A Comparative Study Of Chinese-Spanish Expressions Of Motion Events

As one of the most basic human experiential activities,the perception and description of motion events has been a key subject of research in the fields of comparative linguistics,cognitive linguistics,and language acquisition.In particular,on the theoretical basis of Talmy’s（1985,2000）and Slobin’s（2004）motion events framework,correlational studies have yielded fruitful results in various aspects,such as attribution of Chinese typology,lexicalization pattern of motion events,motion events and syntactic expressions and so on,which has advanced the study of motion events in Chinese.In the case of expressions of motion events in Chinese and Spanish,Chinese and Spanish languages belong to different language types and present complex and multidimensional correspondences at the level of the conceptual structure and expressions of motion events,and these correspondences reflect the differences in the features of linguistic types and cognitive styles of the two languages.Based on data from the Chinese CCL,BCC and Spanish CORPES corpus,plus the parallel corpus from 10 Chinese-Spanish literary works,the paper intends to present a comprehensive and systematic portrayal and analysis of the similarities and differences of Chinese-Spanish motion events expressions in terms of the path representation and expressions,the manner representation and expressions,and the causative representation and expressions of motion events,on the basis of which the study attempts to explain the differences in expressions in terms of typological features of the languages and cognitive aspects.The whole thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter 1 is the introduction,which mainly explains the origin and significance of the topic,the definition of the research object,the research objectives and research questions,the theoretical basis of the research,the research method and the sources of the corpus in details.Chapter 2 is an overview of the research on Chinese-Spanish motion events.It combs comprehensively and systematically the fruitful research results on motion events from the aspects of the type attribution and expressions of motion events in Chinese,the research on motion events in Spanish,and the comparative study on the lexicalization patterns of motion events in Chinese and foreign languages,etc.which lays a solid theoretical foundation for the research of the study.Chapters 3 to 5 are the core content of the thesis.Chapter 3 shows a comparison of the path representations and expressions of Chinese-Spanish motion events.The Chinese and Spanish motion paths are mainly characterized by path verbs,and the difference is that Chinese contains both simple and compound path verbs,while Spanish only contains simple path verbs.By comparing eight groups of path verbs:“lái/qù（来/去）”,“shàng/xià（上/下）”,“jìn/chū（进/出）”,“huí（回）”“guò（过）”in Chinese and“venir（come）/ir（go）”,“subir（go up）/bajar（go down）”,“entrar（enter）/salir（go out）”,“volver（return）”,“pasar（pass）”in Spanish in terms of the conceptual structure of the motion paths,it can be found that the granularity turns out to be larger when Chinese path verbs characterize the conceptual elements of the motion events.In Chinese,the simple path verbs only highlight the[path]of the motion events,but the compound path verbs also characterize the motion of the speaker[subjective perspective](V _{simple path}+come/go).On the contrary,Spanish path verbs not only highlight the concept of[path],but also characterize several semantic elements such as[ground]of the motion,[motion force],[distance]of the motion,[subjective consciousness]of a displaced subject,etc.Under this circumstance,the semantic components are characterized more specifically and with less granularity,but with the exception of“venir（come）/ir（go）”,other path verbs do not usually characterize the motion of the speaker[subjective perspective].The comparison of the expressions projected by path verbs to the surface form of sentences in the two languages shows that the syntactic position of the Chinese NP_ground is more complex than that of Spanish;the spatial orientation of the subject of the motion and the reference ground is often encoded by nouns of locality(NP_ground+nouns of locality),while Spanish usually does not encode it separately;the involvement of the speaker’s[subjective perspective]in the expression of the motion path is much higher in Chinese than in Spanish.The differences in Chinese-Spanish motion path expressions are mainly caused by the different opening of the windowing of attention,the differences in the same SVO order,the differences in the characteristics of the reference ground boundedness and the dimensions of literate interpretation.Chapter 4 presents a comparison of the manner representations and expressions of Chinese-Spanish motion events.Although[manner]is a peripheral semantic element in the motion events framework of Talmy,it is highly involved in the motion events in Chinese,and the motion manner verbs turn out to be the most common expression.By comparing“V_{tiào（跳）}”class/“V_{saltar（jump）}”class and“V_{luò（落）}”class and“V_{caer（se）（fall）}”class in Chinese and Spanish in terms of the conceptual structure of the motion manners,it can be found that the Chinese“V_{tiào（跳）}”class mainly characterizes semantic elements such as[motion force],[pattern]（including[gait]）,[rate],[medium]of the motion,etc.and the concept representation embraces large granularity.By contrast,the“V_{saltar（jump）}”class,in addition to the above-mentioned conceptual components,also characterizes the concepts of[tool],[trajectory],[direction],[ground]and the[subject]of the motion,etc.The characterization of the Spanish verb is richer,more specific and with smaller granularity.However,the Chinese verb“V_{luò（落）}”highlights the nature of the[subject of the motion],[autonomy],[speed],[path]and other conceptual elements,such representation is more specific;the Spanish motion verb“V_{caer（se）（fall）}”highlights the motion[path],and the representation is simpler.The comparison of the expressions projected by manner verbs to the surface form of sentences in the two languages shows that in Chinese“V_manner+V_path”is the preferred mode of motion,while in Spanish“V path”is often encoded separately;the syntactic position of the NP_ground and NP_{motion subject} in Chinese is relatively diverse,mainly governed by the motion manner verbs,the path verbs,the characteristics of the NP_groundand NP_{motion subject},the aspect marker“le（了）”,the distance iconicity and many other factors.By contrast,the syntactic position of the NP_ground and NP_{motion subject} in Spanish is governed by the principle of distance iconicity and also by the heaviness principle.When the Chinese NP_ground is a common noun with a weak locative character or a locative noun that needs to highlight the motion,it is often encoded with nouns of locality,whereas in Spanish it is usually encoded with adverbs of locality or adverbial phrases when the ground is a person and a passing point.The differences in the expression of motion manner in Spanish and Chinese are mainly due to the different types of frames for motion events,different schematic default mechanisms and differences in aspect markers.Chapter 5 compares the causative representation and expression of motion events in Spanish and Chinese.The most common expression for the cause of the motion are the motion-causative verbs.By comparing the motion-causative verbs“V_{fàng（放）}”class/“V_{poner（put down）}”class and“V_{chōu（抽）}”class/“V_{sacar（pull out）}（when moving from the inside to the outside）”class in Chinese and Spanish in terms of the causative representation of the motion events,it is revealed that non-oriented motion-causative verbs in Chinese“V_{fàng（放）}”class have a wide range of representations,mainly highlighting conceptual elements such as[manner/reason of the motion cause],[force of the motion cause],[ground boundedness],etc.,and the concept representation embraces large granularity.However,in Spanish,the“V_{poner（put down）}”class verbs do not only characterize the above concepts,but also highlight semantic elements such as[path],[motion subject],[motion object],etc.Oriented motion-causative verbs in Chinese(“V_{chōu（抽）}”class)describe the motion manner in a specific and detailed way,while“V_{sacar（pull out）}”class in Spanish only highlight the concept of[path].The comparison of the expressions projected by causative verbs to the surface form of sentences in the two languages shows that in Chinese“V_{motion-causative}+V_path”is the preferred mode of motion-causative events,while in Spanish“V_{motion-causative}”is often encoded separately.The syntactic position of the NP_{motion object} in Chinese is more complex than that in Spanish,as the NP_{motion object} placed after the motion-causative verb is often influenced by its own nature,whether the verb carries“le（了）”or not,and the context,and it presents a complex syntactic position in relation to the path verb.When the NP_{motion object} is placed in front of the motion-causative verb,the Chinese is marked by“bǎ（把）”or“bèi（被）”,which could be new or old information.Whereas,when the object of NP_{motion object}is placed in front of the verbs in Spanish,it is either an object pronoun referring to old information or a passive sentence.The syntactic position of the motion-causative NP_groundand its combination pattern with the locative words are similar to that of self-moving events.With the NP_{starting point}often placed before the“V_{motion-causative}+V_path”and the NP_{ending point} often placed after it,but with the point background window less often opened,in Spanish,whether for both the NP _{starting point} and the NP _{ending point,}it is placed after“V_{motion-causative}+V_path”.Reference ground with[+bounded][-zero-dimensional][-prepositional]features is usually encoded with nouns of locality,whereas the motion-causative events in Spanish are rarely encoded with adverbs of locality,but activated by the motion-causative verb,the preposition and the reference ground together.The differences in Chinese-Spanish expressions of the motion-causative events are mainly due to factors such as the type of structure of the analytic and syntactic types and grammatical markers,etc.Chapter 6 contains the concluding part.It summarises and sublimates the whole thesis in terms of the representations of Chinese-Spanish motion events,the expressions of Chinese-Spanish motion events and the factors that influence the differences in Chinese-Spanish motion expressions.In general,the comparison between Chinese and Spanish motion expressions shows that the differences are much greater than the commonalities,and that the differences are mainly due to the differences in the linguistic typology of Chinese and Spanish,and the differences in the ways of perceiving motion events between Chinese and Spanish people.The study is of great theoretical value not only for linguistic typology and comparative linguistics research,but also shows great significance for second language teaching and acquisition in both Chinese and Spanish.