A Contrastive Study Of Children’s Motion Event Segmentation In English And Chinese

Investigating semantic typology from event representation has received a great deal of attention.Talmy classified Chinese into a typical satellite-framed language.However,the typology of Chinese is controversial.Previous studies investigated the typology of Chinese from lexicalization patterns.Few studies focused on event segmentation,to examine the typology of Chinese.The present study aims to explore the typology of Chinese from English-and Chinese-speaking children’s motion event expressions,by examining motion event segmetation,lexicalization patterns,and semantic density.The present study retrieved data from the Child Language Data Exchange System（CHILDES）in the Talk Bank system（https://talkbank.org）.The data were from 3-and 7-year-old children and adults,who were monolingual English-and Chinese-speakers,by investigating properties of motion event expressions in English and Chinese.The study intended to answer the following questions:（1）What are English speakers’motion event segmentation patterns,lexicalization patterns,and semantic density?（2）What are Chinese speakers’motion event segmentation patterns,lexicalization patterns,and semantic density?（3）What are the similarities and differences between English and Chinese speakers’motion event segmentation patterns,lexicalization patterns,and semantic density,and what are the underlying reasons?The study showed that:（1）English tended to represent single subevents,such as[Departure],[Passing]and[Arrival].There were four types of event segmentation patterns in English:[Departure],[Passing],[Arrival],and[Departure+Arrival].Chinese also showed this feature.However,Chinese had a tendency of encoding Arrival Event more frequently than English counterparts.（2）The lexicalization patterns of English and Chinese were different.There were four lexicalization patterns for English motion events:V^[Cause]+S^[Path],V^[Manner]+S^[Path],V^{[Manner+Cause]}+S^[Path],V^[Motion]+S^[Path].In contrast,there were a total of seven types of lexicalization patterns in Chinese:V1^[Cause]+V2^[Path],V1^[Manner]+V2^[Path],V1[Manner+Cause]+V2[Path],V[Path],V1[Manner+Cause]+V2-plus[Path],V1[Manner]+V2-plus[Path],and V1^[Cause]+V2-plus^[Path].The lexicalization patterns of English reflected the properties of satellite-framed language,while Chinese reflected three mixed typological characteristics:satellite-framed,equipollent-framed and verb-framed.（3）The semantic density（SD）distribution of English and Chinese motion events were different.There were four types pf semantic densities in English motion events:SD2,SD3,SD4,and SD5,and they were prone to encode four semantic components in one clause.By contrast,there were five types of semantic densities in Chinese motion events:SD1,SD2,SD3,SD4,and SD5,and they tended to encode three semantic components.The study revealed that:（1）Both English and Chinese tended to encode endpoints-Arrival Event.However,preferences for Arrival Event expression were highly robust features of Chinese,as compared to English,suggesting that Chinese had the thinking pattern of endpoint bias.（2）English is a typical satellite-framed language.By contrast,Chinese is a mixed language showing features of satellite-framed,verb-framed,and equipollent-framed language.（3）Semantic density of English is denser than Chinese.The research findings demonstrate that English and Chinese are typologically different languages,and give support to Slobin’s（1996）“thinking for speaking”hypothesis.