phrases: She wore a green dress to the party ?Obukla je zelenu haljinu na zabavu Otišla je na zabavu u zelenoj haljini (‘ She went to the party in a green dress’ ) Nosila/imala je zelenu haljinu na zabavi. (She wore/had a green dress on at the party’ ) However, compare the manner of motion verbs in: The rock rolled into the water vs I rolled the rock into the water and their correspondents in Croatian Kamen se otkotrljao u vodu vs Otkotrljao sam kamen u vodu. 3) More generally, is there a systematic difference between English and Croatian verb roots in terms of their semantic versatility of the kind illustrated above (whether or not, or to what extent this versatility may be called lexical polysemy is a matter of debate), and could the patterns observed be attributable to the analytic vs synthetic nature of the two languages concerned. If it can be show that the tendency in English to freely expand the meanings of verbs is attributable to the same factors as are responsible for the facility with which the language forms new verbs from words of different lexical categories (i.e. conversion is the most productive process for the extension of the verbal lexicon in English, where the categorisation of such items as verbs and their semantic interpretation rely on the sentential and pragmatic contexts), then the reason for any conservativeness of Croatian verbs, novel or old, may be due to the limited number of closed-class items which synthetically express only a limited subset of the semantic categories expressible by ‘ bare’ English verbs.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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