The encoding of motion events in Chinese
中国語の移動表現
Résumé
This chapter is part of a cross-linguistic study lead by Yo Matsumoto, which aims at contributing to our knowledge of the way languages encode motion events, Other chapters concern Dom (a language spoken in Papua-New Guinea), French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Newar, Sidaama (a Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia), Thai, and include a comparative study of German, Russian and English as “typical” Satellite-framed languages. The volume, through a set of pre-defined parameters (widely based on Talmy’s typology, and exposed in the introductive chapter of the volume), systematically investigates how each language expresses 1) autonomous motion (ex. Susan walked up to the hilltop), 2) caused motion (ex. Bill threw the ball up into John’s hands) and c) visual emanation (ex. Kate looked up into the sky). For caused motion, it further distinguishes cases when the causer and the figure move together like ‘carry’, cases when the causer manipulates the figure throughout the motion such as ‘put’, and cases when the causer only gives an initial impetus to the move like ‘kick’.
In this chapter we first provide a comprehensive view of the way Standard Chinese encodes motion, giving a special attention to the factors that determine the position of locative NPs in the pre-verbal vs. post-verbal slot, such as the semantic role of the locative NP (goal, source, direction…). This feature distinguishes Chinese from Thai, another language discussed in the volume. The paper shows that in Chinese, the use of satellites (usually called ‘directional complements’ in reference grammars) is optional for autonomous motion, is compulsory for causative motion in case of typical, schematized path meanings such as ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘out’, ‘in’, etc., but is very constrained for visual emanation. We also provide a lexical inventory of the path verbs which lexicalize more specific autonomous and causative motion (such as ‘raise (your glass)’ etc.), and illustrations taken from various corpora. We conclude on a few observations on Hungarian and Chinese as Satellite-framed languages.