A Typological Study Of Motion Events In Chinese,English And French

Based on Talmy’s typological frame of motion events,this thesis explores the lexicalization and event integration of motion events in Mo Yan’s Chinese novel Life and Death are Wearing Me Out and the novel’s English version translated by Howard Goldblatt and French translated version by Chantal Chen-Andro.First,motion events segments are recognized in the three languages so as to count the types and tokens of the main verbs used in "self-initiated motion events" and"caused motion events".The result shows that the "self-initiated motion events"percentages in Chinese,English and French versions are respectively 71.80%,64.22%and 71.26%.Consequently,"self-initiated motion events" are more frequently applied to express motion events than "caused motion events",and motion verbs are more frequently used in Chinese and French than in English.Second,the types and tokens of manner verbs and path verbs in "self-initiated motion events" are counted in the three languages.The statistics reveal that English has rich manner verbs,indicating a high lexicalization degree of manner verbs,while French has abundant path verbs,displaying a high lexicalization degree of path verbs.Serial verb constructions are widely employed in Chinese,and this phenomenon implies a low lexicalization.The examination of alternative expressions of manner(AEM)in the three languages finds the AEM frequency in Chinese ranks first and that in English ranks last.However,adverbial AEMs constitutes the majority part of AEMs in all the three languages.In addition,the percentages of AEMs accompanying manner verbs are 86%(Chinese),72%(English)and 52%(French).Third,main verbs in "caused motion events" are counted in the three languages with a view to analyzing the granularity and lexicalization.The analysis reveals that English prefers to use the synthetic expression of[Manner+Cause]verbs while French tends to apply the synthetic expression of[Path+Cause]verbs.Therefore,both English and French display a higher granularity than Chinese.This difference refers to the distinct typological preferences.Last,based on the research findings,lexicalization and event integration of motion events in Chinese,English and French are investigated.This thesis examines the particular expressions of motion events in the three languages and illustrates their typological features.Chinese displays the characteristics of both satellite-framed language and verb-framed language.This thesis concludes that English is a typical satellite-framed language,French is a typical verb-framed language,and Chinese is neither typically satellite-framed nor exclusively verb-framed.Chinese is an equipollently-framed language.