Reference to Motion Events in Six Western Austronesian ...ntur.lib.ntu.edu.tw/bitstream/246246/65346/1/442.pdf · 308 oceanic linguistics, vol. 44, no. 2 the research has yielded

Oceanic Linguistics, Volume 44, no. 2 (December 2005)

Reference to Motion Eventsin Six Western Austronesian Languages:

Toward a Semantic Typology

Shuanfan Huang and Michael Tanangkingsing

national taiwan university

The language of motion events is a system used to specify the motion ofobjects through space with respect to other objects. Recent research hasshown that languages differ in the relative saliency of manner or path theyfocus on in motion event descriptions. These can be thought of as differentstrategies dedicated to specifying the spatial relationship between objects inmotion and the landmark object. We propose a four-way typology based onthe narrative data from six western Austronesian languages. Evidence is pre-sented that each of the languages examined typically has a preferred strategyfor describing motion events and that each has a distinct narrative style.These six languages are shown to share the commonality of giving greaterattention to path information in motion events. Path salience in the encodingof motion clauses appears to exhibit a strong diachronic stability, suggestingthat Proto-Austronesian was probably also a path-salient language.

1. INTRODUCTION: SEMANTIC TYPOLOGY OF THE GRAMMARS OFMOTION EVENT DESCRIPTIONS.1 Space is a cognitive domain that can beconstrued in quite different ways in different languages. Speakers of typologically distinctlanguages vary in their linguistic construal of spatial and motion events across a widerange of situations of language use. Diversity in linguistic coding provides the basic datafor speculations about relativity and habitual use of linguistic forms. Talmy�s (1985) pio-neering two-way semantic typology of motion events has since inspired researchersworldwide to grapple with the implications of spatial language and cognition. A numberof research groups have been formed to attempt a careful comparative study of the rangeof variation in the linguistic treatment of the spatial domain and to draw out implicationsof this emerging typology of variation for the disciplines in cognitive sciences. Much of

1. The research reported here was supported by Grant NSC-92-2411-H-002-056 from Taiwan�sNational Science Council to the ²rst author. Various versions of this paper were presented atNational Taiwan University (October 2003), Taiwan Normal University (November 2003), Dong-hua University (June 2004), Chung Cheng University (June 2004); and at the following confer-ences: Biannual Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, Santa Barbara (July2001); and the Second Workshop on the �Verb� in Formosan Languages, Academia Sinica(November 2003). We are grateful to Stephen Quakenbush, Malcolm Ross, Matt Shibatani, DanSlobin, Sandy Thompson, and especially to three anonymous reviewers for very helpful commentsand suggestions.

© by University of Hawai�i Press. All rights reserved.

Crissa Holder Smith

Muse_logo

308 oceanic linguistics, vol. 44, no. 2

the research has yielded results that suggest striking typological differences, which havein turn spawned a large number of investigations of how language interfaces thought.Two lines of research are particularly noteworthy: Levinson and his collaborators (e.g.,Levinson 1996; Levinson et al. 2002; Pederson et al. 1998; Kita, Danziger, and Stolz2001; Majid et al. 2004) distinguish between languages that describe spatial relations interms of the body (front/back, left/right) [the relative system] and those that orient to ²xedpoints in the environment (like north/south/east/west) [the absolute system]. In a lan-guage of the second type one would refer, for example, to �your east hand,� or �the per-son sitting at the north end of the table.� Levinson�s group has shown that this is indeedtrue. An �absolute� speaker always knows where north is and achieves accurate dead-reckoning. Levinson (2003) and Majid et al. (2004) show that language seems to haveclear transformative power on how we think, memorize, and reason about spatial rela-tions and directions (see Munnich et al. 2001; Gennari et al. 2002 for dissenting views).In the spatial topological domain, Levinson et al. (2003) investigate how topologicalnotions are coded cross-linguistically in spatial adpositions and conclude that notions likein/on/under are not primitive holistic concepts, because many languages seem tomake alternative kinds of distinctions that are learned just as early, and that these topolog-ical notions form an implicational scale akin to Berlin and Kay�s (1969) proposal forbasic color terms, whereby a general locative adposition is successively fractionated (forfurther details, see Levinson and Meira 2003). Kita, Danziger, and Stolz (2001) analyzegestures in different cultures and ²nd that the default gestural frames of reference matchthe predominant linguistic frames of reference (cf. McNeill and Duncan 2000). Forexample, speakers of Relative languages such as English and Japanese code Relativedirections in their gestures even when they do not speak.

Slobin and his associates have shown that the preferred construction type in a lan-guage predisposes speakers to deal differently with motion events encoded in the con-struction and that the domain of manner-of-motion is highly codable in satellite-framedlanguages (henceforth S-languages) and, therefore, in terms of thinking for speaking, isalso more available, in comparison with verb-framed languages (V-languages). Theresearch question then is to identify the �preferred construction type� for each language.

1.1 TALMY’S TWO-WAY TYPOLOGY. In an important ²rst step in thetypology of form-function relations for motion verbs, Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000) pro-vides a cross-linguistic schema in which motion is analyzed into a set of semanticcomponents, and languages are compared and grouped according to how they packagethese components into linguistic forms. According to Talmy, each given language hasa characteristic way of packaging such motion-event components. His two-way typol-ogy of languages is based on the observation that paths are the most likely componentsof a motion event to be incorporated into the event in overt expression. Languages varyas to whether path or manner is coded as the head of the verb phrase, and which iscoded as a verbal dependent, which Talmy calls a satellite. Talmy describes English asa manner-incorporating language and Spanish as a path-incorporating language.Talmy has more recently generalized this typological classi²cation into a distinctionbetween verb-framing and satellite-framing. Framing refers to concepts such as path,

reference to motion events 309

aspect, existence, and so forth, which delimit the verbal event. Some languages sys-tematically encode framing elements in the verb (verb-framing) or in a satellite (satel-lite-framing). In motion event descriptions, a language is �satellite-framed� or �verb-framed� depending on how the �core schema��path component is packaged. Verb-framed languages are those where path information is coded in the main verb, as inSpanish, Arabic, Japanese, Tamil, and Polynesian. All natural sign languages arebelieved to be also verb-framed languages (Slobin and Hoiting 1994). Satellite-framedlanguages are those whose path information is coded in the satellite, and manner infor-mation is coded within the verb itself, as in English, Finnish, Ojibwa, and Warlpiri.One justi²cation for recognizing the satellite as a grammatical category is that for onetypological category of languages it is the characteristic site for the expression of thecore schema (path, or more generally path plus the ground) (Talmy 2000:102). Somelanguages have full systems of satellites, while other languages have virtually no satel-lites. One effect of this cross-linguistic difference appears in the representation ofboundaries in motion events. Aske (1989) shows that a boundary plays a crucial role ina verb-framed language like Spanish because if crossing a boundary results in a newcon²guration or state, path description can continue only via a new clause with itsverbs. In English, a satellite-framed language, boundaries are not singled out but aretreated as just further path segments to be coded as satellites.

Manner and how it is presented is a second important difference between the S- andV-language types. In contrast to path, manner in an S-language is encoded in the mainverb. With V-languages such as Spanish, path is encoded in the main verb, while man-ner is introduced outside the verb, in a gerund or a separate clause. Such cross-linguis-tic differences in motion verb con³ation have the potential to reveal much about thehuman mind and experience. Choi and Bowerman (1991) show that young children²rst talk about paths of motion rather than their manners. Naigles et al. (1998) showthat there is a stronger propensity for English speakers than for Spanish speakers tochoose manner interpretations of novel motion verbs. Berman and Slobin (1994:118�19) ²rst propose that S-languages and V-languages have distinct narrative styles. S-lan-guages allow for detailed description of paths within a clause and tend toward greaterspeci²cation of manner. In V-languages, such elaboration is more of a �luxury,�because path and manner are elaborated in separate clauses that are generally optionaland less compact in form. Slobin (2000) also shows that the domain of manner-of-motion is highly codable in S-languages, producing many �manner� verbs such aswalk, rush, dive, clamber, and saunter and, therefore, in terms of thinking for speakingand for writing, is also more available, in comparison with V-languages..

1.2 RECENT REFINEMENTS. Much of the recent research on motion eventshas focused primarily on these two language types represented by English (Germanic)and Spanish (Romance). These two languages express manner and path in the verband in a nonverbal constituent, but simply do so in opposite ways. Yet there are lan-guages whose structure of motion event sentences looks even on the surface to be strik-ingly different from either of these two languages, and they need to be examined insome depth before we arrive at a sound typology of the structure of motion events.


Croft (2003:219�24) observes that aside from verb framing and satellite framing,which are both asymmetric strategies for encoding motion events, there is a range ofsymmetric strategies found in the world�s languages: the serial strategy, found in Man-darin Chinese and Lahu; the double coding strategy, found in Slavic languages; and thecoordinate strategy, found in Amele. Huang (2001) has also shown, based on a corpusof pear narratives, that Tsou represents a macro-event language where the characteris-tic pattern for motion event descriptions is to use compound verbs comprised of amanner pre²x and a path verb root, taking the term �macro-event� in the sense ofTalmy (2000) to mean a fundamental category of complex event that is prone to con-ceptual integration and representation by a single clause. A macro-event in motionevents is a structure that combines motion, path, and manner into a clause.2 However,combinations of manner and goal components in Tsou must be expressed by a coordi-nate strategy. Other languages use still other strategies. Slobin (2004) and Slobin (pers.comm.) have now added a third type to the existing two types, resulting in a tripartitetypology: V-language, S-language, and equipollently-framed language (E-language).In an E-language, path and manner are expressed by equivalent grammatical forms.Slobin�s three typological groupings are:

1. Satellite-framed2. Verb-framed3. Equipollently-framed

a. serial verbb. bipartite verb c. generic verb

Thus path and manner are encoded in at least four distinct patterns (constituent ordersignored):

2. The typological contrast with regard to verbs of motion is part of a large set of macro-eventsanalyzed by Talmy (1991, 2000), including the conceptual domain of emotion, aspect, change ofstate, action correlation, and event realization (cf. Huang 2002 for observations on emotionexpressions in Tsou). The way a macro-event in motion in Tsou is structured parallels the way amacro-event in other domains is structured. The second verb stem in the following expresses:

(a) the path in an event of motion(i) Mo cu tmai�-aemonu si mali.

aux pfv roll-in nom ball�The ball rolled in.�

(b) the aspect in an event of temporal contouring(ii) Mihin�i e�unu maita�e.

aux.3pl talk.toward thus�They talked on.�

(c) the correlation in an event of action correlating(iii) Mita pasu-ofeihini �e Pasuya.

aux.3sg sing-along nom PN�Pasuya sang along.�

(d) the fulfillment in an event of realization(iv) Mita m�sacuhu to f�koi �o Pasuya.

aux.3sg step.on.succeed obl snake nom PN�Pasuya stepped on the snake.�


(A) Satellite-framed language: Path satellite + Manner verb(B) Verb-framed language: Path verb + Manner adjunct(C) Macro-event language: [Manner pre²x + Path root]verb(D) Serial-verb language:

D1: Path verb#Manner verbD2: Manner verb#Path verb

In the following analyses, MP will be used to represent the pattern found in (C),P#M the pattern in D1, where the path verb precedes the manner verb, and M#P thepattern in D2, where the manner verb precedes the path verb. If a deictic verb followsthe sequence, as typically occurs in Chinese, it will be represented as M#P#D. There isalso, in addition, the coordinate strategy that is found in some of the western Austrone-sian languages being investigated here; this will be introduced later in the article.

Despite the ²ndings summarized above, there is still a dearth of cross-linguisticresearch on such issues as lexicalization pattern and characteristic narrative styles formotion events in Austronesian languages.3 The present paper is a cross-linguisticinvestigation of all the elements that express spatial relationships in motion events insix western Austronesian (wAn) languages: Cebuano, Malay, Saisiyat, Squliq Atayal,Tagalog, and Tsou.4 We will show that there is great diversity across languages in thelevel of salience and granularity in path or manner expression, in the type of semanticcomponents employed, and in the balance between different parts of the language sys-tem in expressing spatial notions. We will propose a four-way typology for the lan-guages examined in the present study. Speci²cally, we hope to show that Tagalog,Cebuano, and Squliq are strongly V-framed languages, and allow for no or little use ofverb serialization, and that Saisiyat and Malay, while exhibiting unmistakable strongpath salience, have each developed additional distinct strategies for motion eventdescriptions. Tsou has pursued an entirely different grammatical strategy in developingverb compounds that give equal salience to path and manner.

The rest of this article is organized as follows. First our database and methodologyare introduced in section 2. Section 3 sketches the linguistic characteristics of the sixAustronesian languages under investigation, and section 4 looks at the structure ofmotion clauses in the corpus data. This is followed by an extended examination of thedistribution of path and manner elements in a clause, the frequency of ground compo-nents, size of the manner verb lexicon, and narrative style in sections 5 through 8.

3. Slobin (2004) categorizes Austronesian languages as serial verb languages. This is an inaccu-rate characterization, although if Slobin had meant to refer to Oceanic languages, he wouldhave been largely correct (cf. Crowley 2002). It is true that verb juxtapositions are frequent inSquliq and Saisiyat (but not in Tsou, Tagalog, and Cebuano), but these are actually eithercoordinate strategies without an overt connective used to connect two clauses, or serial verbconstructions used mainly to describe activities, and rarely used to depict motion events,which are the central focus of Slobin�s paper.

4. These six languages represent four different primary branches of the Austronesian family asproposed in Blust (1999): Atayalic (Squliq Atayal), Tsouic (Tsou), Northwest Formosan(Saisiyat), and Malayo-Polynesian (Cebuano, Tagalog, Malay). Thus, these languages werechosen in part to re³ect our attempt at a coverage of the languages wide enough for us to beable to state with some con²dence the typological characteristics of the motion event struc-tures in the Austronesian language family.


There the unique way of structuring motion events in each of the six languages is dem-onstrated. Section 9 is the conclusion.

2. DATABASE AND METHODOLOGY. The present study is based on a corpusof narratives of the Frog story by adult native speakers of the six western Austronesian(wAn) languages. Corpus data from a seventh language, Mandarin Chinese, is alsoexamined for purposes of comparison. The narrators, who ranged in age from being intheir twenties to their sixties, were asked individually to narrate to the transcribers thestory of a wordless picture book, Frog, where are you? (Mayer 1969). All of the transcrib-ers, except for two, were also native speakers of the respective language(s) they tran-scribed. The narratives were then transcribed into intonation units (IUs) based on DuBois et al. (1993). In all, 35 narratives (Tagalog: 6; Cebuano: 7; Malay: 6; Squliq: 5;Saisiyat: 8; Tsou: 6; Mandarin: 7) running to 230 minutes and 8 seconds for a total of6,233 IUs formed the database for this study. The corpus was then searched for utter-ances containing motion clauses�clauses with manner of motion verbs, path verbs, MPverbs, or M#P#D verbs. A total of 1,206 motion clauses (Tagalog: 97; Cebuano: 132;Malay: 90; Squliq: 280; Saisiyat: 239; Tsou: 215; Mandarin: 153) were extracted fromthe corpus and were then subjected to the various analyses, observations, and tabulationsas reported in the sections that follow. Using the same stimulus material, we were able tocontrol for semantic content and plot structure in doing cross-linguistic investigations.5

Collecting the Frog narratives is part of a larger project of ours to study the interac-tion between grammar, discourse, and cognition in Austronesian languages. The Frogstory is about the adventures of a frog that a boy keeps in his jar. One night the froggets out and leaves the room and the boy wakes up the next morning to ²nd it gone.The boy and his dog then head out to the woods to look for the frog. On the way they²rst run into a mouse and a beehive on the top of a tree. The dog shakes the tree and thebees turn loose and start chasing the dog. The boy gets to the top of a tree and looksinto a hole. An owl emerges from the hole and the boy is scared, falls off the tree, andlands on his back. The boy tries to get away from the owl. He gets on top of a rock. Hereaches to grab branches of a tree, which turn out to be the antlers of a deer. The deerrises up, carries the boy on its head, and starts to run toward a cliff. The deer stops at theedge of the cliff, throws off the boy, and he and also the dog fall into a body of waterbelow. The boy and the dog swim to a tree trunk with a hole in it. They peek throughthe hole and see their frog and a bunch of other frogs together. The boy picks up hisfrog and heads back home, waving goodbye to the other frogs.

Before we get to the analysis itself, ²rst a brief sketch of the linguistic characteris-tics of each of the six wAn languages is in order.

3. A LINGUISTIC SKETCH OF THE SIX LANGUAGES. Saisiyat, a moder-ately endangered language, is spoken on the highlands of northern Taiwan by a popu-

5. The following collaborators have assisted in the gathering of narratives: Squliq Atayal, MayaYeh; Malay, Siaw-Fong Chung; Mandarin Chinese was transcribed by Hsieh Fu-hui; Tsou wastranscribed by Huang Huei-ju; Saisiyat, Cebuano, and Tagalog were recorded and transcribedby Michael Tanangkingsing.


lation of about 5,300 (2000 census) distributed between two major dialects. The dialectstudied here is the Southern (Tonghe) dialect variety. Most speakers are trilingual(Saisiyat, Hakka, Mandarin) or quadrilingual (Saisiyat, Hakka, Mandarin, Japanese).Saisiyat is strongly AVO in word order in agent focus (AF) clauses, but VAO innonagent focus (NAF) clauses. It has developed an accusative case-marking systemand an incipient passive-like voice. It is important to note that Saisiyat shows symp-toms of split ergativity where PF clauses tend to be used with the perfective aspect,while transitive AF clauses tend to occur with progressive or future auxiliaries.

Saisiyat is conservative in focus morphology, re³ecting reconstructed PAn af²xes,PF -un, LF -an, RF si-, though verbal LF clauses as main clauses have nearly disap-peared from the language, -an forms now being found only in subordinate clauses.

Saisiyat has a rich case marking system, with a distinction made between when thereferent is a proper noun and when it is a common noun, as in other Formosan lan-guages: the nominative hi/ka; the accusative hi/ka; the genitive ni/noka; the dative ini/no; the locative kan/ray. Saisiyat has a single locative case particle ray that covers thefunctions of source, goal, and location. Note that the nominative markers are nowrestricted to appearing only in presentative constructions and embedded clauses, sug-gesting that the presence of nominative case markers was a more pervasive phenome-non at an earlier stage of the language.

Tsou, a major language of the Tsouic branch of the Austronesian language family, isspoken on the highlands of SW Taiwan, and has a population of about 5,400 (2000 cen-sus). The dialect studied in the present article is the Tfuya dialect. Tsou is also moderatelyendangered, many of its speakers being also trilingual or quadrilingual. Tsou, a rigid verb-initial language, has an elaborate and vibrant case-marking system, with a set of nomina-tive markers indicating �subject,� depending on the visibility and/or the psychological dis-tance of the subject NP in relation to the speaker, and another set of oblique markersindicating nonsubjects and genitive NPs. Tsou has no distinct locative case markers.

Squliq, spoken by about 91,000 speakers (2000 census), is one of the two majordialects of the Atayal language. Squliq, a verb-initial language, has a focus system sim-ilar to that of Saisiyat and a set of oblique markers (squ�/sa/te/i�) whose functional dif-ference from each other has yet to be sorted out. Unlike Mayrinax Atayal but likeTsou, Squliq has no purely locative case markers.

Tagalog and Cebuano, verb-initial languages belonging to the Meso-Philippine lan-guage family (Mosley and Asher 1994), are the two major languages in the Philip-pines, each spoken as a ²rst language by a ²fth of the total population. Tagalog ismainly used as a ²rst language in the Southern Tagalog provinces and in the southernprovinces of the Central Luzon region, as well as along the coastal areas on the islandof Mindoro.. It is also spoken as a second language in the rest of the country. Cebuanois spoken on the central Visayan islands of Cebu, Bohol, Negros, Leyte, and on thenortheastern half of Mindanao as the native language and by the rest of the populationof the Visayas and Mindanao areas as their second language. Both languages are char-acterized by a highly developed focus system, common in Philippine-type languages,but differ from each other in terms of the proportion of their AF clauses and PFclauses: PF clauses account for 80 percent of all clauses in Tagalog (Cooreman, Fox,


and Givon 1984, cited in Shibatani 1988:95), while PF clauses account for only about21 percent of clauses in Cebuano in our own conversation corpus.

Payne�s (1994) study on Cebuano shows that there are, as in Saisiyat, passiveclauses in the language, wherein Os precede As, which are nontopical and are eithermarked as oblique or simply omitted in PF clauses. Based on the order of the A and Ophrases in Cebuano PF clauses, these PF clauses are splitting into two distinct con-structions: the older active PF clause construction and the innovative passive construc-tion (cf. Croft 2001).

Malay is spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and southern Thailand, forming acommunity of more than 250 million speakers. The data collected for this study belongto the Malay variety spoken in Malaysia. Malay, a rigidly SVO language, has lostmuch of the focus system and the remaining morphology is much simpler than Taga-log or Cebuano. Notably, Malay has developed three types of passive, distinguished byaf²xal verbal morphology or by discourse transitivity (Chung 2005). Malay has aricher set of prepositions, which are used to mark location, time, and a variety ofoblique case-marking functions. Case markers include kepada �to� (dative), untuk �for�(benefactive), and dengan �with� (comitative). The three �basic� locational preposi-tions are di �at�, ke �to�, and dari �from� (Cumming 1991).

4. MOTION EVENTS IN THE FROG STORIES. In this section, we will lookat the structure of motion event descriptions in natural discourse. Languages differ inthe way various components of motion events are coded. In the following, we showthe motion event structure of the six languages by looking at (1) the distribution of pathand manner components; (2) the narrations of the owl�s exit in the Frog stories; (3) theGround constructions of the narrative, especially those of downward movement; and(4) path segments in the narration of the �cliff scene.�

Recall that in S-languages, path is always encoded outside of the main verb, in thesatellite, leaving that slot open for the expression of manner. As a consequence, theselanguages have generally elaborated the domain of manner of movement. The pre-ferred pattern in V-languages is to use the main verb to encode path or simple motion(e.g., �go�), leaving the expression of manner in an optional and foregrounding adjunctphrase, a gerundive, an adverbial phrase, or in a separate clause. Note that in thepresent study we include caused movement verbs such as the equivalents of pick, take,carry, put, and so forth, in the category of manner verbs. The reason we did this is thatthese verbs usually involve an ensuing trajectory of the moved object and express pathinformation implicitly. By contrast, purely action verbs like hold or posture verbs likestand, sit, crouch do not necessarily initiate a subsequent change in the object�s locationand were excluded from the present study.

In this study we make the assumption that path or directionality of motion does notcon³ate with manner into a single verb root. Whenever there is a con³ation of path andmanner, two verb roots are needed to encode the con³ation. Based on this assumption, averb like climb is treated in this study as a manner verb, rather than a path verb or an MPverb, and means something like �to crawl on a vertical surface, typically upward�, butdoes not semantically entail an upward motion. Saying of someone that she climbed


down is not a contradiction. Since we typically climb upward rather than downward, justas we typically walk forward instead of backward, there is little linguistic need to stressthe upward motion component associated with climbing. The assumption appears to bechallenged by the equivalent of the �climb� verb in numerous V-languages. In these lan-guages the �climb� verb, a parade example in the literature on the prototype semantics oflexical items, seems to be used only for upward motion in a grasping manner, a pointurged in Slobin (2004). Thus in Turkish, a V-language, tirmanmak �climb� is used only tomean �clamber upward�, thus con³ating both manner and path, while in reference to�clambering downward�, one can only have recourse to a simple downward path verb.Similarly, in Squliq, the equivalent of the Turkish tirmanmak is mkaraw, but one must usea simple downward path verb mbzyaq �descend� to mean �(climb) down�. In Tsou, capodenotes upward motion in a grasping manner, but the more atypical climbing downwardis iconically coded with a compound verb eu�si-peohu �climb down�, which is formed oftwo verb roots eu�si- �to use hands and feet� and supeohu �move down�. Note that in theSquliq narratives, one narrator, in fact, used mkaraw to mean �to climb out (of the bottle)�,in reference to the frog climbing out of the bottle, and another narrator used mkaraw tomean �climb into (a hole)�, suggesting that upward motion is not a necessary, albeit a pro-totypically expected, component of the verb. Slobin (pers. comm.) now suggests that thesemantics of the �climb� verbs are language-speci²c issues: �climb� is probably man-ner+path in some languages, but only manner in others. This raises the entire issue ofverbs that con³ate manner and path verbs (such as �³ee�, �plunge�, and many more), andfurther research is sorely needed.

Table 1 presents the distribution of the various motion components in wAn and inMandarin. As the table clearly shows, the differences between the wAn languages andMandarin are dramatic; similarly, the differences between Tsou and the other ²vewAn languages are just as striking. Mandarin is a highly verb-serializing languagewhere the most preferred strategy is to use combinations of manner as the main verbwith a directional complement composed of a path verb and a deictic motion verb, averb-serializing strategy that focuses on the path and the deictic components (± towardspeaker). Talmy (1985, 2000) considers Chinese as strongly satellite-framed, likeEnglish, although other researchers have placed it on a continuum somewhere between

TABLE 1. PERCENTAGE OF THE MOTION COMPONENTSIN THE FROG NARRATIVES

Manner Path MP P#M M#P M#P#D�

� M#P#D in Mandarin includes three types of combinations of motion components:M#P#D, M#D, and P#D.

Saisiyat 26 63.6 8.4 0.4 1.6 0

Squliq 42.1 57.1 0 0.4 0.4 0

Tsou 22.3 42.3 35.4 0 0 0

Tagalog 27.8 72.2 0 0 0 0

Cebuano 39.3 60.7 0 0 0 0

Malay 36.7 49.2 14.2 0 0 0

Mandarin 40.5 6.5 0 0 5.6 48.4


English and Spanish (Slobin and Hoiting 1994). Slobin (2004) now considers it a serialverb language, in basic agreement with the present analysis.

In Tsou, there are two equally strong strategies for encoding motion events: the useof path verbs alone and the use of lexicalized compound motion verbs that con³ateboth manner and path. Moreover, both manner and path components in compoundmotion verbs are bound elements, which effectively rules out the language as either apurely S- or V-language. Tsou thus represents a distinct language type and will be cat-egorized as a macro-event language, as noted above, though it also shares features of aV-language in having a relatively high use of path verbs alone. There are no signi²cantdifferences among the remaining ²ve wAn languages (with the exception of Saisiyatand Malay, discussed below). Each of these languages exempli²es a V-language char-acterized by a high use of path verbs and a low use of manner verbs.

Both Malay and Saisiyat exhibit incipient structural features in having acquired MPcompound verbs for motion events, a characteristic distinctly lacking in Squliq, Taga-log, and Cebuano.6 MP compound verbs found in the Malay data are illustrated below.Ter- is a pre²x meaning �accidentally� or �abruptly�.

ter-keluar ter-come.outter-jatuh ter-fallter-lepas ter-escapeter-masuk ter-enter

Summarizing brie³y the present section, we have shown the six wAn languagesand Mandarin fall into three distinct language types: Tsou is a macro-event languagewith a signi²cant MP compound strategy giving roughly equal salience to path andmanner. The other wAn languages are strongly path salient languages, though eachcan be shown to employ language-speci²c strategies, a point taken up in the follow-ing sections. Mandarin is a strongly verb-serializing language, and gives manner thegreatest salience. This initial typing of the seven languages studied will now be usedto predict a number of other typological characteristics such as path salience vs.manner salience in a clause, the frequency of ground components, size of the man-ner verb lexicon, and narrative style. Now the differing ways various languagesdescribe the emergence of the owl from a tree hole have been known to be quitesymptomatic of the type they ²t into, and this is the focus of the following section.

5. EMERGENCE OF THE OWL. Slobin (2004) surveys expressions used todescribe the emergence of the owl in the frog story in languages categorized by Talmyas either V- or S-languages. In V-languages, narrators consistently use a single pathverb to describe the emergence of the owl. By contrast, many S-language narrators usea manner verb together with a path satellite to describe the same motion event. Asexpected, most Tsou narrators use M#P compound verbs for the expression of themotion.7 As shown in table 2, all of the wAn languages (except for Tsou) exhibit a dis-

6. We have chosen not to consider the causative sense of the Referential focus (RF) marker as asubtype of manner. If we had done otherwise, the percentage ²gure of MP compound verbsfor Saisiyat would have gone up considerably. Note that Talmy (2000:114�16) considersCause to be on a par with Manner and recognizes both of them as types of satellite.


tinct preference for path verbs, much like speakers of other V-languages such as Span-ish and Turkish. All of the narrators in Saisiyat, Squlig, Tagalog, and Cebuanoconsistently used the path verb �to come out�. There are no instances where a mannerverb, with or without a satellite expression such as �³y (out)�, is used to introduce theowl. Sentences in (1) through (5) taken from the corpus data are illustrations.

(1) saisiyat8

�In�aray kahoey babaw �i�izo� m-wa:i� ila ka oewi�.from tree above inside AF-come pfv nom owl

�An owl came (out) from inside the tree above.�

(2) squliqM-htuw qutux qu a pu�puk.AF-come.out one nom prtcl owl

�An owl came out.�

7. In another scene, the exit of the frog from the jar, 100 percent of the Tsou narrators chose touse only path verbs to describe the exit of the frog. As shown in table 2, Tsou speakers alsooperate with a narrative style in which path verbs alone serve as the main verbs.

8. The following abbreviations are used in addition to those of the Leipzig Glossing Rules: AF, Agentfocus marker; asp, aspect marker; conj, conjunction; dm, discourse marker; exist, existentialverb; intrj, interjection; lnk, linker; prtcl, particle; PF, Patient focus marker; pzflr, pause²ller; PN, Proper noun; red, reduplication; and RF, Referential focus marker.

TABLE 2. THE OWL’S EXIT IN THE FROG STORY:PERCENTAGES OF MANNER AND PATH VERBS†

� Percentage ²gures for Spanish, English, Russian, and German are based on Slobin(2000, 2004) and Ozcaliskan and Slobin (1999).

manner verb‡

� Manner in this table refers to MP verbs for Tsou and Malay and to M#P or M#P#D forMandarin.

path verbsatellite-framed

Russian 100% �English 32% 68%German 18% 82%Dutch 17% 83%

serial verb languageMandarin 83.4% 16.6%

macro-event languageTsou 83.4% 16.6%

verb-framed French 100%Spanish 100%Turkish 100%Hebrew 3% 97%Saisiyat 100%Squliq Atayal 100%Tagalog 100%Cebuano 100%Malay 100%


(3) tagalogBigla-ng l-um-abas ang kuwago sa loob ng kahoy.suddenly-lnk AF-exit ang owl loc inside of tree

�Suddenly, the owl came out from inside the tree.�

(4) cebuanoUnya ang owl ni-gawas gikan sa kahoy.then ang owl AF-move.out be.from loc tree

�Then the owl came out from the tree.�

(5) malayBurung hantu keluar daripada lubang pokok itu.one-clf bird.ghost come.out from hole tree that

�An owl came out from the tree hole.�

In table 1 Mandarin Chinese is shown to make a very high use of a speci²c serialverb construction of the type M#P#D for motion event descriptions. The wAn lan-guages as a whole ²nd little use for either this type of verb serialization, or even thesimpler type M#P or P#M. As V-languages, any verb serialization must take a pathverb as the ²rst verb, given that in V-languages, path is obligatory and manner optional.We have no explanation for the paucity of the serial verb type P#M in these languages.

Verb serialization is a diverse phenomenon and appears in a variety of morphosyn-tactic forms. Much like converb constructions that are prevalent in Japanese and Turkiclanguages, it is a grammatical resource that allows a compact rendering of many sub-events in single clauses and the grounds of many of these subevents are thus sup-pressed.9 In the following discussion, we will operate with the intuitive notion that verbserialization is two or more verbs acting as one verb and that it is used to describe assingle events what in a nonserializing language is achieved by the use of a clause builtaround a single verb. Restricting our attention for purposes of the present discussion tojust motion events, the major functions of verb serialization may be said to add path ofmotion to deictic center of motion (D#P), manner of motion to path (P#M), a source orgoal component to path (P#P), or an event or activity verb to path (P#A), or a path tomanner of motion (M#P), depending on the type of language involved.10 For example,

(A) D#P: adding path to deictic center of motion(6) saisiyat

M-wai� kas�oehaz ka takem �AF-come move.out nom frog

�The frog comes out ��squliq: NAtagalog: NAcebuano: NAmalay: NA

9. We are grateful to Matt Shibatani for bringing to our attention the functional similaritybetween verb serialization and converb constructions that are found in Japanese and Turkiclanguages.

10. We thus exclude from the present study verb serialization of the type paraphrasable as �comeand �,� or �go and. �� This type of verb serialization usually has a purpose reading and is usedprincipally to describe activities and thus falls outside the purview of the present concern.


(B) D/P#M: adding manner of motion to deictic center of motion or path(7) saisiyat

Boya� m-wai� h-oem-ayap ray korkoring ki ahoe�.bee AF-come AF- ³y loc child and dog

�The bees come ³ying toward the child and the dog.�

(8) squliq M-ge: m-laka� qu nguyaq qasa la.AF-leave AF-³y nom owl that prtcl

�The owl ³ies away.� (Frog 4: 197�98)tagalog: NAcebuano: NA

(C) P#G: adding ground expression (source or goal) to path(9) saisiyat

Ahoe� ki ma�iaeh sahae� ila ila hao ray �atas.dog and man fall pfv toward there loc cliff

�The dog and the boy fell off the cliff to (the ground) there.� (Frog 7:86)

(10) squliq M-htuw kahul squ bling na qhoniq qu nguziq lga.AF-move.out be.from loc hole gen tree nom owl prtcl

�The owl comes/goes out of the treehole.� (Frog 5:146�47)tagalog: NAcebuano: NA

The three types of verb serialization construction above show symptoms of lexi-calization. This can be observed by noting that the set of path verbs is itself relatively²xed and that the path verb taking the ²rst position is even more ²xed. The only verbthat appears in patterns (A) and (B) in the Saisiyat data is mwai� �come�. Thus thesepatterns are relatively accessible to the speaker, which in turn contributes to their lex-icalization. The production data also indicate that narrators produced these utter-ances with relative ease, there being no pause or repair, in marked contrast to theproduction of coordinate sentences discussed below.

(D) M#P: The status of this type of verb serialization in the wAn languages remainsat this stage of our research somewhat unclear.11 In a language like Spanish, path isexpressible outside the main manner verb only if paths are not boundary-crossing. Thusrunning to/toward/across the street is possible, but not running outside/inside the building(Aske 1989). The present corpus data do not permit us to draw such a ²rm conclusion,but do suggest that this type of verb serializing must be a distinctly dispreferred type inthe wAn languages, as can be observed from table 1. Of the 239 motion event clauses in

11. M in M#P is here taken in its narrower sense to mean only spontaneous manner of motion verbs(e.g., run), but not causative motion verbs like put, which are counted as manner verbs in table 2,for reasons explained earlier. There are numerous instances of M#P verb serialization found inthe corpus where M is a causative motion verb. One such instance in Saisiyat is the following:

(v) saisiyat (Frog 2:30)Mari-inila �al-al�oehaz-en ila ka= ta�oeloeh noka ahoe�.take-pzfl.rpfv red-take.out-pzflr pfv nom head gen dog�The dog tried to pull out its head (from the container).�


the Saisiyat corpus, a total of just three tokens spoken by two different narrators belong tothis type, two of which are given below as (11) and (12). (13) is an elicited sentence:

(11) saisiyatWae�ae� �ae�aeaew ila .. ila hiza ray ima mwahil.12 deer run pfv reach there loc asp wide

�The deer ran away toward an open space there.� (Frog 5:190)

(12) saisiyatKorkoring homses maykonkonai sahae� ray ra:i�.child surprised roll fall loc ground

�The boy got surprised and fell down rolling.� (Frog 8:43)

(13) saisiyatYako �ae�aeaw kaslatar.1sg run move.out

�I ran out.� (elicited)

In (11), �ae�aeaew is a manner verb, and ila �go; reach�, a path verb, is restricted tooccurring only following a motion verb and functions more like a direction particle. In(12) maykonkonai is a manner verb and sahae� a path verb. Note that we have shownearlier that Saisiyat has begun to acquire a sizable number of MP compound verbs andthat it is only reasonable for us to expect it to have developed the M#P verb serializa-tion as a strategy. (13) is an M#P verb serial sentence where �ae�aeaw is a manner verband kaslatar a boundary-crossing path verb. The existence of (13) may suggest theboundary-crossing constraint, in its pure form, does not operate in Saisiyat. On theother hand, a stronger constraint against any verb serialization of the form M#P�regardless of whether or not P is boundary crossing�may have been the primary fac-tor for the Squliq Atayal narrator in (14) below to repair and shift to a serial verb con-struction of the P#M type mge: mlaka�, literally, �leave ³y� at line 197 when she couldhave said mlaka� mge: �³y away� at line 196 and meant what she had in mind.13

(14) squliq196 � Wal m-laka� qu,

asp AF-³y nom

197 � m-ge: m-laka� qu ka,AF-leave AF-³y Nom ka

198 � (1.1) nguyaq qasa la.14

owl that prtcl

�(The owl) ³ew (out). The owl ³ew away.�

12. Internal ellipses with two periods �..� show a short pause (0.3~0.7 seconds).13. Lee (2003) investigates the structure of motion event sentences in Kavalan, a nearly extinct

language spoken by fewer than 100 people on the northeast coast of Taiwan, and concludesthat it is also a V-language. Among her corpus data is a serial verb sentence of the P#M type:

(vi) kavalanWasu �nay nani wiyati me-RaRiw.dog that dm leave AF-run�(Then) the dog ran away.�

14. The number in parentheses immediately following a sequence of three dots represents theduration (in seconds) of a �long� pause. Thus here the narrator paused 1.1 seconds beforeuttering the last few words in his/her sentence.


The Tsou narrative data present some puzzles: the M#P verb serialization pattern isnot attested in the language at all, and yet the strong MP compounding strategy in Tsouthat we saw in table 1 can plausibly be said to be a strategy that results from reductionand lexicalization of the more general M#P verb serialization based on the reasonableassumption that ordering of bound morphemes re³ects the ordering of lexical mor-phemes at an earlier stage�though sources other than verb serialization cannot beruled out a priori. The complete absence of M#P verb serialization as a strategy in theTsou frog narratives thus is a mystery to us.

This immediately raises the question of the pattern and the density of verb serializa-tion in these six languages, a question clearly pertinent to an understanding of thestructure of motion events at the clause level. We calculated the ratio of serial verbs permain motion clauses in the frog texts and the results are shown in table 3. The tableshows that although Squliq may be said to be a mildly serializing language, Tagalog,Cebuano, Tsou, and Malay represent the polar extreme of showing little verb serializa-tion at all. Because these results are based on evidence from more than one Austrone-sian primary subgroup, we speculate that Proto-Austronesian was a language thattolerated no verb serialization in motion clauses.

(E) Verb subordination: Unlike Saisiyat, Squliq, or Tsou, both Tagalog andCebuano apparently do not allow multiple verbs in single clauses, through the more�symmetric� strategy of either verb serialization or verb compounding. It is onlythrough subordination that multiple verbs can be allowed in single clauses in these twolanguages. If manner is coded as the main verb, path must be subordinated to form aVmanner + pa-Path construction, as in (15). It is also possible to use a path verb whilesubordinating the manner component, as in (16). Of the two sentence types, nativespeakers ²nd (15) to be the more preferred type. This along with the data shown intable 1 suggests that the universally preferred word order for the languages investigatedhere is for manner verbs to precede path verbs, even in V-languages.

(15) a. cebuanoUnya ni-lakaw ang deer pa�ingon didto sa bangin.then AF-walk ang deer PA-go there loc cliff

[Manner] [Path]

�Then the deer walked toward the cliff.� (Cebuano, Frog 2:79�80)b. tagalog

L-um-utang ang bote pa-labas ng kuweba.AF-³oat ang bottle pa-out loc cave[Manner] [Path]

�The bottle ³oated out of the cave.� (Tagalog, elicited)

TABLE 3. RATIO OF SERIAL VERBS PER MAIN MOTION CLAUSES

language ratio of densityTagalog 0%Cebuano 0%Tsou 0%Malay 3.3%Saisiyat 8.3%Squliq 15.1%Mandarin 54.0%


c. tagalogAng bote ay l-um-utang pa-labas ng kuweba.ang bottle ay AF-³oat pa-out loc cave

�The bottle ³oated out of the cave.� (Tagalog, AY construction)

(16) a. cebuanoUnya ni-paingon ang deer didto sa bangin nga nag-lakaw.then AF-go ang deer there loc cliff rel AF-walk

[Path] [Manner]

�Then the deer went toward the cliff walking.� (Cebuano, elicited)

b. tagalogL-um-abas ang bote na pa-lutang galing sa kuweba.AF-out ang bottle rel pa-³oat from loc cave[Path] [Manner]

�The bottle ³oated out of the cave.� (Tagalog, elicited)

(F) Coordinate strategy: Verbs in a series are considered to constitute a coordinateconstruction if the verbs have separate scope for tense or aspect or if they each areinterpretable as representing independent events. In a biclausal coordinate strategy,manner verbs are much freer to either precede or follow path verbs (represented asM##P and P##M respectively), each occurring in a separate clause, without doing vio-lence to what is considered a normal event sequence type, while serial verb construc-tions are much more constrained in terms of what constitutes a salient event type.Thus, for example, both jumping and leaving, and leaving and jumping are possibleevent sequences, and no languages have probably ever found it necessary to codify onebut not the other as a signi²cant event type. Both M##P and P##M are indeed attestedin Saisiyat, Squliq, Tsou, and Cebuano. In both Saisiyat and Squliq, clauses are con-joined without using an overt connective; in Tsou, they are usually marked with a con-nective ho except when the ²rst verb is hafa �carry-PF�, in which case, hafa and thepath verb in a second clause are conjoined without the use of a connective. In theCebuano sentence below, lakaw is interpretable as either a manner verb �walk� or apath verb �to leave�. Attested coordinate constructions are illustrated below.

(17) saisiyatSi-mari� �aehae� ka takem ila hao.RF- take one nom frog go there

�(The boy) takes one frog and goes there.� (Frog 1:118)

(18) squliqM-stopu wal m-ge: qu qpatong qa. AF-jump asp AF-leave nom frog this

�The frog jumped (out of the jar) and left.�

(19) tsouTe�o mo-ftii ho su� ta ceoa.aux.1sg AF-jump conj fall obl ground

�I�m jumping to the ground.� (²eld notes)


(20) tsouIsi cu elua �o fo�kunge; isi cu hafa maine�e.aux.3sg prtcl PF.²nd nom frog aux.3sg prtcl carry home

�He found the frog and took it (and went) home.�

(21) cebuanoNang-lakaw dayon sila ni-�adto sila sa kagubatan.AF-walk dm 3pl AF-go 3pl loc woods

�Then they left; they went into the woods.� (Frog 4:44)

(22) tagalogLumabas sila ng bahayAF-exit 3pl obl house

� (0.8) nag-punta ng kaparangan upang hanap-in ang palaka.AF-go obl forest so ²nd-PF ang frog

�(They) left the house and went into the woods to look for the frog.�

(23) malayKatak itu keluar melangkah menuju ke pintu.frog that go step.toward toward loc door

�The frog came out and walked toward the door.�

6. GROUND EXPRESSIONS ACROSS THE LANGUAGES. V-languages, bycomparison with S-languages, macro-event languages, and serial-verb languages, arecharacterized by the occurrence of fewer Ground elements per clause. Slobin(1996:201) argues that, with verbs of motion in narratives, English allows for an elabo-rate use of satellites to specify path with a single verb. Table 4 below displays the per-centages of clauses with ground adjuncts and those without ground adjuncts in motionclauses in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and in the six wAn languages. Less than halfof the motion event clauses include at least one ground adjunct encoding location,source, or goal (Plus-ground clauses), while over half consist of only bare verbs, pro-viding no elaboration of path beyond the inherent directionality of the verb itself(Minus-ground clauses). Table 5 shows the percentages of downward motion descrip-tions with the equivalent of the verb �fall (down)�. The Saisiyat data show that the

TABLE 4. PERCENTAGES OF MINUS-GROUND AND PLUS-GROUND CLAUSES

minus-ground plus-groundV-languages: Saisiyat 61% 39%

Squliq 64% 36%Tagalog 55% 45%Cebuano 59% 41%Malay 42% 58%Spanish�

� Percentage ²gures for Spanish and English are taken from Slobin (1996).

37% 63%S-languages: English� 18% 82%Macro-event languages: Tsou 52% 48%Serial-verb languages: Mandarin 43% 57%


downward motion verb sahae� �fall (down)� occurs alone, without any kind of groundexpressions 27.3 percent of the time, slightly lower than Spanish. Other wAn lan-guages�Squliq, Tagalog, and Cebuano�show a much stronger tendency to use just abare verb to express descending motion.

The results in table 4 can be seen to be in basic harmony with those shown in table 5,with the exception of Saisiyat and Malay, discussed below. V-languages tend to use baremotion verbs alone and to provide no elaboration of path in specifying ground informa-tion, the wAn languages much more so than Spanish, while S-languages tend to pro-vide in addition at least ground adjuncts that code for location, source, or goal. Althoughit is now well known that our cognitive attention focuses primarily on the initial or espe-cially the ²nal phase of paths (termed �path windowing� in Talmy 1996), it is only bylooking at the discourse data that we can come to appreciate the dramatic differencesexhibited here between the four types of language in the way ground information is pro-vided or suppressed. In this motion domain, Tsou clearly aligns more with the V-lan-guages, but it also shows a distinctly more balanced distribution between Plus-groundand Minus-ground expressions, as would be expected of a macro-event language.15 InMandarin, the persistent attention to the deictic center of motion associated with thestrongly preferred M#P#D strategy already goes some way toward specifying, or atleast making it possible for the hearer to infer, the ground information, and thus itsshowing in table 4 must be understood in this light. While Saisiyat in general behavesmuch like the other V-languages in providing minimal speci²cation of ground informa-tion, as shown in table 5, its use of the downward motion verb sahae� is unique in nearlyalways doing the opposite of providing at least some kind of ground information.

The question that interests us here is why there seems to be in general less coding ofground in V-languages. The answer we suggest lies in understanding the gradient natureof path vs. ground information. Path and ground speci²cation may ultimately be a gra-dation. Gong (2003), in a quantitative analysis of mutual information (MI) values of

15. There are two verbs in the Tsou corpus that are equivalent to fall in English, namely supeohuand su� and their syntactic behaviors are different. While su� always took a ground expression,most occurrences of supeohu did not. But supeohu had a much higher token frequency than su�,which is why the percentage ²gure for Tsou is as shown in table 5.

TABLE 5. PERCENTAGES OF DOWNWARD MOTION DESCRIPTIONSWITH THE BARE VERB ‘FALL (DOWN)’

bare verbsV-languages: Saisiyat 27.3%

Squliq 52.2%Tagalog 62.5%Cebuano 62.9%Malay 26.9%Spanish�

� Percentage ²gures for Spanish and English aretaken from Slobin (1996).

36%S-languages: English� 15%Macro-event languages: Tsou 55.6%Serial-verb languages: Mandarin 41.9%


Mandarin motion verbs based on the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus shows thatdirectionality of path is highly predictable from manner of motion. In general, when theMI value is greater than 2, it means that the cooccurrence between a manner verb and itspath of motion is not random, but highly expectable. What Gong�s data show is that theMI values between manner verbs and path verbs in Mandarin average greater than 6,suggesting that many of the manner verbs and their path complements have becomelexicalized and are stored and accessed as units. This mutual predictability betweenmanner and path account, at least in part, for why there is generally less coding ofground in Mandarin and Tsou, the two languages that have a high use of combinationsof manner and path verbs (MP or M#P#D verbs). A peculiar feature in the syntax ofSquliq motion and certain activity verbs that take an oblique adjunct headed by theoblique case marker squ� or, less frequently, sa is that the NP following the oblique casemarker is often elided, resulting in sequences like Vmotion/activity + squ�/sa, as in

(24) squliq atayalM-karaw squ�, kt-an-nya� qutux bling na� qhoniq. AF-climb obl LF-see-3sg one hole gen tree

�(He) climbed and saw a hole in the tree.�

This suggests that there is in Squliq a tighter constituency between the motion verb andthe oblique case marker than that between the case marker and the following NP spec-ifying the ground. This in turn suggests that there is also mutual predictability betweenmotion verbs and the following ground expressions in Squliq. Everything takentogether, we suggest that if path is predictable from the manner of motion verb, and ifground is also projectable from the motion verb, then there would obviously be lessmotivation for a language to further code for ground information.

6.1 THE M=P VERBS. We have suggested that the mutual predictability betweenmanner and path may account in part for why there is in general less coding of groundinformation in languages with a high use of combination of manner and path verbs.Another factor contributing to the low use of ground expressions in most of the wAnlanguages, that so far seems to have escaped the attention of researchers on the lan-guage of motion events, is that what look like simple manner verbs on the surface,when used either in combination with another motion or activity verb, or more to thepoint, when used alone, often have a preferred/default path interpretation. The pathinterpretation is carried by the structure of utterance, given the structure of the lan-guage, and not by virtue of the particular contexts of utterances. In other words, thepath interpretation is not based on a direct computation about speaker intention, butrather on general expectations about how language is normally used. An examinationof the data shows that manner verbs that involve motor activities (e.g., run, walk, ³y,climb) are most likely to coerce a path interpretation. Thus the equivalent of English ³y,in the V-languages, for example, is not just �³y�, but ³ying away/around/ up/out; run isnot just �run�, but run away; jump is not just �jump�, but jump out, and so forth. Interest-ingly, these motor pattern manner verbs are also the most frequent manner verbs thatoccur in the M#P#D construction in Mandarin. The ³ying away of the owl in the frogstory was expressed by three Saisiyat narrators as oewi� hoemayap ila �The owl ³ies


(away)�.16 This pragmatic meaning of �oriented path,� if recurrent enough, may in timebecome lexicalized as part of a new lexically coded meaning of the verb. Thus, exactlyas in Mandarin, in Cebuano the verb lakaw �walk�, originally a manner verb, has devel-oped an additional path verb meaning of �to leave; to go away�. A native speaker ofSquliq Atayal, when asked to translate into English the following motion expressionstaken from the corpus (25�27), added a path phrase or path satellite to the originalmotion verbs. The added path expressions are italicized below.

(25) squliqMemaw mlaka� m-ong squ� hngyan na hozil.even AF-³y AF-hear obl sound gen dog

�Even the bees ³ew out to hear the dog�s voice.� (Frog 1:98�100)

(26) squliqMlaka� yaya�-nya�.AF-³y bee-3sg

�The bees are ³ying around.� (Frog 3:108)

(27) squliqHnyal m-stopu� qutux qu qoli� ru m-n-kux kya la.asp AF-jump one nom mouse conj AF-pfv-frighten there prtcl

�A mouse jumped out and frightened him.� (Frog 2:105)

Demonstrations from other languages are given below.

(28) cebuanoDayon ang owl ning-lupad.then ang owl AF-³y

�Then the owl ³ew away.� (Frog 1:46�48)

(29) cebuanoGi-kuha niya ang usa ka baki� ug ni-lakaw na sila.PF-take 3sg ang one lnk frog and AF-walk pfv 3pl

�He took one frog and they walked away.� (Frog 6:89�91)

(30) tagalogTumakbo ito nang matulin at ini-hulogrun-AF this asp fast and PF-fall

ang bata ng usa sa isa-ng putikan.ang child obl deer loc one-lnk muddy.place

�The deer ran away fast and tossed the child into the mud.� (Frog 4:134�37)

(31) malayKatak itu keluar dari botol dan melarikan diri.frog that come.out from bottle and run self

�The frog came out from the bottle and ran away.� (Frog 6:5�6)

Motion verbs that implicate a path interpretation will be categorized as M=P verbs.Table 6 gives the percentages of M=P verbs in the sample languages.

16. This event was described by two Tsou narrators as the owl smoyafo �rush out� and meiavovei�³y around�, both of which are MP compound verbs.


As we can see, a fairly high percentage of manner verbs in the various languagesinvestigated here function as M=P verbs and thus carry a default path interpretation,especially in Malay. Tsou is not included in the table, because conceptual combina-tions of manner and path are always explicitly coded as MP verbs in this language.

The uncovering of the class of M=P verbs in the wAn languages is important tomotion researchers for a deeper understanding of the relative salience of manner vs.path in languages. What looks on the surface like a manner verb in these languagesturns out on closer scrutiny to involve a path interpretation after all. There is thus aninteresting mutual implication between manner and path, especially in V-languages.On the one hand, V-language speakers tend to focus on the path of a motion scene andignore manner unless it is exceptional. On the other hand, reference to manner alsooften implicates path. We have suggested that the path interpretation is basicallycoerced by the structure of utterance, given the structure of language, and not necessar-ily by virtue of the particular contexts of utterances. This ²nding suggests that the roleof inference should be factored in as perhaps another typological dimension, in addi-tion to typologies based on lexicalization and morphosyntax.

6.2 EVENT SEGMENTATION IN THE CLIFF SCENE. It has been sug-gested that one reason that V-language narratives provide less speci²cation of groundinformation is that V-languages are more concerned with establishing the physical andemotional settings in which people move, thus allowing manner and path to beinferred, whereas S-language narratives attend to both manner of movement and suc-cessive path segments, making it dif²cult to have a mental image of one without theother (Slobin 2000:132). If this observation is true, then comparable motion events willbe described with fewer path segments in V-languages than in S-languages. The cliffscene in the frog story provides an illustration. This scene, which shows the appear-ance of the deer and how it led to the fall of the boy into the water below, is divided intofour path segments (Slobin 1997):

1. change of location: deer rises up, runs, arrives at cliff2. negative change of location: deer stops at cliff3. cause change of location: deer throw boy, makes boy/dog fall4. change of location: boy/dog fall into water

Slobin (1997) calculated the number of event segments mentioned by each narrator andcame up with higher averages of event segments per narrator in S-languages than in V-languages. The corresponding averages for the languages in the present study are pre-sented in table 7. The numbers given in table 7 fall roughly within the range predicted for

TABLE 6. PERCENTAGE OF M=P VERBS

language tokens/motion verb tokens/manner verbSquliq 10.0 31.1Saisiyat 6.3 24.2Tagalog 5.2 18.5Cebuano 11.9 30.2Malay 10.8 30.2


V-languages as well as S-languages by Slobin, save for two glaring exceptions. Saisiyatand especially Squliq Atayal, surprisingly, behave more like Germanic languages. Thereis no evidence, however, that the speakers of the V-languages in the present sampleattended more to physical settings of the motion events in the frog narratives. A checkthrough all the event sequences in the cliff scene in all of the narrative data clearly indi-cates that not a single narrator alluded to there being a body of water somewhere underthe cliff prior to their saying that both the boy and the dog fall (into the water). What thesespeakers said is a compact presentation of the type shown in (32) through (36).

(32) saisiyat: The child rode on the deer as the latter went toward thegrassy land. The dog chased and called out at the deer. The deerstopped upon seeing the cliff. The child and the dog fell off the cliff.There were a forest and a piece of land on the side.

(33) saisiyat: The deer took the child and ran to the cliff and threw him off.The dog also fell into the river below.

(34) squliq: The deer took the boy and ran to the cliff. His dog also ran after thedeer. They got to the edge of a cliff and the deer threw the boy into the water.

(35) tagalog: The deer ran. Bantay was also surprised and ran with thedeer. They did not know that they were heading toward a cliff. The deerknew it was a cliff and stopped running. Only Allen and Bantay fellinto a body of water.

(36) tagalog: The deer ran (away), while the dog chased it. The deer ran withthe boy on top of its back and it threw the boy into the mud with the dog.

(37) cebuano: Then he was seated on top of the deer�s head. Then the dogand the child fell into the water.

(38) cebuano: The deer ran (away). The deer kept on running, and the dogwas running too. When they reached the cliff they fell. The child andthe dog fell. There was a body of water where the child fell.

TABLE 7. AVERAGE NUMBER OF EVENT SEGMENTS AND PERCENTAGE OF NARRATORS MENTIONING MORE THAN THREE SEGMENTS IN THE

‘CLIFF SCENE’

V-languages: Romance�

� The percentages for these languages aretaken from Slobin (1997).

2.1 30%Semitic� 2.0 30%Saisiyat 3.0 50%Squliq 3.6 100%Tagalog 1.8 17%Cebuano 2.2 33%Malay 2.5 50%

S-languages: Germanic� 3.0 86%Slavic� 2.8 76%

Macro-event languages: Tsou 3.1 83%Serial-verb languages: Mandarin 3.0 100%


The question then is why the otherwise apparently typical V-languages such as Squliqand Saisiyat have turned out to behave like S-languages in this respect.

The unusually high percentage numbers for Squliq Atayal in table 7 call for someexplanation. All of the ²ve Squliq narrators, including one church clergyman and twoschool teachers, were obviously enjoying their chances at the storytelling and their narra-tives were unusually detailed, emotionally involved, saturated with lots of cultural fram-ing (such as giving tribal names to the boy and the dog, thinking that they get along verywell, guessing that they probably can�t swim after they get thrown off the cliff into a bodyof water, etc.). The lengthy narratives average 350 IUs (intonation units) per narrator,which is much more than the overall average of 97 IUs (summed across all of the otherfour languages) per narrator. This greater amount of dwelling on details makes it possiblefor the narrators to tap their potential linguistic resources, which may thus have beenlargely responsible for pulling the percentage average up toward the S-language end,resulting in their greater attention to both manner of movement (cf. table 11 below) andpath segments, although Squliq behaves pretty much like a typical V-language in otherrespects. However, to say that a language like Squliq is a typical V-language is simply tosay that the verb in the language usually encodes the direction of motion, while the man-ner information is optionally encoded in adjunct phrases. It is a typical but not an exclu-sionary way of encoding motion events within a language, and typical ways of sayingthings can be overridden, given the appropriate circumstances.17

We have shown that Tsou, a macro-event language, makes a high use of MP com-pound verbs, and that Saisiyat has begun to also acquire the MP compounding strat-egy. Similarly, the overriding strategy of Mandarin is its use of M#P#D to describemotion events. As one consequence, speakers of these languages attend to combina-tions of manner and path as conceptual wholes and may thus allow for their speakersto attend to event segments more readily. The effects of these linguistic representationson off-line memories for events show up clearly in table 7. The results in table 7 showthat Tsou, as predicted, is distinct from other wAn languages and aligns more readilywith S-languages. However, we have no explanation for the high percentage ²guresfor Saisiyat in table 7, beyond noting that it has begun to also acquire the compoundingstrategy of the type MP characteristic of Tsou.

Table 8 summarizes the status of each language based on the criteria discussedabove. Based on the results shown in the table, all of the wAn languages are united inhaving a high use of path verbs for motion descriptions and in showing little interest inspecifying ground information. Of the six languages, Tagalog and Cebuano may besaid to be most strongly verb-framed, while the three Formosan languages fail in atleast one of the tests. Both Tsou and Saisiyat fail in two of the four tests, marking them

17. The high percentages for Squliq in table 7 are here attributed to the personal characteristics ofthe narrators. One of the reviewers raises the question of whether the ²gures for the other lan-guages would be signi²cantly different for narrators of the Squliq kind. Also, because theseSquliq narrators were among those using the highest number of manner verbs, can one attributethis to their characteristics as narrators? Slobin (pers. comm.) raises a similar concern, notingthat his Chilean Spanish adult frog stories are exceptionally long and literary in form, whereasChilean 9-year-olds tell short and highly stereotyped stories. We do not have ready answers tothese important questions, beyond saying that future researchers in this area need to developother kinds of elicitation procedure that control better for the length of narratives.


un²t to be categorized as pure V-languages. Tsou, as a macro-event language, has fea-tures of a V-language both in having a high use of bare path verbs alone for downwardmotion descriptions and in the low percentage of plus-ground expressions, whileSaisiyat shows incipient characteristics of a macro-event language like Tsou, as notedabove. The typology of the wAn languages established on the basis of the resultsgiven in table 1 clearly shows that the languages each have a characteristic tendency inone direction or the other, thus necessarily tolerating exceptional strategies when onetries to work within a strictly two-way Talmyan typology.

We turn next to the question of how the ²ve languages differ from each other andfrom other V-languages, especially with respect to the expression of manner and path.

7. LANGUAGES MIND THEIR MANNERS DIFFERENTLY. V-languagespeakers seem to build mental images of physical scenes with minimal focus on man-ner of movement. As a consequence, in normal instances, V-language speakers tend toomit manner verbs or manner adjuncts and ground elements (Slobin 2000:108; cf.tables 4 and 5 above). For example, it would usually be suf²cient to say in French Il estentre in lieu of the more complex Il est entre dans la maison en courant �He entered thehouse by running.� Manner will be expressed only if it is exceptional, or if it is neededto provide some identifying information; otherwise, translational motion takes prece-dence. As con²rmed by our Saisiyat informants, (39) is a more natural expression than(40). In other words, it seems more natural for a Saisiyat native speaker to perceive thebird as �coming out� of the tree hole than to visualize it as �³ying� out of it.

(39) saisiyatHiza ray hoeroe� oewi� kas�oehaz ila.that loc hole owl move.out pfv

�The owl came out from the hole.�(Saisiyat Frog 1: 47�48)

(40) saisiyatHiza ray hoeroe� oewi� h-oem-ayap kas�oehaz ila.that loc hole owl AF-³y move.out pfv

�The owl ³ew out from the hole.� (constructed)

In Cebuano, only one component, usually the path, is expressed in a singlemotion event clause, exactly as in Saisiyat. Clauses such as (15a), repeated as (41)below, incorporating both path and manner verbs, occur only twice in the data. Thusit is more appropriate to say that Cebuano clauses can accommodate only one mainverb, with the other verb forms downgraded to subordinate clauses.

TABLE 8. SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS ON THE DIAGNOSTIC TESTS FOR V-LANGUAGES

owl’s exit ground expression downward motion narrative styleTsou X V V XSaisiyat V V X XSquliq Atayal V V V XTagalog V V V VCebuano V V V VMalay V V X V


(41) cebuanoUnya ni-lakaw ang deer pa�ingon didto sa bangin.then AF-walk ang deer pa-go there loc cliff

[Manner] [Path]

�Then the deer walked toward the cliff.� (Cebuano Frog 2:79�80)

In an interesting illustration of the constraint that normally only one componentis expressed in a single clause, (42) from the Cebuano Frog narratives shows thatwhen both path and manner are available for on-line production, Cebuano speakershave a choice between the two. In this instance, the narrator uses a manner verb torepair a path verb, given that Cebuano does not allow two verbs to occur in a singleclause. Note that in (42), path and manner verbs are uttered in different intonationunits, as indicated by different superscript numbers.

(42) cebuano25Na-naog 26ni-ambak ang �iro�.AF-down AF-jump ang dog[Path] [Manner]

�The dog went down= jumped.� (Cebuano Frog 5:25�26)

Tagalog observes the same constraint as that in Cebuano in restricting the number ofverbs that can occur in a single clause. Although we were able to elicit clauses such as(15b,c) and (16b), these did not show up in our corpus data, con²rming that just as inCebuano, these represent at best a dispreferred strategy in the language.

Now if path is an obligatory component in motion event descriptions and if V-lan-guages tend to omit manner expressions, the degree of manner salience must be asigni²cant parameter along which languages can differ. In satellite-framed or serial-verb languages, manner is encoded in the verb. In macro-event languages, manner iscoded as a lexical pre²x to the main verb. In verb-framed languages, manner is oftenexpressed as an adjunct. In addition, it has been observed that manner is expressed ingestures in many languages. Slobin (2000), based in part on McNeill and Duncan(2000), reports that S-language speakers use gestures that combine path and manner toaugment the lexical expression of manner, or they gesture path alone. By contrast, V-language speakers use gestures to accompany path verbs and manner verbs, and thesegestures depict only path or only manner.

In Tagalog and Cebuano, manner is coded as the verb or as an adjunct. mannerverbs function to provide descriptive information to help identify a referent being intro-duced into discourse, as shown in the two extracts below. In both extracts, a path verb(43) or an existential construction (44) is used to introduce a new referent. The mannerinformation of �³ying� at lines 31 and 35 in (43) and at line 87 in (44) is used as anidentifying description.


(43) tagalog27 � Pero-ng l-um-abas

but-ang AF-move.out

28 . . yong mga= <P ano ba ito P>?18

that pl what Q this

29 � Naku ano ba ito?intrj what Q this

�But what came out were�what are these? Oh, what were these?�30 � (1.1) M=31 � (1.9) di ko alam ano-ng tawag diyan

neg 1sg know what-ang call there

32 � sa Tagalog.sa PN

�I don�t know how to call these in Tagalog.�33 � (1.7) O=di hala sige hanap pa rin sila nang hanap so intrj ²nd still also still 3pl asp ²nd

34 � da- nandyan pa rin yong mga= ano mga= there still also that pl pzflr pl

35 � XXX basta may mga lumilipad.19

prtcl exist pl AF-³y

�Anyway, they kept on looking, but those ³ying creatures were stillthere.� (Tagalog Frog 1: 27�35)

(44) cebuano84 � (0.8) Ang sulod

ang inside

85 � usa ka bukawone ka owl

86 � ang langgam nga dako-g mataang bird rel big-lnk eye

87 nga sa gabi�i lang mu-lopad maka-kita�ma�ayo.rel sa night only AF-³y AF-see well

�Inside the tree hole was an owl with large eyes, the kind of bird that³ies only at night and sees well. ��

(45) saisiyat (Frog 2:5�8)5 � (2.6) Hiza� ka=

that nom

6 � ray �izo� takemloc inside frog

7 � ra:iw ilaleave pfv

8 . . t-om-kaw ila.jump-AF pfv

�The frog inside the container left. (It) jumped (out).�

18. �<P � P>� encloses a stretch of piano speech.19. �XXX� indicates a portion of text not clearly audible.


(46) saisiyat (Frog 8:19�21)19 � (2.1) Sia hawah ka hinoehas

3s open acc window

20 � (2.6) ahoe� raiw iladog leave pfv

21 � (1.5) t-om-kaw ila.jump-AF pfv

�He opened the window and the dog jumped away.�

(47) malay (Frog 5:33�34)33 � Tiba-tiba seekor rusa mun-ah muncul

suddenly one-cl deer appear

34 � rusa itu menggigit budak tersebut dan deer that bite child that and

mengangkat budak tersebut dan melari.carry child that and run

�Suddenly a deer appeared. It bit the child, carried him, and ran.�

If we consider the percentages of path verbs used in the narratives in all of the lan-guages being studied (see table 9 below), we can see that they fall within a fairly narrowrange, the spread between the high and the low being no more than 20 percent. On theother hand, the differences in the percentages of manner verbs used in the narrativesbetween the languages were considerable. As shown in table 10, percentages of mannerverbs are uniformly low in the four V-languages. On the non-V language side, Tsou has ahigher use, and Mandarin�a highly verb serializing language where nine out of tenclauses use a manner verb�has the highest use of manner verbs. These ²ndings are notreally surprising, because they are already foreshadowed by the results in tables 1 and 2.Everything taken together, these results comport with Slobin�s (2004) ²nding that lan-guages differ not so much in whether some focus more on path than others, but in howmuch they focus on manner as a component of motion event descriptions.

TABLE 9. PERCENTAGE OF PATH EXPRESSIONS IN THE FROG STORY

Path MP P#M M#P M=P M#P#D TotalSaisiyat 63.6 8.4 0.4 1.6 6.3 0 80.3Squliq 57.1 0 0.4 0.4 10.0 0 67.8Tsou 39.0 35.0 0 0 0 0 74.0Tagalog 72.2 0 0 0 5.2 0 77.4Cebuano 60.7 0 0 0 11.9 0 72.6Malay 49.2 14.2 0 0 10.8 0 74.2Mandarin 6.5 0 0 5.6 0 48.4 60.6

TABLE 10. PERCENTAGE OF MANNER EXPRESSIONS IN THE FROG STORY

Manner MP P#M M#P M=P M#P#D TotalSaisiyat 19.7 8.4 0.4 1.6 6.3 0 36.4Squliq 32.1 0 0.4 0.4 10.0 0 42.9Tsou 25.6 35.0 0 0 0 0 60.6Tagalog 34.4 0 0 0 5.2 0 39.6Cebuano 27.4 0 0 0 11.9 0 39.3Malay 25.9 14.2 0 0 10.8 0 50.9Mandarin 36.3 0 0 5.6 0 48.4 90.3


8. A PROPOSAL. Until recently, the consensus view among researchers in thesemantic typology of motion clauses was that a language is either a V-language or anS-language. If a given language is not a member of one type, then by default it has tobe a member of the other. Guided by this prevalent dichotomy, one might argue that ofthe six wAn languages studied in the present paper, Tsou, Saisiyat, Squliq, and Malayare not V-languages, because they do not satisfy all of the four diagnostic tests. It hasnow become increasingly clear, however, that the strategies of motion event descrip-tions deployed in a language at the level of complexity examined in the present studyare in fact combinations of features of each. It is probably rare for a language to bepurely of the V-language type as determined by the four diagnostic tests. A languagecan have some features of a V-language, while simultaneously having features of an S-language as well, as long as we understand the V-language as a path-salient languageand the S-language as a manner-salient language. Tables 11 and 12 show the numberof distinct manner-verb and path-verb types, respectively. Concerning types of mannerverbs, the Tagalog and Cebuano narrators use the fewest number of manner-verb types(7), while Squliq, Saisiayat, and Tsou narrators the most (16 each). There is also a dra-matic difference in the number of distinct path-verb types used. Saisiyat has the highestnumber (18), followed by Cebuano and Tagalog (17 and 15, respecively), as comparedwith a low of 8 for Malay.

TABLE 11. MANNER-VERB TYPES USED IN THE FROG NARRATIVESIN THE SIX LANGUAGES

Squliq Saisiyat Cebuano Tagalog Tsou Malay

16 16 7 7 16 6 (#tokens)

pknyan manra:an lakaw lakad co�econu menjalan �walk�

qzinah �ae�aeaew dalagan takbo melari �run�

hyagun somowaw habol habol peobanga dikejar �chase�

mtakay malben oefu�u �stumble�

mstopu� tomkaw ambak talon �jump�

lmuyaw omakama� �crawl�

mlaka� hoemayap lupad lipad �³y�

qluy measkoskopu �³oat�

lmngiq langoy langoy yuhnguzu �swim�

snyan askan/inleb butang lagay sia/teapha �put�

tpanga/galun maras dala hafa membawa �carry�

pstpak ciha �hurl�

mkaraw capo memanjat �climb�

tuop�opa �spill�

smopayo �ride�

smeha�o �tiptoe�

aemo�u �scatter�

pataboe�/muiti yuoeva �burrow�

tanisowaw �follow�

tmrok/kinslip mintani� tosvo �stop�

maykonkonai terguling �roll�


We propose to conceptualize Talmy�s two-way typology model as a grid, with thevertical axis representing path salience, and the horizontal representing manner salience,so that the exact position of any language relative to other languages can be plotted, asshown in ²gure1 on the next page. Because, as we have demonstrated, languages differnot so much in their focus on path as in their focus on manner, they should tend to clustersomewhere in the upper left quadrant of the grid space. But what about the far corners ofthis grid? Is there such a thing as a pure embodiment of either type? Extrapolating fromthe empirical results established thus far, it is clear that Saisiyat, Tagalog, and Cebuanomost approximate a pure path-salient language type and Mandarin, with over 90 percentof the motion clauses containing a manner component, should certainly count as thehighest manner-salient language. Tsou, a macro-event language with a signi²cant MPcompound strategy, is an unusual language, having both path- and manner-salience, andis thus located next to Mandarin, but tilted slightly toward the upper-left corner of thespace. Finally, Malay is located next to Tsou because it exhibits strong path salience andhas also developed an incipient MP compounding strategy.

TABLE 12. PATH-VERB TYPES FOUND IN THE FROG NARRATIVES

Squliq Saisiyat Cebuano Tagalog Tsou Malay

12 18 17 15 14 8 (#tokens)

mhtuw kas�oehaz gawas labas yuyafo keluar �move out�

mzyup sulod lusob/pasok masuk �enter�

mkhoyaw mohae�oe kana�og/tumba baba�/tumba �descend�

tai�itol saka akyat bangun �ascend�

mhotaw sahae� hulog hulog supeohu jatuh �fall�

hagbong bagsak su� �fall�

musa osa� adto/padulong punta (uh) pergi �go�

wayal rima� pa-ingon tungo �go�

mzinas lobih balik yuoevei balik �return�

uli� uwi pulang �return�

mge: ra:iw hawa�/lakaw alis mongoi �leave�

takas takas pkaako �escape�

palayo �go far�

maray/may agi �pass by�

dulog �beside�

kahul in�aray i�ima �from�

mtuliq min�itol yu�cu �arise�

mwah mwa:i (uh) �come�

tehok potngor esmi �arrive�

ila �move to�

mi�usnu menuju �toward�

sanabih �look around�

hinkosizaeh �look toward�

mokakaso �step back�

kas�oemaeh �to land�

mo�usnu �go toward�

maine�e �go home�


9. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. The language of motion events is a systemused to specify the motion of objects through space with respect to other objects.Recent research in the typology of the language of space provides a framework forinvestigating the relationship between the conceptual structure of events and theirexpression in single clauses, which is clearly a rich, yet underexplored, area of study.The cross-linguistic data examined in this paper, made possible by the use of the samestimulus material, suggest that a four-way classi²cation of event structures is neededfor the typological classi²cation of languages. In V-languages, path is expressed by amain, ²nite verb, and manner is expressed by some subordinate expression, as in Taga-log and Cebuano. In S-languages, as in English, path is expressed by a nonverbal ele-ment associated with the main verb. None of the languages studied here is an S-language. In a macro-event language, as in Tsou, both path and manner are expressedby component verb morphemes. In serial-verb languages, as in Mandarin, path andmanner verbs are chained together to describe as single events what in a nonserializinglanguage is achieved by the use of multiple clauses each built around a single verb.

As pointed out repeatedly by Slobin, predictions about the frequency of use of man-ner or path expressions in texts is based on a psycholinguistic claim that content will beencoded more frequently if it is expressed with an element that does not impose anexceptional processing load (e.g., by main verb, by serial verb, by compound componentmorpheme, etc.). Over time, such content areas will tend to diversity in lexical resources,resulting in more ²ne-grained representation of the particular semantic domain. On thewhole, these predictions are borne out by the present data: all of the wAn languages areunited in having a high use of path verbs for motion descriptions and the number of dis-

FIGURE 1. PATH AND MANNER SALIENCE OF SELECTED LANGUAGES

path salience100%

Saisiyat � MalayTagalog � � � Tsou

Cebuano �

�Squliq � Mandarin

50%

0 % 50% 100 %manner

salience


tinct path-verb types found in each of the languages, with the exception of Malay, is quitehigh, as compared with Mandarin. The fact that Tsou gives roughly equal salience to pathand manner is also predicted, given its overriding MP compound strategy.

In broad terms, only Tagalog and Cebuano can be said to be pure verb-framing lan-guages. Saisiyat is less of a straightforward V-language because on two counts it fails thetests of a V-language. It has developed a minor strategy of using compound combinationsof manner and path (MP) for the description of motion events. It is also unusual in havingboth verb-serializing forms for complex motion events, in which either manner is followedby path verbs (M#P), apparently the more universal word order pattern, or path verbs pre-cede manner verbs (P#M), with the instantiations of the former pattern being more numer-ous, consistent with its having acquired the minor pattern of MP verb compounding.

Tsou, a macro-event language, has no adpositions, and much of the path informationmust be inferred. The language is unique in having two equally strong strategies for encod-ing motion events: a high use of path verbs alone as the main verbs and a high use of lexi-calized compound motion verbs that con³ate both manner and path components (MP).This characteristic effectively rules out the language as either a pure S- or V-language.

Of the three Formosan languages surveyed here, Squliq shows more symptoms ofa V-language, and yet it also exhibits features of an S-language in giving greater atten-tion to both manner and path of movement. Its twin results seen in table 7 (greaterattention to path segments) and table 11 (more elaboration of manner verb types) areprobably no accident.

Malay is essentially a V-language, though somewhat more attenuated than eitherTagalog or Cebuano, as manifested by its basic adherence to the diagnostic criteriagiven in table 8: a relatively high use of path verbs and little interest in providing anelaboration of path segments or ground information. Considering the sociolinguisticcomplexity of the Malay language (cf. Gil 2002), further research is needed before wehave a fuller understanding of its language of motion event descriptions.

The ²ndings enumerated above suggest that the six Austronesian languages investi-gated here do share the common property of giving greater attention to path informa-tion. Because this property appears generally quite stable up to the stock level (�stock�in the sense of Nichols 1992), we suggest that path salience vs. manner salience in theencoding of motion clauses might plausibly be one of the few structural features that�like case marking or head�dependent marking�exhibit strong diachronic stability. Thiswould indicate that Proto-Austronesian was probably also a path-salient language.

Finally, it is important to appreciate that recent cross-linguistic research into thelanguage of motion events provides a moral for researchers in the future to be morespeci²c about the preferred construction type, the particular quality of path salience,manner salience, ground speci²cation, or the balance between different parts of thelanguage system in expressing motion events. Psycholinguistic claims need to bebased on more thorough linguistic analysis. No longer will it suf²ce to merely indi-cate how languages ²t into Talmy�s typology, which, as we have seen, is notsuf²ciently rich to accommodate a worldwide sample. We hope the investigationreported here will serve as a starting point for continued exploration of the structureof motion events in other Austronesian languages.


REFERENCES

Aske, Jon. 1989. Path predicates in English and Spanish: A closer look. Berkeley Lin-guistic Society 15:1�14.

Berlin, Brent, and Paul Kay. 1969. Basic color terms. Berkeley: University of Califor-nia Press.

Berman, Ruth A., and Dan I. Slobin. 1994. Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguis-tic developmental study. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Blust, Robert. 1999. Subgrouping, circularity and extinction: Some issues in Austrone-sian comparative linguistics. In Selected papers from the 8th International Confer-ence on Austronesian Linguistics, ed. by Elizabeth Zeitoun and Paul Li, 31�90.Taipei: Academia Sinica.

Choi, Soonja, and Melissa Bowerman. 1991. Learning to express motion events inEnglish and Korean: The in³uence of language-speci²c lexicalization patterns.Cognition 41:83�122.

Chung, Siaw-Fong. 2005. Kena as a third type of Malay passive. Oceanic Linguistics44:194�214.

Cooreman, Anne, Barbara Fox, and Talmy Givón. 1984. The discourse de²nition ofergativity. Studies in Language 8:1�34.

Croft, William. 2001. Radical construction grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.��. 2003. Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Crowley, Terry. 2002. Serial verbs in Oceanic: A descriptive typology. New York:

Oxford University Press.Cumming, Susanna. 1991. Functional change: The case of Malay constituent order. New

York: Mouton de Gruyer.Du Bois, John, Stephan Schuetze-Coburn, Susanna Cumming, and Danae Paolino.

1993. Outline of discourse transcription. In Talking data: Transcription and cod-ing for language research, ed. by Jane Anne Edwards and Martin D. Lampert, 45�89. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Gennari, Silvia P., Steven A. Sloman, Barbara C. Malt, and W. Tecumseh Fitch. 2002.Motion events in language and cognition. Cognition 83:49�79.

Gil, David. 2002. The pre²xes di- and N- in Malay/Indonesian dialects. In The historyand typology of western Austronesian voice systems, ed. by Fay Wouk and MalcolmRoss, 241�83. Canberra: Paci²c Linguistics.

Gong, Shuping. 2003. The cognitive perspective on Mandarin motion verbs. Unpub-lished ms.

Huang, Shuanfan. 2001. A third way to travel: Spatial representations in languageswithout prepositions. Paper presented at the ALT IV, UCSB, July 19�22.

��. 2002. Tsou is different: A cognitive perspective on language, emotion, andbody. Cognitive Linguistics 13:1�18.

Kita, Sotaro, Eve Danziger, and Christel Stolz. 2001. Cultural speci²city of spatialschemas as manifested in spontaneous gestures. In Spatial schemas and abstractthought, ed. by Merideth Gattis, 115�46. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Lee, Joanna. 2003. Motion verbs in Kavalan. Working Papers in Linguistics 6. Taipei:National Taiwan University.

Levinson, Stephen. 1996. Frames of reference and Molyneux�s question: Cross-lin-guistic evidence. In Language and space, ed. by Paul Bloom, Mary A. Peterson,Lynn Nadel, and Merrill F. Garrett, 109�69. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

��. 2003. Space in language and cognition. Explorations in cognitive diversity.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Levinson, Stephen C., Sotaro Kita, Daniel B. Haun, and Björn H. Rasch. 2002. Re-turning the tables: Language affects spatial reasoning. Cognition 84:158�88.


Levinson, Stephen, and Sergio Meira. 2003. The language and cognition group: �Naturalconcepts� in the spatial topological domain�adpositional meanings in crosslinguis-tic perspective: An exercise in semantic typology. Language 79(3): 485�516.

Majid, Asifa, Melissa Bowerman, Sotaro Kita, Daniel B. M. Haun, and S. Levinson.2004. Can language restrict cognition? The case for space. Trends in CognitiveSciences 8:108�14.

Mayer, M. 1969. Frog, where are you? New York: Dial Books.Mosley, Christopher, and R. E. Asher. 1994. Atlas of the world�s languages. New York:

Routledge.McNeill, David, and Susan Duncan. 2000. Growth points in thinking-for-speaking. In

Languages and gesture, ed. by David McNeill, 141�61. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Munnich, Edward, Barbara Landau, and Barbara Anne Dosher. 2001. Spatial languageand spatial representation: A cross-linguistic comparison. Cognition 81:171�207.

Naigles, Letitia R., Ann R. Eisenberg, Edward T. Kako, Melissa Highter, and N.McGraw. 1998. Speaking of motion: Verb use in English and Spanish. Languageand Cognitive Processes 13:521�49.

Nichols, Joanna. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time. University of ChicagoPress.

Õzçaliskan, Seyda, and Dan Slobin. 1999. Learning how to search for the frog: Expressionsof manner of motion in English, Spanish, and Turkish. Proceedings of the 23rd AnnualBoston University Conference on Language Development, vol. 2. Somerville, Mass.:Cascadilla Press.

Payne, Thomas. 1994. The pragmatics of voice in a Philippine language: Actor-focusand goal-focus in Cebuano narrative. In Voice and inversion, ed. by Talmy Givon,317�64. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Pederson, Eric, Eve Danziger, David P. Wilkins, Stephen Levinson, Sotaro Kita, andGunter Senft. 1998. Semantic typology and spatial conceptualization. Language74:557�89.

Ross, Malcolm. 2003. The grammaticization of directional verbs in Oceanic lan-guages. In Complex predicates in Oceanic languages: Studies in the dynamics ofbinding and boundness, ed. by Isabelle Bril and Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre, 297�330. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1988. Voice in Philippine Languages. In Passive and voice, ed.by Masayoshi Shibatani, 85�142. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Sinha, Chris, and Taria Kuteva. 1995. Distributed spatial semantics. Nordic Journal ofLinguistics 18:167�99.

Slobin, Dan. 1996. Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. InGrammatical constructions: Their form and meaning, ed. by Masayoshi Shibataniand Sandra A. Thompson, 195�220. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

��. 1997. Mind, code, and text. In Essays on language function and language type,ed. by Joan Bybee, John Haiman, and Sandra Thompson, 437�67. Amsterdam:Benjamins.

��. 2000. Verbalized events. A dynamic approach to linguistic relativity anddeterminism. In Evidence for linguistic relativity, ed. by Susanne Niemeier andRene Dirven, 107�38. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

��. 2004. The many ways to search for a frog: Linguistic typology and the expres-sion of motion events. In Relating events in narrative: Typological and contextualperspectives, ed. by Sven Strömqvist and Ludo Verhoeven, 219�57. Mahwah, N.J.:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Slobin, Dan, and Nini Hoiting. 1994. Reference to movement in spoken and signedlanguages: Typological considerations. Berkeley Linguistic Society 20:487�505.


Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. InLanguage typology and syntactic description. vol. 3: Grammatical categories and thelexicon, ed. by Timothy Shopen, 57�149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

��. 1991. Path to realization: A typology of event con³ation. Berkeley LinguisticSociety 17:480�519.

��. 1996. Fictive motion in language and �ception.� In Language and space, ed. byPaul Bloom, Mary A. Peterson, Lynn Nadel, and Merrill F. Garrett, 211�76. Cam-bridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

��. 2000. Toward a cognitive semantics. 2 volumes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Shuanfan HuangGraduate Institute of Linguistics National Taiwan University No. 1 Roosevelt Road Section 4 Taipei, [email protected]

Michael TanangkingsingP. O. Box 53-1299 Taipei 106, [email protected]

Documents

Reference to Motion Events in Six Western Austronesian ...ntur.lib.ntu.edu.tw/bitstream/246246/65346/1/442.pdf · 308 oceanic linguistics, vol. 44, no. 2 the research has yielded