# Spatial asymmetries in the expression of Path and Manner: comparative study of narratives in French and English

Adélie Buclier, Efstathia Soroli, Anetta Kopecka

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Adélie Buclier, Efstathia Soroli, Anetta Kopecka. Spatial asymmetries in the expression of Path and Manner: comparative study of narratives in French and English. 57th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Aug 2024, Helsinki, Finland. hal-04913589

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Submitted on 27 Jan 2025

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# Spatial asymmetries in Path and Manner encoding:
A comparative study of narratives in English and French

Adélie Buclier, Anetta Kopecka & Efstathia Soroli

(Université de Lille, Université Lumière Lyon II & Université de Lille)

Key words: spatial language – spatial asymmetries – lexicalization patterns – English – French

Languages differ importantly in the means they offer to express Path and Manner of motion (cf. Verb-framed vs. Satellite-framed languages) (Talmy 2000, Hickmann et al. 2017). Some recent studies focus on specific sub-categories of these components and have shown asymmetries revealing both across- and within-language variation (Pourcel and Kopecka, 2005) such as: (i) Path asymmetries in Source/Goal expression (i.e., high variation and frequency of devices that express the Goal, as in French de 'from' vs. à 'to', vers 'towards', jusqu'à 'all the way to') (Ikegami 1987, Kopecka and Ishibashi 2011, Lakusta and Landau 2012, Vuillermet 2020, Johanson et al. 2019, Kopecka and Vuillermet 2021); (ii) Manner asymmetries in Fast/Slow Motion expression (i.e., use of a diverse lexicon to express speed/Fast Motion in a more frequent way than Slow Motion, as in Estonian or Russian) (Taremaa and Kopecka 2023, Plungian and Rakhilina 2013); and (iii) presence of some privileged combinations (e.g., in Estonian, Fast Motion verbs that tend to combine more often with Goal) (Taremaa and Kopecka 2023). Despite a growing interest in the expression of Path and Manner components, the role of their specific sub-categories in spatial asymmetries is yet to be finely explored.

The present corpus study focuses on Path, Manner, and their sub-categories (Source/Goal; Fast/Slow motion respectively) in English and French narratives, and aims to examine: (i) the relative weight of these components as expressed in verbs, satellites (e.g., particles, prefixes), and other peripheral devices, (e.g., prepositions, adverbials); (ii) their asymmetries in terms of frequency, morphosyntactic complexity, and semantic granularity; and (iii) their potential combinations.

The analysis is based on the Frog Story narratives (Mayer, 1969) of 24 adult speakers (12 per language) shows that, in this dataset:

(i) **Lexicalization patterns:** Path is more often expressed in verbs in French and in satellites in English. On the other hand, Manner is expressed in both verbs and peripheral devices in French but is exclusively lexicalized in English. These statements confirm previous findings about the expression of these two components in Romance and Germanic languages (Talmy 2000, Hickmann et al. 2017);

(ii) **Asymmetries:** In both languages, the Source is the predominant component of Path, which is expressed in a more frequent and more diverse way than the Goal. More specifically, English speakers primarily use peripheral devices encoding the Source (e.g., away, off, out), and occasionally use Goal markers (e.g., in, into). Similarly, English speakers show a preference for Source verbs over Goal verbs. French speakers follow a similar pattern, while also conflating Manner and Path (e.g., s'évader 'to escape', s'enfuir 'to run away', s'échapper 'to escape'). As regards the expression of Speed, French speakers favor Fast Motion in terms of both frequency and diversity of linguistic devices. English speakers show a great diversity of usage of Slow Motion verbs – a finding that differs from previous observations with respect to the salience of Goal and Fast Motion (Ikegami 1987, Stefanowitsch and Rohde 2004, Stefanowitsch 2018);

(iii) **Combinations:** In both languages, the preferred combination is the expression of Fast Motion with Source markers (e.g., to run away, 's'enfuir'), as opposed to what has been previously observed in other languages (e.g., for Estonian in Taremaa and Kopecka 2023).
The present study discusses current research on Source/Goal and Fast/Slow Motion asymmetries and investigates their language-specific characteristics and manifestations in a fine-grained fashion.

## References

Hickmann, M., Engemann, H., Soroli, E., Hendriks, H. & Vincent, C. (2017). Expressing and categorizing motion in French and English: Verbal and non-verbal cognition across languages. In I. Ibbartexe- Antunano (ed.), *Motion and space across languages. Theory and applications*, 61-94. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Ikegami, Y. (1987). 'Source' vs 'Goal': A case of linguistic dissymmetry. In Dirven R. & Radden G. (eds.) *Concepts of case*, 122–46. Tübingen: Günter Narr Verlag.

Johanson, M., Selimis, S., & Papafragou, A. (2019). The Source-Goal asymmetry in spatial language: language-general vs. language-specific aspects. *Language, Cognition and Neuroscience*, 34(7), 826-840.

Kopecka, & Ishibashi, M. (2011). L'(a-)symétrie dans l'expression de la Source et du But : perspective translinguistique. *Faits de Langues*, 38(2), 131–149.

Kopecka, A., & Vuillermet, M. (2021). Source-Goal (a)symmetries across languages. *Studies in Language*, 45(1), 2-35.

Lakusta, L. & Landau, B. (2012). Language and Memory for Motion Events: Origins of the Asymmetry Between Source and Goal Paths. *Cognitive Science* 36, 517-544.

Mayer, M. (1969). *Frog, where are you?* New York: Dial Press.
Plungian, V. & Rakhilina, E. (2013). Time and speed: Where do speed adjectives come from? *Russian Linguistics*, 37(3), 347–359.

Pourcel, S., & Kopecka, A. (2005). Motion expression in French: typological diversity. *Durham & Newcastle working papers in linguistics*, 11, 139-153.

Stefanowitsch, A., & Rohde, A. (2004). The goal bias in the encoding of motion events. In Radden G. & Panther K-U. (eds.), *Studies in linguistic motivation*, 249–267. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Stefanowitsch, A. (2018). The goal bias revised: A collostructional approach. *Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association* 6(1), 143-166.

Talmy, L. (2000). *Toward a Cognitive Semantics*. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Taremaa, P., & Kopecka, A. (2023). Manner of motion in Estonian: A descriptive account of Speed. *Studies in Language*, 47:1, pp. 32-78.

Vuillermet, M. (2020). Source-Goal asymmetries in Ese Ejja. *Studies in Language*, 45(1), 235–275.