David Wilkins, David Nash and Jane Simpson (used with permission)
April 1998
The purpose of this questionnaire is to gain a first comparative picture of the lexical resources Australian languages draw on for the expression of motion, and the manner in which motion descriptions are "packaged". In the nature of our design, and our discussion, we rely heavily on Talmy's (1985) notion of lexicalization patterns, in particular his cross-linguistic discussion of systems of motion description. We are interested, for instance, in patterns of semantic conflation (that is, what other semantic information besides 'motion' may be encoded in a verb root) and patterns of semantic distribution (that is, what types of information are encoded in the different morphemes that come together to build a description of a motion event).
We will assume a "pretheoretical" understanding of what constitutes a motion event and a motion description. In this questionnaire, the primary focus is on "translocational motion" (i.e.change of location of an entity along a path from one place to another). We further restrict our focus to motion descriptions in which the Subject argument of a verb (in an active clause) is the entity ('figure') in motion (an accompanying entity may also be in motion, but that is not our focus of interest). In narrowing our focus in this way, we depart from Talmy's own manner of investigation, since he was also interested in patterns of location, causative location and causative motion.
This questionnaire is designed in a "modular fashion". There are four independent modules, and we would be glad to receive answers to any of the "modules". A researcher should not feel that they need to answer the whole questionnaire if that seems too daunting. Where you do not know the answer to a question, please say so (rather than leaving a part of a module blank). The ordering of modules reflects our own sense of which types of information are more important to enable us to do some cross-language comparison.
Name of Researcher:
Name of Language:
Primary Place of Research:
Primary Data Resources:
May we distribute your filled in questionnaire?: YES NO
How many inflecting, unanalysable, mono-morphemic verb roots does the language possess: (tick one of the following)
LESS THAN 50_________ 50 to 200 __________MORE THAN 200________
Can you give us a more precise figure? (If so, what source(s) is the figure based on?):
Below we present 26 English motion verbs or descriptions. We would
like you to provide any (and all) expressional equivalents for the
language under discussion. We are not only interested in
mono-morphemic verb roots, we are also interested in more complex
expressions. For instance, in Arrernte, there is no monomorphemic
root for 'to fly'. However, Arrernte speakers do commonly talk about
the motion of birds, airplanes and insects by combining a general
motion verb and the locative phrase alkere-le
(sky-LOC) 'in
the sky' in the same clause - e.g. alkere-le alhe-me
('in sky
going') = 'flying'; alkere-le unthe-me
('in sky wandering')
= 'flying around'; alkere-le apetye-me
('in sky coming') =
'flying this way', and so on.
(N.B. While it would be nice to know translation equivalents, it is more important for us to know what expressions people actually use, no matter how infrequently.)
We do not assume that the following will provide a one-to-one list of equivalents. In some cases the same verb or expression may cover several notions we have distinguished on the list, and in other cases the distinctions won't be fine-grained enough and you'll need to provide several equivalents, detailing the distinctions. We simply ask you to give us as much detail as is feasible.
Please include the following information in any response:
a. "to go"
b. "to come"
c. "to return" ("to go back")
d. "to take to" ("take along"; "carry")
e. "to bring"
f. "to move" (from one place to another e.g. they shifted into the shade; they moved
camp)
g. "to leave behind" ("to abandon"; "to leave something somewhere and go off")
h. "to move" ( with no overall change of location; move on the spot or about a fixed
point e.g the bush is moving, his eyes/hair moved)
i. "to move quickly" ("hurry away"; "hurry off")
j. "to walk"
k. "to run"
l. "to crawl (of baby)"
m. "to fly (of bird)"
n. "to hover" ("to flutter" - e.g of hawk; butterfly)
o. "to swim" (of fish? of person?)
p. "to roll" (e.g. of ball or boulder or tumbleweed)
q. "to creep up on" ("to sneak along"; "sneak up on")
r. "to follow someone/something"
s. "to track someone/something"
t. "ascend" ("get up on to"; "to climb up")
u. "to descend" ("get down off/out of")
v. "to fall" (down from a height) (does this contrast with "to fall over"?; "collapse"?)
w. "emerge" ("exit"; "appear"; "come out"; "rise (of sun)")
x. "to enter " ("to go into" (e.g. a house, a camp))
y. "to cross over" ("go across")
z. "to pass by"
So that one can get a feel about how motion description really works
in the language, could you please provide a piece of natural
continuous text which is rich in motion expression, and which you feel
is representative. All that is needed is a small text or text
fragment of between 5 and 20 clauses in length, in which the focus is
the motion of one or more of the "protagonists". Of course, we need
you to provide morphemic breaks, interlinear glosses, and a free
translation. It would also be useful if you could provide notes, as
you go along, to any specific motion related features that the
'outsider' should attend to.
(An example will be provided. - Note that, we'd prefer it if you did
not rely on a translation from English, but instead used a small text
that was generated directly from the mind and mouth (or pen) of a
native speaker.)
In Talmy's (1985:61) terms the basic components of a motion event are:
Figure= the entity that is in motion
Ground= the entity or entities that the Figure is moving in relation to
Path= the course followed (and trajectory) of the Figure (often deduced from the Ground which is specified)
Motion= the actual predication of a motion act.
So, in the sentence 'the baby crawled up the hill', the Figure is 'the baby', the Ground is 'the hill', the Path is specified with 'up', and the assertion of Motion is encoded in the verb 'crawl' .
This module of the questionnaire is particularly concerned with the way in which Grounds and Paths (including direction) may be grammatically coded. We would appreciate it if you used some of the expressions from the list in Module I of this questionnaire in glossed example sentences to illustrate the types of marking asked about below.
a) How are "goals" of motion marked? (i.e. what cases, adpositions, or
other means are used to mark ground NPs functioning as "goals of
motion?)
(e.g. The child crawled to(wards) the tree.; They returned
to camp; The lizard got up onto the rock.;)
b) Can one make a distinction between 'to X' and 'towards X'? For all
motion verbs? How?
(e.g. The leaf fell towards the ground. vs. The leaf fell
to the ground.)
c) How are "sources" of motion marked?
(e.g. The woman moved away from the fire. ; They
travelledfrom Sydney.;
The baby bird fell out of the tree.; The dog fell off of
the truck.)
d) How are ground NPs which refer to the route or path along/on which motion takes place marked? (e.g. He's walkingalong the track.; The horse wandered along the sides of the fence.)
e) How are ground NPs which refer to the medium in which motion takes
place marked?
(e.g. The bird is flying through the air.; The children are
running through the sand?)
f) How does one mark a ground NP which refers to a place through (or
via) which the
figure travels in order to get to another place?
(e.g. They travelled from Alice Springs to Elliott via Tennant
Creek
; She came through here
on her way to church.)
g) With expressions like "enter" (or "go into") and "exit" (or "come
out of"), how are the ground NPs which refer to the space "entered"
and "exited" marked?
(e.g. The snake enteredits burrow.; The owl came out
from the hollow of the tree.)
h) With expressions of "crossing" and "passing" how are grounds
indicating the entity 'crossed' and 'passed' marked?
(e.g. Those people ran past our house; A dingo crossedthe road.)
i) Languages like English can string several Grounds together with one motion verb (e.g. The dog carried the meat from the creek along the path to the tree.). Other languages have strong restrictions, preferring one Ground per motion verb. Do you have a sense of how many grounds can occur naturally with a motion verb? Is it possible (natural) to say things like:
- He went from the tree to the rock.
- He went into the house through the rear door.
- He came along the road towards our car.
-The dog carried the meat from the creek along the path to the tree.
j) If you use adpositions or case endings to express these ideas, can they occur independently as the main predicate in a sentence as in? (If they are possible, what do they mean? Can they have motion readings or only static spatial readings?)
- The dog (is) from the tree
- The dog (is) to the tree
- The dog (is) along the road
- The dog (is) into the house
- The rabbit (is) out of its burrow
Talmy (1985) observed that, in motion descriptions, a language like
English differs typologically from a language like Spanish, by virtue
of the fact that Spanish tends to conflate 'motion' and 'path'
together in the verb root, while English tends to code path in a
separate (adverbial/prepositional) element which functions as a
satellite to the verb. He judges patterns of expression to be
characteristic for a language if they are (i) colloquial in style
(rather than formal or stilted), (ii) frequent; and (iii) pervasive
(rather than limited) in application. Thus, in English, the
characteristic mode of expression is to say "go up", "go down", "go
in", "go out" and so on, while it is less characteristic to to say
"ascend", "descend", "enter", "exit", and so on. The former pattern
exemplifies "satellite-framing" (i.e. 'go' provides the motion
concept, while 'up', 'down', 'in', 'out' realizes the path). For
languages like Spanish, verbs like "enter" and "ascend" are the
characteristic mode of expression, and the verb roots can been seen to
simultaneously code "motion" and "path" (i.e. "verb-framing").
(Note: Satellites to the verb-root may be affixes on the motion verb
root; or clitics; or path adverbs; or particles; or preverbs)
Please try to assess whether the language you are working on is verb-framed or satellite framed (or somewhere in between or something else), by answering the following 'diagnostic' questions:
i) The child ran to the other side of the street/path/creek.
ii) The child ran across the street.
iii) The baby crawled into the house/shed/camp. (Where the "into" path is to be stressed, is the form of expression done more like: "crawlingly enter" or "crawl into" or "crawl to the inside of"?)
iv) The baby crawled up the rock (Can one distinguish "crawl to the top of the rock" and "ascend the rock by crawling"?).
v) The snake slithered into the string bag.
vi) The boy fell to the ground. (while standing on the ground? vs from out of a tree?)
vii) The rock/boy fell down into the water. (where entry into the water is stressed)
viii) The girl climbed up onto the branch of the tree.
Please provide any other information on the language that you feel is relevant to this research endeavour. In particular, if there are publications or sections of publications concerning the language which deal directly with motion description, we would be grateful if you brought this to our attention (and we will collate and share all such references).
THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP
What people actually do with this information: Preliminary results provided by David Wilkins (Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders
V.A. Northern California Health Care System