I am researching on the distinction between manner-in-verb languages (e.g., English and German) and path-in-verb languages (e.g., Spanish and Greek). This issue has been researched extensively, both theoretically -- esp. by Dan Slobin -- and empirically -- e.g. by Lera Boroditsky and Anna Papafragou, with diverging results.
In relation to other areas in the battlefield of linguistic relativity (e.g., colour or gender categorization), the topic of motion seems to be the hardest 'nut to crack,' with research shedding totally opposite results. Now, I can think of two reasons for that, namely
(1) it is still unclear what speakers really focus on in their general attention to the world, as biased by their language. That is, where most research seems to indicate that we'll focus on what's encoded in our own language, there are also indications of the opposite (i.e. Papafragou, Hulbert & Trueswell 2008: 'participants spontaneously studied those aspects of the scene that their language does not routinely encode in verbs').
and (2) so-called manner-in-verb languages actually tend to encode path information with great frequency and detail (albeit as a satellite to the verb, e.g. the leaf floated OUT OF THE CAVE AND RIGHT INTO THE HOLE ON THE DRIFTING LOG), such that the language-specific dichotomy is a little blurry.
I would highly appreciate any opinions on these issues. Also, would you please direct me towards any recent publications of relevance (other than Gumperz&Levinson 1999, Boroditsky and Papafragou)? Thank you so much.
Hi Pablo,
I agree with you completely that the differing results regarding effects of language on conceptualizations of motion may reflect in part the fact that manner verb languages such as English and German also give great prominence to path information. They just don't typically use verbs to do this. Thus, although English and German speakers may attend more strongly to manner of motion than do speakers of path verb languages, they may still attend to path quite strongly, possibly more strongly than they attend to manner if the two are placed in competition with each other for one's attention. I discuss some of these issues in a publication from 2010 (available on my Researchgate page):
Kersten, A.W., Meissner, C.A., Lechuga, J., Schwartz, B.L., Albrechtsen, J.S., & Iglesias, A. (2010). English speakers attend more strongly than Spanish speakers to manner of motion when classifying novel objects and events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139, 638-653.
Hi Alan: Thank you so much for your contribution! That was useful indeed.
Hi Pablo,
Have you looked into topics discussed within cognitive semantics? Like, Len Talmy's work on verb-framed and satellite-framed languages?
Hi Renata,
Certainly. Talmy started the whole thing, as it were. I finished my paper by now -- soon to be published, hopefully.
Best regards.