the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 1999: 68 ... (Chinese version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets translated by Ma.
Accepted for publication in Studies in Language.
The typological change of motion expressions in Chinese revisited: Motion events in Old Chinese and its Modern Chinese translation
1
Wenlei Shi1, Wanglong Yang1, and Henghua Su2 Zhejiang University / 2 Indiana University Bloomington Abstract
This paper reports on a corpus-based study aimed at reexamining the typological status and diachronic change of motion expressions in Chinese, drawing on parallel texts consisting of autonomous motion expressions in Old Chinese (OC) and its Modern Chinese (MoC) translation. The results show that MoC significantly differs from OC both in the preference of lexicalization patterns (Talmyan typology) and semantic components distributed in discourse (Slobinian typology) when narrating similar motion scenes. However, these results fail to support the viewpoint that Chinese has undergone a change from a verb- to a satellite-frame (Li 1993; Talmy 2000; Peyraube 2006; Shi & Wu 2014). It is argued that (i) the Talmyan typology and the Slobinian typology should be treated separately. In Talmyan typology, the diachrony of Chinese demonstrates the change of a V- to a parallel-frame, in that satellite- and verb-framed constructions in MoC have equal frequency and show no bias for the encoding of subtypes of autonomous motion. In Slobinian typology, MoC remains as a Path-salient language, as it gives considerable weight to the expression of Path; (ii) the dominant lexicalization pattern in a language varies from one sub-domain of motion to another (see also Lamarre 2003), and thus the typology of motion expressions is sub-domain-specific; and (iii) motivating forces and blocking forces, furthermore, co-exist diachronically for the typological evolution of motion encoding due to the idiosyncrasy of the morphosyntactic system. 1
Keywords: typological change, motion event, lexicalization pattern, Path salience, Manner salience, Chinese
1.
Introduction
This paper aims to reexamine the typological change of motion expressions in the Chinese language. It is a corpus-based study drawing on parallel texts consisting of autonomous motion expressions in Old Chinese (OC) and its translation into Modern Chinese (MoC). In his seminal work, Talmy (2000: 118–120) proposes that the lexicalization pattern of motion events in Chinese appears to have undergone a typological shift from a Path-conflation pattern (i.e., a verb-framed or V-framed pattern), lexicalizing Path in main verbs, to a Co-event-conflation pattern (i.e., a satellite-framed or S-framed pattern), along with lexicalizing Path in satellites. As illustrated in the following examples, Path is encoded by the main verb chū ‘exit’ in OC; while coming into MoC, it is encoded by the satellite form chū-lái ‘out (hither)’. (1)
a. 有蛇自泉宫出。 yǒu
shé
zì
Quángōng
chū.
there.is snake from Quángōng
exit
(OC—Zuǒzhuàn • Wéngōng the 16th year, end of 5th century BC) b. [MoC]有大蛇从泉宫爬出来。1 yǒu
dà-shé
cóng Quángōng pá-chū-lái
there.is huge-nake from Quángōng crawl-out-hither.
1
The information on the source of the MoC translations is provided in Table 1. We only give the information “[MoC]” before each modern translation to save space. We appreciate a reviewer’s suggestion for this. 2
‘A huge snake crawled out from the Quangong Palace.’ Since then, the typological change of motion expressions in Chinese has been disputed. Peyraube (2006: 133), based on a morphosyntactic analysis, argues that “around the 10th century, the typological shift from V to S was achieved.” However, as pointed out in Shi & Wu (2014: 1249), this statement is unconvincing due to the fact that a considerable number of V-framed constructions were still widely in use during that period. In order to make a more accurate judgment for the typological status, one needs to distinguish at least three stages for the use of a linguistic category or pattern, namely, the initial stage, the expanding stage, and the full-fledged stage. The stage of typological shift “achieved” should be at the full-fledged one. The use of Sframed constructions (i.e., verb-directional constructions, VDCs henceforth) during 10th century Chinese history is only at the expanding stage, far from reaching the full-fledged stage. Based on an investigation on the preference of lexicalization patterns used in the four historical periods of Chinese, Shi & Wu (2014) argues, different from Peyraube (2006), that up until the Modern period Chinese was not a typical S-framed language. Preference, though, was for S-frame constructions. However, the data of MoC used in Shi & Wu (2014) is adopted from Chen & Guo (2009). The problem is that Chen & Guo’s (2009) data fails to reflect the whole picture. The authors only selected monosyllabic words for discussion but neglected disyllabic words and some crucial constructions (e.g., zhe-construction. See Section 4.1.1, 4.1.3, and 4.2.1 for details). In order to reflect the difference between OC and MoC in terms of the preference of motion expressions, one needs to build an improved corpus. Recent studies, particularly studies conducted by Dan Slobin and his colleagues (e.g., Berman & Slobin 1994; Slobin 1996, 2000, 2004, 2006; Strömqvist & Verhoeven 2004; Guo et al. 2009), have shown that the distribution of semantic components in discourse correlates with the 3
lexicalization pattern. That is, a particular lexicalization pattern influences its speakers’ conceptualization of motion events and the organization of the discourse structure. This provides an intriguing approach to reexamine the typological change in the Chinese language. Following this line, Chen & Guo (2009) argues that MoC is neither an S- nor a V-framed language, but rather an equipollently-framed (E-framed) language, in that the form of Path and that of Manner have the same grammatical weight. That seems to indicate that the diachrony of Chinese is from V- to E-frame. However, as will be discussed in this paper (see also Shi & Wu 2014: 1245–1246), the Talmyan approach and the Slobinian approach do not strictly correlate with each other and should be treated separately. One can not make the claim that a language is E-framed based solely on the preference of semantic components in discourse. In this paper, a corpus study was conducted based on parallel texts consisting of autonomous motion expressions in OC and MoC translation. Both morphosyntactic structure (Talmyan approach) and discourse structure (Slobinian approach) were included in our investigation. Two major research questions are raised: (i)
In what types of morphosyntactic structures and to what extent do OC and MoC differ when depicting similar motion events?
(ii) How can our approach (i.e., an investigation through translational texts) contribute to the debates on the typology of motion encoding in Chinese and its typological evolution? The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the methods of this study. Section 3 offers an investigation of lexicalization patterns. Section 4 moves on to compare the distribution of semantic components. Finally, Sections 5–6 present discussions and a summary of the major findings of the study.
4
2.
Methodology
2.1. Corpus selection and description A corpus of OC-into-MoC translation is designed for this study, which presents the correspondence and the differences of motion expressions in a rather straightforward and condensed fashion. As stated in Slobin (2005: 128), “the translation task gives us a window into the maximum possibilities of a language, as it strives to adapt to the demands of a source language.” The corpus for OC (prior to West Hàn, i.e., prior to the 1st century AD) is adopted from Shi & Wu (2014). It includes 180 randomly selected episodes of motion expressions from six texts spanning from the middle through the late stage of OC (mid-5th century BC to mid-3rd century BC). An episode, following Özçalışkan & Slobin (2003: 206), refers to a narrative segment with the description of “the movement of a major protagonist, beginning from a stationary position and continuing to move until arriving at another stationary position where a plot-advancing event occurs.” These texts were chosen to maximally represent the spoken language of that period and to maintain the continuity and consistency of the narration of motion. The investigation of this paper only focuses on autonomous motion expressions, but leaves other types of motion (e.g., caused motion) for future study. Table 1 summarizes the details of the corpus.
Table 1:
Information of the corpus in OC and MoC translations
Old Modern translations
Episodes Time span
Chinese
5
Lúnyǔ Dúběn ‘A Reader of Lúnyǔ’, by Xun Lúnyǔ
6 Qian, Zhonghua Shuju Press, 2007 Báihuà Zuǒzhuàn ‘A colloquial translation of
Zuǒzhuàn
Zuǒchuàn’, by Zuomin Feng, Yuelu Shushe
76
Press, 1989 Mèng Zǐ Yìzhù ‘An Annotation of Mèng Zǐ’, by Mèng Zǐ
7 Bojun Yang, Zhonghua Shuju Press, 1962 Hán Fēizǐ Quányì ‘A Comprehensive
Hán Fēizǐ
Translation of Hán Fēizǐ’, by Ming Chen and
33
Qing Wang, Bashu Shushe Press, 2008 Lǚshì Chūnqīu Quányì ‘A Comprehensive Lǚshì
Translation of Lǚshì chūnqīu’, by Mingchun
chūnqīu
Liao and Xingan Chen, Bashu Shushe Press,
34 2004 Yàn Zǐ Chūnqīu Zhùyì ‘An Annotation of Yàn Yàn Zǐ
Zǐ Chūnqīu’, by Anqin Xue, in Jialu Xu (ed.)
Chūnqīu
Wénbái Duìzhào Zhū Zǐ Jíchéng, Guangdong
24 Education Press, 1995 450 B.C.－250 180 B.C.
A reviewer points out that some “translations of OC sentences into MoC are rather literary and do not represent the MoC Spoken language”. However, we believe that the occurance of the 6
literary texts in our corpus is limited. Most of the modern texts were translated to facilitate the ordinary readers’ understanding of classics but not for the academic purposes. To achieve this goal, translators would prefer to use colloquial styles than literary ones. Additionally, to further control this issue, for each OC text four to six versions of MoC translations were examined by three native speakers in order to select the most colloquial one that could be used to construct the corpus. We acknowledge that even so, there are still some translation texts that are inevitably of literary style, as noted by the reviewer. However, they should be minor. This should also be the case for the original OC texts. For example, Zuǒzhuàn, “Tso Chuan” also contains a certain number of literary texts of that period as well. Some structures and constructions used in modern translations might reflect and be influenced by the orginal OC texts. We believe that this kind of literary usage is also an indispensable part of a language when describing motion events and therefore should not be excluded from the current investigation. This issue is related to a bigger question, namely, whether these translation texts are homogeneous and comparable or not. We are aware that the faithfulness and stylistic patterns in the translation texts may vary depending upon individual translators. However, this kind of variation will still be regulated by the conventionalized linguistic norms imposed by the society, such as the ways to express motion events. As pointed out at the beginning of this section, the translation texts have their advantages in that they represent the correspondence and difference of motion expressions in a rather straightforward and condensed fashion. The current methodology still seems to be a well-accepted and optimal choice for this study as it realizes the comparision of the lexicalization patterns of each motion event from OC into MoC while controls the corresponding context, genre, and register.
7
Taking these factors into consideration, we argue that the OC original corpus and the MoC translation corpus selected in our paper are comparable. Translators’ individual variations and a limited number of literary linguistic forms will not affect the overall conclusion.
2.2. Data transcription The selected texts were coded and tagged by a Chinese philology specialist and were double checked by a group of three native speakers. The encoding and tagging cover two aspects: the morphosyntactic categories (main verb, satellite, adverbial, noun, preposition, etc.) and semantic components (Manner, Path, Figure, Ground, and Action). The results were stored in the corresponding database. Semantic components involved in the paper are defined as follows: Motion refers to the presence per se of motion in the event. Figure refers to the entity that moves with respect to another entity. Ground refers to the reference object of motion of the Figure. Path refers to the path followed or site occupied by the Figure object with respect to the Ground object. Manner refers to the way that the Figure moves. Cause refers to the external cause that motivates the movement of the Figure (revised from Talmy 2000). Lexical forms used to encode semantic components are defined as follows. Motion verb refers to a verb that encodes translational motion. Here, Manner verbs and Path verbs are both subcategories of the motion verbs. Neutral verbs are divided into two subtypes. The first type (NA), also called “pure motion verb” (Beavers et al. 2010: 362), refers to a motion verb that expresses neither Manner nor Path, but solely indicates movement of Figure, such as go/move in English, git/hareket et in Turkish (Özçalışkan & Slobin 2003: 261), and xíng ‘go/move’ in OC (Shi & Wu 2014). The second type (NB) refers to verbs that normally encode non-translational 8
Action, but in some constructions can express Manner-of-motion, such as kū ‘cry’ in kū ér guò shì ‘cry and cross the market’ (from Zuǒzhuàn) and fù ‘carry’ in fù shū ér xíng ‘carry book (on the back) and move’ (from Hánfēi Zǐ) (Chen & Guo 2009; Shi 2014a). These forms are also included in our investigation. Satellite, according to Talmy (1991: 486; 2000: 101–102), refers to a grammatical category of any constituent other than a nominal or prepositional complement that is in a sister relation to the main verb (or verb root), such as a verb particle in English (e.g., the particle out in verb phrase get out), the prefix of a verb in German (e.g., the prefix aus in the verb ausgehen), and the verb complement in Chinese (e.g., the complement guò ‘across’ in the verb phrase pǎo guò ‘run across’). Prepositions are excluded by Talmy’s (2000) original definition. But this treatment has since been controversial (see Stringer 2002; Beavers et al. 2010; Croft et al. 2010; Shi 2014b: 26–31 for discussion). In the present paper, the term “satellite” is used in a broad sense to cover particles, prefixes, and prepositions. One reviewer criticized this methodology for its lack of clarity, stating that “how this methodological choice influences the result of the study is unclear”. Prepositions that were classed into satellites in the study were mainly due to the fact that sometimes one would run into difficulties when trying to distinguish a preposition from a verb complement––the latter being a typical satellite in Talmy’s (2000) definition. For example, it is hard to tell if 过 guò ‘across’ in 走过路口 zǒu guò lùkǒu ‘walk across the intersection’ or 到 dào ‘to’ in 跑到屋里 pǎo dào wūlǐ ‘run into the house’ is a preposition or a verb complement. Only a few typical prepositions are included in the study, e.g., 自 zì ‘from’ in OC and 从 cóng ‘from’ in MoC. For us, these forms are similar to 过 guò and 到 dào in the following respects: semantically, they all encode Path component; and syntactically, they are all satellite forms and introduce a Ground element to main verbs. Therefore, these forms should be treated in the same way. Including these typical prepositions, the conclusion will not 9
be influenced given that the number of them is limited. A further investigation exclusively on typical verb complement may be needed for future studies to see if there is a substantial influence. A synthetic verb, which is called a hybrid-conflation verb in Kopecka (2009), refers to a verb that conflates Manner and Path simultaneously. Normally, Manner and Path do not conflate in the same verb but are linguistically encoded separately (Rappaport Hovav & Levin 2010; Senghas et al. 2004). However, we do find some cases in which Manner and Path are simultaneously conflated in the same verb, such as 奔 bēn ‘escape.away (toward),’ 登 dēng ‘climb.up,’ 逾 yú ‘jump.across’ in OC, and 撤退 chètuì ‘retreat.back,’ 出动 chūdòng ‘set.out,’ 进伐 jìnfá ‘proceed.forward.to.attack’ in MoC. These synthetic verbs are classified into Manner verbs for the ease of comparison. Only the verbs that exclusively encode Path are categorized as Path verbs. The diachronic changes of synthetic verbs are further discussed in Section 3.1. Morphosyntactic patterns that are identified to lexicalize motion, besides V- and S-patterns defined at the beginning, also include the following patterns. Equipollently-framed patterns (Epatterns), as briefly introduced earlier, refer to the ones in which the linguistic form of Path and that of Manner have the same grammatical weight. An E-pattern is categorized in terms of its morphosyntactic features rather than its discourse features. There are some instances of E-pattern attested in the OC corpus (58 tokens; 17.26%). For example, 趋出 qū chū ‘walk.fast (and) exit’ is an E-pattern in that the verb of Manner qū and the verb of Path chū have the same grammatical weight. Supporting evidence is that the construction can be inserted with a conjuction 而 ér in the middle. We can find the use of 趋而出 qū ér chū in that period. Other instances of E-pattern attested in our OC corpus are listed as follows: 趋入 qū rù ‘walk.fast (and) enter’, 疾走出门 jí zǒu chū mén ‘rapidly run (and) exit door’, 驰往 chí wǎng ‘drive (and) go.to’, and 突出 tū chū 10
‘sprint.abruptly (and) exit’, etc. A few cases in MoC can also be categorized as an E-pattern, such as 驱车前往 qū chē qiánwǎng ‘drive chariot (and) go to’ and 驾驶君主的车子出去 jiàshǐ jūnzhǔ de chēzǐ chūqù ‘drive king’s chariot (and) go out’. The term “V-/S-/E-frame” emphasizes the conflation of core semantic components in surface forms in accordance with Talmy (2000). “V-/S-/E-pattern” emphasizes the morphosyntactic pattern that encodes the semantic component. At times, they are interchangeable. Double-Path patterns, also know as Mixed patterns (Kopecka 2009), refer to those constructions in which both the main verb and the satellite encode Path.2 Take for example, 回到 huí dào ‘return to,’ 前往 qián wǎng ‘toward go,’ 离开 lí kāi ‘leave away,’ 来到 lái dào ‘come to,’ and 出来 chū lái ‘exit hither’ in MoC.
3.
Lexicalization patterns
3.1. Lexicalization patterns of autonomous motion events The morphosyntactic patterns that encode autonomous motion employed in the OC corpus and MoC translations are listed in Table 2.
Table 2:
Frequency of lexicalization patterns of autonomous motion in OC and MoC Modern Chinese
Old
V-
S-
Chinese
frame
frame
Synthet
E-
Other
Non
ic
frame
s
e
DPP
2
We used the label “mixed pattern” to categorize this pattern in the earlier version of the paper. A reviewer points out that “mixed” implies a mixture of different things. Here we rather have a “double” encoding of Path. To resolve this potential ambiguity, “double-Path pattern” is used instead. 11
226+6=232(69.0 V-frame
98
44
71
4
0
7
2 5%) 62–
E-frame
7
41
4
1
8
1
0 4=58(17.26%)
S-frame
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
Synthetic
1
13
0
2
0
3
1
1(0.3%) 20– 1=19(5.66%) 29–
Others
1
9
1
1
0
17
0 3=26(7.73%) Total in
107 (31.94
108 (32.24
76 (22.69
8 (2.39%
8 (2.39
28 (8.35
3 □
OC=336 Total in
%)
%)
%)
)
%)
%) MoC=335
Note: DPP=double-Path pattern. “Others” refer to those patterns that are difficult to categorize (e.g., Manner-only verbal constructions). Some instances are as follows: 追楚师 zhuī chǔ shī ‘chase Chu army,’ 挟辀以走 xié zhōu yǐ zǒu ‘carry shaft and run’ in OC, and 长驱疾驰 cháng qū jí chí ‘lastingly drive (and) quickly gallop,’ and 转身 zhuǎn shēn ‘turn body’ in MoC. The numbers from left to right in the rows in Table 2 represent the count of each pattern used in MoC corresponding to those in OC. For instance, 98 instances of V-patterns of counterparts in MoC were found for the V-patterns used in OC, and 7 instances of V-patterns of counterparts in MoC were found for the E-patterns in OC. The column to the right represents the total number of each pattern in OC, and the bottom row represents the total number in MoC.
12
It should be noted that a few cases were inconsistent between OC and MoC in segmenting conceptual units of events, as shown by the following example: (2)
[OC]{入自皇门},
{至于逵路}
→
[MoC]{ 从 皇 门 攻 入 大
路上} {rù
zì
Huángmén},
{zhì
yú
kuí-lù}
→
{enter from Huang-gate} {arrive at broad-road} → {cóng Huángmén gōng-rù
dà-lù-shàng}
{From Huángmén attack-enter
broad-road-above}
(Zuǒzhuàn • Xuāngōng the 12th year, end of 5th century BC) The two clauses are separated by braces “{}” in OC, which are syntactically independent of each other. There is a clear temporal borderline in the middle with different reference points. In MoC, however, the counterpart translation is integrated into a single clause with a verbdirectional construction (VDC). Additionally, a couple of cases which contain a single verbal clause in OC were divided into two distinct motion expressions in MoC, as the following example illustrates: (3)
[OC]入 → [MoC]{走在前面} rù
→
{zǒu
zài
enter → {walk at
{先进去}
qiánmiàn} {xiān
jìn-qù}
front}
enter-thither}
{first
(Zuǒzhuàn · Zhuānggōng the 19th year, end of 5th century BC) In our corpus investigation, one case with a single V-pattern in OC translated into two MoC constructions and a total number of seven cases in which two OC V-patterns translated into one MoC construction were detected. There are four cases in which a single E-pattern in OC was translated into two constructions in MoC and one case in which a single hybrid pattern in OC 13
was translated into two constructions in MoC. We also found three cases in which one “other” pattern in OC was translated into two constructions in MoC. In addition, in three cases, the motion expressions in OC find no MoC counterpart and therefore were labelled as “none” in Table 2 and were excluded from further calculation. To test the discrepancy of distribution of lexicalization patterns between OC and MoC, a Chisquare test was conducted on the constitution of the two sampled data sets. 3 A significant difference was found in the distribution of lexicalization patterns (X2 = 269.562 df = 4, p < 0.001), indicating that the preference for encoding motion events has substantially changed from MoC to OC. The major changes are manifested in the following aspects: (i) V-frame is the most prevalent lexicalization pattern in OC (69.05%). However, coming into MoC, the percentage of V-frame is significantly lower (31.94%). (ii) The percentage of S-frame goes upward from 0.3% to 32.24%. Only the example, 东走 dōng zǒu ‘(toward) east flee’ in (4) below, was treated as an S-frame in the OC corpus. (4)
师延东走。 Shīyán dōng
zǒu.
Shīyán eastward escape (OC—Hán Fēizǐ • Shíguò, 3rd century BC) [MoC]师延向东逃走。 Shīyán xiàng dōng táo-zǒu. Shīyán toward east escape-away ‘Shiyan escaped toward the east.’
3
According to Table 2, OC has V-frame with 232 tokens, S-frame with 1 token, E-frame with 58 tokens, synthetic pattern with 19 tokens, double-Path pattern with 0 tokens, and others with 26 tokens. MoC has V-frame patterns with 107 tokens, S-frame patterns with 108 tokens, E-frame patterns with 8 tokens, synthetic patterns with 8 tokens, double-Path patterns with 76 tokens, and others with 28 tokens. 14
This construction encodes a non-boundary-crossing Path, namely, the movement toward a certain reference point. The same phenomenon was found cross-linguistically as well. As reported in Aske (1989) and Slobin (1997), certain typical V-languages, for instance Spanish, can also use S-framed structures, though they are restricted by the pragmatics of [±boundarycrossing]. That is, these languages obligatorily use V-frame patterns when expressing [+boundary-crossing] Path and use S-frame patterns only when expressing [–boundary-crossing]. Interestingly, OC appears to obey such a constraint. Changes in the percentage of S- and V- patterns to a large extent are caused by the diachronic change in the morphosyntactic status of Path forms. Syntactic position (i.e., V/V1 vs. V2/V3) is a crucial criterion in determining whether a Path verb in MoC is a main or satellite verb, as well as an important dimension in estimating the evolution of the lexicalization pattern in Chinese diachronically. Since Pre-Modern Chinese, the Path form is typically identified as the main verb in V/V1 position but in V2/V3 position it is grammaticalized into a satellite (Shi 2014b; Shi & Wu 2014). The syntactic distribution of Path forms (including deictic forms) is calculated and listed in Table 3.
Table 3:
Syntactic distribution of Path verbs and deictic verbs in OC and MoC Monosyllabic
Disyllabic
Deictic verbs (monosyllabic)
V/V1
V2
V/V1
V2
V/V1
V2/V3
OC
95.64%(263)
4.36%(12)
0
0
94.44%(17)
5.56%(1)
MoC
47.41%(128)
52.59%(142)
100%(39)
0
25%(20)
75%(60)
15
Only monosyllabic Path verbs were attested in the OC corpus and were mostly used independently as a V-pattern. The cases in which monosyllabic Path verbs took the V2 position (e.g., 走出 zǒu chū ‘run exit,’ and 趋过 qū guò ‘run pass’) are very limited. They can be separated by the insertion of the conjunction 而 ér in OC (e.g., 趋过 qū guò ‘run pass’ vs. 趋而过 qū ér guò ‘run and pass’). Therefore, they were categorized as an E-pattern, with the Manner verb and Path verb holding the equipollent grammatical weight. When it comes to the modern translations, however, the use of monosyllabic Path verbs that occupy the V2 position has increased up to 52.59% and most (if not all) of them function as complements or satellites (Talmy 2009; Shi & Wu 2014). Deictic verbs (i.e., 往 wǎng ‘go,’ 来 lái ‘come,’ and 去 qù ‘go’) are all monosyllabic. Their diachronic evolution in terms of syntactic position is similar to that of the general Path verbs. In OC, most of the deictic verbs are either used independently or take the V1 position, and they should have a main verb grammatical status. When it comes to the modern translations, the use of deictic verbs in the V2/V3 position, as satellite, increases up to 75%. The Path satellite, as a category (with Deictic included), has undergone a significant change in the history of the Chinese language, evolving from almost nonexistence 4 to a prominent inventory. This categorial change can be illustrated by the following examples. In (5), the Path verb 出 chū ‘exit’ in OC was translated by a directional satellite into MoC. (5)
有蛇自泉宫出。 yǒu
shé
zì
there.is snake from
Quángōng chū. Quángōng exit
4
Taking a broad definition of “satellite,” a very small number of members of the Path satellite category do exist in OC, such as the preposition 自 zì ‘from.’ 16
(OC—Zuǒzhuàn • Wéngōng the 16th year, end of 5th century BC) [MoC]有大蛇从泉宫爬出来。 yǒu
dà-shé
cóng
there.is huge-snake
Quángōng from
pá-chū-lái.
Quángōng
crawl-out-hither
‘A huge snake crawled out from Quangong.’ Example (6) demonstrates how the Path verb 东 dōng ‘move toward east’ in OC, which is converted from the noun 东 dōng ‘east,’ was translated into a PP+V construction, where the Path is encoded by a prepositional satellite. (6)
遂徒行而东。 suì tú
xíng ér
then by.walk go
dōng.
and go.eastward (OC—Yànzǐ chūnqiū • Zá Shàng, 3rd–4th
century BC) [MoC]就徒步向东方走了。 jiù
túbù
xiàng-dōngfāng zǒu le.
thus by.walk toward-east
walk
PFV
‘[Yanzi] then walked toward the east.’ The form 往入 wǎng rù ‘go enter’ in the example (7) is a juxtaposition of two Path verbs encoding two sequential motion events in OC. It was then integrated into a single VDC (S-frame) in MoC, with the main verb encoding Manner and the directional satellite expressing Path: (7)
象往入舜宮。 Xiàng wǎng rù Xiàng go
Shùn gōng.
enter Shùn house (OC—Mèngzǐ • Wànzhāng Shàng, 3rd–4th century
BC) 17
[MoC]象便走向舜的住房。 Xiàng biàn
zǒu-xiàng
Shùn
Xiàng then
walk-toward Shùn
de
zhùfáng.
PRT
house
‘Xiang then walked toward Shun’s house.’ In example (8), 趋而归 qū ér guī ‘hurry-up and return’ in OC is an E-pattern, where Path is encoded by the main verb. It was translated into an S-pattern in MoC. (8)
晏子…趋而归。 Yànzǐ…qū
ér
guī.
Yànzǐ…hurry.up
and
return (OC—Yànzǐ chūnqīu • Zá Shàng, 3rd–4th
century BC) [MoC]晏子…跑回家。 Yànzǐ…pǎo huí
jiā.
Yànzǐ…run back home ‘Yanzi…ran back home.’ In the following case (9), 逾 yú ‘jump-cross’ exemplifies a change from a hybrid verb of OC, encoding both Manner and Path in the verb, into an S-frame in MoC. (9)
[重耳]逾垣而走。 [chóngěr] yú
yuán ér zǒu.
[chóngěr] jump.across
wall and run (OC—Zuǒzhuàn • Xīgōng the 5th year, end of
5th century BC) [MoC]当他爬上墙正准备逃跑时…… dāng tā
pá-shàng
when he climb-up
qiáng zhèng
zhǔnbèi táopǎo shí…
wall
prepare escape moment
just
18
‘When he climbed up the wall and was just going to escape…’ As can be seen from the above examples, the Path of motion conflated in main verbs in OC is now inclined to be encoded by satellites in MoC. (iii) The percentage of E-patterns have dropped from 17.26% in OC to 2.39% in MoC (see Section 3.2 for details). (iv) Double-Path patterns, having both a main verb and satellite encoding Path, are not attested in OC, but come to be popular in MoC (22.69%). As the following example in (10) shows, the single Path verb 归 guī ‘return’ used in OC was translated into a double-Path pattern in MoC (i.e., 回到 huí dào ‘return-to’). (10) 少师归。 Shàoshī guī. Shàoshī return (OC—Zuǒzhuàn • Huángōng the 6th year, end of 5th century BC) [MoC]少师回到楚国。 Shàoshī
huí-dào
Chǔ-guó.
Shàoshī
return-to
Chǔ-State
‘Shaoshi returned to State Chu.’ (v) A hybrid pattern (i.e., in which the main verb encodes Manner and Path, such as 逾 yú ‘jump across’, 奔 bēn ‘flee (to)’, 涉 shè ‘cross (river) on foot’, 投 tóu ‘plunge down’, and 走 zǒu ‘flee away’ in OC) changes decrementally from 5.66% to 2.39%. The hybrid-pattern constructions of OC were largely replaced by S-patterns (13 out of 19 tokens) in MoC. As shown in example (11), 奔 bēn ‘flee (to),’ most of its OC originals are translated into S-patterns. Type
19
(a) of MoC is of a typical S-frame; type (b) is a bit different in that the Manner verb in the first syntactic slot is disyllabic (e.g., 出逃 chū táo ‘outwards-flee’ and 亡命 wáng mìng ‘flee’). (11) OC original 奔 bēn ‘flee to’
MoC translations →
a. 逃往 táo wǎng ‘flee toward’; 逃来 táo lái ‘flee
to (hither)’; 逃到…去 táo dào…qù ‘flee to…(thither)’; b. 出逃到 chū táo dào ‘outwards-flee-to; flee to’; 亡命到 wáng mìng dào ‘flee to’. In sum, on the one hand, MoC shows significant differences from OC in various aspects in terms of the distribution of lexicalization patterns. On the other hand, MoC does not seem to be an S-framed language. Although having been increased to 32.24%, S-frame patterns in MoC still do not enjoy a dominant pattern status but occupy a similar proportion as the V-frame patterns (31.94% vs 32.24%). In addition, these two patterns show no bias on the encoding of the subtypes of autonomous motion. Based on this observation, MoC should be categorized as a parallel system of conflation (Talmy 2000: 66). Consequently, the diachrony of the Chinese language does not demonstrate a typological shift from a V- to an S-pattern as proposed by Talmy (2000: 119) but a shift from a V- to a parallel-pattern. A more detailed reassessment on the typological status of Chinese and its diachrony will be given in Section 5.1.
3.2. Lexicalization patterns of Manner and Path encoded simultaneously The above analyses are mostly concerned with the distribution of the lexicalization pattern of autonomous motion in general (e.g., OC prefers to encode only Path forms and omit Manner forms). This leaves us with the question: What would the speakers of OC and MoC prefer to use 20
when Manner and Path are both salient and need to be expressed at the same time? We calculated the morphosyntactic constructions that simultaneously encode Manner and Path (M&P) in OC and their translations in MoC. The results are listed in Table 4.
Table 4:
Count of constructions for M&P in OC and MoC translations MoC Sequen E-frame Synthet DoubleV-frame
tial
S-frame VManner/V
ic
Path
sentenc Othe Tot
(VneutralB+zhe VManner+S OC
neutral
+)VPath
VManner VPath+Sa
e
rs
al
atPath B+VPath
+Path
tPath
{S1}{S 2}
V-frame AdvManner+VPath
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
8
34
5
0
3
3
3
56
1
7
0
1
0
0
3
12
0
1
0
0
0
1
0
2
S-frame AdvPath+VManner E-frame VManner/VneutralB(+C ONJ)+VPath Synthetic VManner+Path Sequential sentence {S1}{S2}
21
Total
10
44
5
1
3
4
6
73
Note: The category “others” in Table 4 refers to constructions that cannot be categorized in the listed types, such as 送给 sòng gěi ‘give or send’ (in the MoC translation of Lǚshì Chūnqiū • Jìqiūjì). According to Table 4, OC prefers to use E-patterns for M&P (77%, N = 56); other kinds of constructions are only used sporadically. Three types of E-framed constructions were attested in OC; namely, VManner+CONJ+VPath (e.g., 趋而出 qū ér chū ‘run and exit’), Vneutral B+CONJ+VPath (e.g., 缒而出 zhuì ér chū ‘hang-down-with-rope and exit’), and VManner+VPath (e.g., 走出 zǒu chū ‘run exit’). In contrast, the majority of these OC constructions were translated into S-patterns (60%, N = 44) in MoC. We then calculated the constructions for M&P in MoC and their OC counterparts. The results are presented in Table 5.
Table 5:
Count of constructions for M&P in MoC and their OC counterparts OC Sequent E-frame V-frame
Syntheti
S-frame
ial VManner/neutral
c
(AdvManner+) AdvPath+VM MoC
B(+CONJ)+
VPath
Othe Tot clauses
VPath+Ma
rs
al
1
11
{S1}{S2
anner
VPath
nner
} V-frame 6
0
4
0
0
22
Vneutral B+zhe+VManner
S-frame VManner+SatPath
37
1
35
7
3
10
93
2
0
7
0
0
0
9
1
0
2
0
0
0
3
3
0
0
1
0
1
5
{S1}{S2}
1
0
5
0
1
1
8
Others
0
0
l1
0
0
0
1
Total
50
1
54
8
4
13
E-frame VManner/neutral B+VPath
Double-Path Vneutral B+zhe+VPath+SatPat h/deictic
Synthetic VPath+Manner Sequential clauses
13 0 Note: “Others” refers to a small number of cases, such as 率领全军出动 shuàilǐng quánjūn chūdòng ‘lead the whole army to dispatch out’ (in MoC translation of Zuǒzhuàn • Xiānggōng the 27th year), where the action verb 率领 shuàilǐng and hybrid-pattern verb 出动 chūdòng are used together, which cannot be categorized in the listed types.
23
As shown in Table 5, MoC primarily uses S-patterns (72%, N = 93) for M&P. These MoC constructions have two main sources in OC originals, namely, E-patterns (42%, N = 54) and Vpatterns (38%, N = 50). The change from an E- frame to an S-frame can be illustrated by the following example: (12) 范昭趋而出。 Fàn-Zhāo qū
ér
chū.
Fàn-Zhāo hurry.up and
exit (OC—Yànzǐ chūnqīu • Zá Shàng, 3rd–4th century BC)
[MoC]范昭快步走了出去。 Fàn-Zhāo kuài-bù
zǒu
Fàn-Zhāo quick-step walk
le
chū-qù.
PRT
out-thither
‘Fan Zhao walked out quickly.’ The E-framed construction 趋而出 qū ér chū ‘hurry-up and exit’ in OC contains two verbs linked by a conjunction; it was translated into a VDC 走了出去 zǒu le chū-qù ‘walked out’ in MoC, with a Manner verb followed by a complex Path satellite. The change from the V-frame to the S-frame can be demonstrated by the following example: (13) 大王…去之岐山之下。 TàiWáng…qù zhī
QíShān
TàiWáng…leave
go
zhī
xià.
QíShān
foot
PRT
(OC—Mèngzǐ • Liánghuìwáng Xià, 3rd–4th century BC) [MoC]太王…避开,搬到岐山之下。 TàiWáng…bì-kāi,
bān-dào Qíshān zhī
TàiWáng…avoid-away
move-to
xià.
Qíshān
PRT
down
‘The king Taiwang…avoided away and moved to the foot of the Qishan hill.’ 24
The two S-framed constructions 避开 bì-kāi ‘avoid away’ and 搬到 bān-dào ‘move to’ in the MoC translation correspond to Path verbs 去 qù ‘leave’ and 之 zhī ‘reach’ in OC, respectively. As shown by the lexicalization patterns of M&P, OC takes E-patterns as the major encoding strategy whereas MoC takes S-patterns as the primary choice.
4.
Semantic components in discourse
This section examines the distributional preference of semantic components, e.g. Manner, Path, and Ground in discourse. The types and tokens of Manner verbs and Path verbs used in OC texts and MoC translations are listed in Table 6–7.
Table 6:
Tokens and types of motion verbs in OC arranged by frequency
Order Verb Pinyin Meaning
Freq. Order Verb Pinyin
Meaning
Freq.
Manner verbs (26 types, 77 tokens) 1
走1
zǒu
‘run’
12
14
逐
zhú
‘chase’
2
2
趋
qū
‘walk fast’ 11
15
避
bì
‘avoid/hide’
1
3
奔
bēn
‘flee (to)’
7
16
驰
chí
‘gallop’
1
4
驱
qū
‘drive’
5
17
从
cóng
‘follow’
1
5
逾
yú
‘jump
5
18
飞
fēi
‘fly’
1
4
19
济
jì
‘sail across 1
across’ 6
涉
shè
‘cross (river) on
by ship’ 25
foot’ 7
乘
chéng
‘ride’
3
20
蹶
jué
‘stride’
1
8
登
dēng
‘climb up’
3
21
逃
táo
‘flee’
1
9
投
tóu
‘plunge’
3
22
突
tū
‘sprint
1
abruptly’ 10
坠
zhuì
‘fall
3
23
踊
yǒng
‘jump’
1
3
24
越
yuè
‘jump
1
down’ 11
走2
zǒu
‘flee’
across’ 12
驾
jià
‘drive’
2
25
撞
zhuàng ‘strike’
1
13
亡
wáng
‘flee’
2
26
追
zhuī
‘chase’
1
Path verbs (23 types, 275 tokens) 1
入
rù
‘enter’
47
13
退
tuì
‘return’
3
2
出
chū
‘exit’
45
14
适
shì
‘approach’
3
3
至
zhì
‘reach’
30
15
南
nán
‘move
2
southward’ 4
去1
qù
‘leave’
24
16
上
shàng
‘ascend’
2
5
过
guò
‘pass’
21
17
东
dōng
‘go
1
eastward’ 6
还
huán
‘return’
18
18
赴
fù
‘go to’
1
7
之
zhī
‘go to’
16
19
复
fù
‘return’
1
8
归
guī
‘return’
15
20
即
jí
‘approach’
1 26
8
及
jí
‘reach’
15
21
起
qǐ
‘rise’
1
10
如
rú
‘approach’ 11
22
升
shēng
‘rise’
1
11
返
fǎn
‘return’
23
遵
zūn
‘move
1
10
along’ 12
下
xià
‘descend’
6
Deictic verbs (2 types, 18 tokens) 1
往
wǎng
‘go’
14
2
来
lái
‘come’
4
Neutral verbs (NA: 1 type, 9 tokens) 1
行
xíng
‘move’
9
Neutral verbs (NB: 14 types, 17 tokens) a 1
鞭
biān
‘whip’
2
8
将
jiāng
‘carry’
1
2
衣
yì
‘wear’
2
9
哭
kū
‘cry’
1
zǎi
‘carry by 2
10
shì
‘dress up’
1
载
饰
3
11
挟
xié
‘hold under 1
vehicle’ cāo 4
‘hold’
1
操 arm’
5
扶
fú
‘hold up’
1
12
携
xié
‘take along’
1
6
负
fù
‘bear’
1
13
缒
zhuì
‘hang down 1 with rope’
7
歌
gē
‘sing’
1
14
捉
zhuō
‘hold
1
firmly’
27
Note: The statistics are based on the same OC corpus used in Shi & Wu (2014), except that we also included the NB type neutral verbs, due to the fact that this type is a significant strategy in encoding Manner of motion in OC. Consequently, the percentage of tokens of Manner verbs and Path verbs was also revised. The subscript numbers attached to verbs in Table 6–7 represent differentiated meanings, e.g, 走 zǒu1 ‘run’; 走 zǒu2 ‘escape away’; 走 zǒu3 ‘leave’; 走 zǒu4 ‘walk’; 跑 pǎo1 ‘run’; 跑 pǎo2 ‘escape’; 赶 gǎn1 ‘move in haste’; 赶 gǎn2 ‘drive (someone away)’; 掉 diào1 ‘fall’; 掉 diào2 ‘turn around’; 坐 zuò1 ‘sit’; 坐 zuò2 ‘ride’; 冲 chōng1 ‘rush’; 冲 chōng2 ‘collide.’
Table 7:
Tokens and types of motion verbs in MoC translations arranged by
frequency Orde
Ver
r
b
Pinyin
Freq Orde
Ver
.
b
Pinyin
Meanin
Freq
g
.
Meaning r
Manner verbs (monosyllabic: 38 types, 110 tokens; disyllabic: 20types, 28tokens) ‘move 1
走4
zǒu
‘walk’
28
20
乘
chéng
by
1
vehicle’ 2
逃
táo
‘escape’
14
21
冲1
chōng
‘rush’
1
‘penetrat 3
跑1
pǎo
‘run’
10
22
穿
chuān
e
1
through’ 4
渡
dù
‘sail across’
6
23
窜
cuàn
‘scurry’
1
28
‘move by 5
攻
gōng
‘attack’
4
24
打
dǎ
1 attackin g’
6
爬
pá
7
赶1
gǎn
‘climb’ ‘move
4
25
倒
dǎo
‘fall’
1
3
26
躲
duǒ
‘dodge’
1
in
haste’ 8
驾
jià
‘drive’
3
27
跟
gēn
‘follow’
1
9
跳
tiào
‘jump’
3
28
溜
liū
‘flee’
1
10
驰
chí
‘gallop’
2
29
跑2
pǎo
‘escape’
1
11
登
dēng
2
30
侵
qīn
‘invade’
1
2
31
摔
shuāi
‘tumble’
1
‘ascend
by
step’ ‘fall 12
掉1
without
diào control’
13
飞
fēi
‘fly’
2
32
投
tóu
‘throw’
1
14
驱
qū
‘drive’
2
33
跃
yuè
‘leap’
1
15
折
zhé
‘turn (to)’
2
34
越
yuè
‘jump’
1
16
搬
bān
1
35
转
zhuǎn
‘turn’
1
‘remove (house to)’ 17
奔
bēn
‘run’
1
36
追
zhuī
‘chase’
1
18
避
bì
‘dodge’
1
37
钻
zuān
‘worm’
1
19
沉
chén
‘sink’
1
38
坐2
zuò
‘ride’
1 29
亡
wángmìn ‘flee
命
g
撤
1
5
11
desperately’
逃 2
chètuì
翻 táopǎo
‘flee’
2
12
追
出
chūdòn
逐
动
g
步
出
4
bùxíng
‘chase’
2
‘walk’
1
2 over’
越
zhuīzhú
13
‘set out’
14
1
发
off’
驾
出
‘flee
jiàshǐ
‘drive’
1
15
chūzǒu
驶
走
流
进
6
‘flee liúwáng
for 1
16
refuge’
亡
1
‘start chūfā
行
5
2
‘climb fānyuè
跑
3
‘retreat’
退
1 away’ ‘advanc
jìnbīng
e
the 1
兵 army ’
跳 7
‘proceed
进 tiàoyuè
‘jump’
1
17
跃
jìnfá
to
1
伐 attack’
行 8
xíngzǒu 走
‘advanc
进 ‘walk’
1
18
jìnjūn
e
the 1
军 army’
30
巡 9
凯 xúnxíng
‘patrol’
1
‘return kaǐxuá
19
行
with 旋
1
n victory’
追 10
‘chase
追 zhuīgǎn
‘chase’
1
20
赶
zhuījī
and
1
击 attack’
Cause verbs (7 types, 7 tokens) 1
拔
bá
‘pull’
1
5
拉
lā
‘drag’
1
2
冲2
chōng
‘collide’
1
6
驶
jià
‘drive’
1
3
带
dài
‘take or bring’ 1
7
押
yā
‘detain’
1
4
吊
diào
‘hang’
1
Path verbs (monosyllabic: 16 types, 270 tokens; disyllabic: 5 types, 39 tokens) ‘descend 1
到
dào
‘arrive’
78
9
下
xià
9 ’
2
回
huí
‘return’
41
10
上
shàng
‘ascend’
8
3
出
chū
‘exit’
35
11
入
rù
‘enter’
6
4
开
kaī
‘away’
22
12
退
tuì
‘return’
3
5
离
lí
‘leave’
21
13
走3
zǒu
‘leave’
3
6
进
jìn
‘enter’
17
14
归
guī
‘return’
1
7
过
guò
‘pass’
12
15
起
qǐ
‘rise’
1
8
往
wǎng
‘toward’
12
16
至
zhì
‘arrive’
1
31
进 1
jìnrù
‘enter’
13
jīngguò
‘pass by’
10
lùguò
‘pass by’
9
fǎnhuí
‘return’
5
dàodá
‘arrive’
2
入 经 2 过 路 3 过 返 4 回 到 5 达 Deictic verbs (2 types, 80 tokens) 1
来
lái
‘come’
46
2
去2
qù
‘go’
34
Neutral verbs (NA1 types, 2 tokens) 1
行
xíng
‘move’
2
Neutral verbs (NB Monosyllabic: 5 types, 5 tokens; disyllabic: 2 types, 2 tokens) 攻 1
掉2
diào
‘turn around’
1
1
gōngdǎ ‘attack’
1
打 征 2
丢
diú
‘throw’
1
‘march zhēngf
2
and 伐
1
á attack’
32
3
送
sòng
‘send’
1
4
站
zhàn
‘stand’
1
5
坐1
zuò
‘sit’
1
Note: The MoC translations divide its verbs into two categories, i.e., monosyllabic and disyllabic. If two morphemes are already solidified to be a word, thus forming an inseparable unit, it is listed as one verb, e.g., 进军 jìn jūn ‘march’ and 经过 jīng guò ‘pass’. If the two morphemes are still transparent in meaning, they are listed separately, such as 前往 qián wǎng ‘forward-go; go forward’ and 出逃 chū táo ‘exit-escape; escape away’.5 The last 10 types of the forms under the “Manner verbs” are synthetic verbs (12 tokens), encoding both Manner and Path. It should be noted that the MoC translations added 7 caused motion verbs to translate OC autonomous motion. We will come to this issue in Section 4.3. Within the Path verbs, kai ‘away’ and wang ‘toward’ can only function as a directional (satellite). This is discussed in Section 4.2.1.
4.1. Encoding of Manner in discourse 4.1.1. Types of Manner verbs The types of Manner verbs attested are listed in Table 8.
Table 8:
Types of Manner verbs in OC and MoC OC
MoC
5
A reviewer points out that the criteria here to distinguish lexicalized items are not totally convincing. Sometimes we were in a dilemma when making a judgment. But the items that we class as solidified verbs do appear to encode an integrated meaning. For example, 进军 jìn jūn means a Figure (e.g. an army) “marchs” toward somewhere; 经过 jīng guò means a Figure “passes” somewhere. The token-number of these forms is few. So, it may not alter our overall conclusion. A better solution can be expected for future studies. 33
Types of Manner verbs
26
58 Monosyllabic 38
Disyllabic20
According to the above table, the types of Manner verbs have increased substantially from OC to MoC. All of the Manner verbs in the OC corpus are monosyllabic; however, MoC has both monosyllabic and disyllabic verbs. Only looking at monosyllabic forms, we found that the types of Manner verbs used in MoC were more than that in OC (38: 26); if the 20 types of disyllabic verbs attested in modern translations are included the difference is more pronounced (58: 26). In their investigation of 180 episodes of motion events in 9 MoC novels (the same number of episodes as the present study), Chen & Guo (2009) found 41 types of Manner verbs, which is close to the number of monosyllabic verbs we found in MoC (38 types). The difference is more significant when the disyllabic verbs are included. These disyllabic compounding forms have solidified or have been univerbalized and should be treated as single verbs. Unfortunately, the fact that Chen & Guo (2009) neglected disyllabic verbs fails to fully reveal the whole picture of motion expressions in MoC. The increase in the types of Manner verbs enhances the diversity and detailedness of expression of Manner information. The above change suggests that the Manner verbs in OC form a relatively closed class; in MoC, however, they form a relatively open class. The types of Manner verbs, according to Talmy (2000, 2009), are relatively “open” in S-framed languages but relatively “closed” in V-framed languages. The results in Table 8 support the idea that OC stands close to the V-framed side, whereas MoC is close to the S-framed side.
34
4.1.2. Tokens of Manner verbs The tokens of Manner verbs, Path verbs, and Neutral verbs used in OC and MoC are listed in Table 9 below, comparing with those of English (S-language) and Turkish (V-language) adopted from Özçalışkan & Slobin (2003: 261, Table 1).
Table 9:
Frequency of motion verbs in OC and MoC Manner verbs
Path verbs
Neutral verbs
Total
English
51%
27%
20%
N/A
MoC
30.26%(138)
67.76%(309)
1.97%(9)
456
Turkish
30%
59%
7%
N/A
OC
20.37%(77)
72.75%(275)
6.88%(26)
378
Diachronically speaking, the change in tokens of Manner verbs shows an incremental tendency from OC into MoC (20.37% vs 30.26%). However, the frequency in MoC is still quite low and is very close to that of Turkish and conversely far away from that of English. The findings support the argument that MoC is still inclined to be a V-framed language and is distanced from being an S-framed language.
4.1.3. Adverbial elements that encode Manner In addition to main verbs, adverbial elements are also employed to encode Manner in Chinese. A comparison between OC and MoC from this perspective will further reveal their differences with respect to the richness and expressiveness of Manner expressions.
35
Table 10:
Frequency of adverbials that encode Manner in OC and MoC Adverbs
Zhe-constructions
Modifying Manner
Modifying Path
Modifying Manner
Modifying Path
verbs
verbs
verbs
verbs
OC
50%(4)
50%(4)
0
0
MoC
96.43%(27)
3.57%(1)
56.25%(9)
43.75%(7)
As seen in Table 10, two types of adverbial elements can be identified, adverbs and zheconstructions, which will be discussed respectively. As far as the frequency of Manner adverbs is concerned, MoC is significantly different from OC. Table 10 reveals that only 8 tokens of adverbs are used in OC in total; in contrast, 28 tokens of adverbs are attested in MoC translations. The majority of these newly emerging Manner adverbials are used to add new Manner information. Below is an example where the Manner adverb is found to be absent in OC but overt (with a new Manner adverb added) in the corresponding modern translation: (14) [晋太子圉]遂逃归。 [Jìn tàizǐ
Yǔ]
suì
táo
[Jìn prince Yǔ] then flee
guī. back
(OC—Zuǒzhuàn • Xīgōng the 22th year, end of 5th century BC) [MoC]于是晋太子圉,就偷偷地从秦国跑回晋国。 yúshì Jìn tàizǐ Yǔ, jiù tōutōu
de cóng Qín-guó
pǎo-huí Jìn-guó.
then Jìn prince
secretly
from
Yǔ then
PRT
Qín-state
run-
back Jìn-state ‘The Prince fled secretly from Qin back to Jin.’ 36
The significant increase in the number of Manner adverbs from OC into MoC undoubtedly enhances the expressiveness and richness of Manner expressions in MoC. OC and MoC are also significantly different in terms of the preference on whether Manner adverbs directly modify Manner verbs or Path verbs. As Table 10 suggests, almost no difference was found in OC in this respect. While coming into MoC, most of the Manner adverbs are directly used to modify Manner verbs instead of Path verbs (96.43% vs 3.57%). In this way, the richness and vividness of Manner expression in Chinese are enhanced to a greater extent (see Özçalışkan and Slobin’s 2003 discussion on English and Turkish). The zhe construction is a special adverbial or subordinating construction that is only used in MoC. Generally speaking, the function of zhe is to convert a main clause, to which zhe is attached or inserted, to an adverbial clause (see also Ji et al. 2011: 1048–1050 for discussion). The zhe construction is potentially able to express any kind of meaning; however, here we only focus on its function of encoding Manner. Zhe constructions in MoC are mainly used to translate the cases in the OC original texts wherein a neutral verb of B type (see Table 7 for NB) and a motion verb are juxtaposed. These constructions typically have a conjunction in the middle, as shown in the example 挟辀以走 xié zhōu yǐ zǒu ‘carry shaft and run’ in (15). (15) 颍考叔挟辀以走。 Yǐngkǎoshū xié
zhōu yǐ
zǒu.
Yǐngkǎoshū
carry shaft in.order.to
run
(OC—Zuǒzhuàn • Yǐngōng the 11th year, end of 5th century BC) [MoC]颍考叔用两手拉着车辕跑。 Yǐngkǎoshū yòng liǎng shǒu lā-zhe
chēyuán pǎo.
Yǐngkǎoshū
drag-PROG
with
two
hand
shaft
run 37
‘Yingkaoshu dragged the shaft of the carriage with his two hands and ran.’ Given the statistics in Table 10, the percentage of zhe constructions modifying Manner verbs is slightly higher than that of those modifying Path verbs. In contrast, out of their corresponding expressions in OC, only three instances are found where an NB verb is juxtaposed with a Manner verb, whereas for the remaining thirteen instances, the NB verbs collocate with Path verbs. This suggests that the use of an NB verb juxtaposed with a motion verb in OC is very likely to compensate for the insufficiency of Manner expressions (a typical feature of V-languages), whereas the function of the corresponding zhe constructions in MoC is, to some extent, to further highlight the Manner. This is clear from the fact that 56.25% (nine tokens) of zhe constructions are used to directly modify Manner verbs. As illustrated in (16), the neutral verb fú ‘supportwith-hand’ in the OC original collocates with a Path verb in the modern translation; however, the zhe construction fú-zhe ‘supporting’ instead directly goes with the Manner verb. (16) 提弥明……遂扶以下。 Tímímíng…suì fú
yǐ
xià.
Tímímíng…then
support.with.hand and descend
(OC—Zuǒzhuàn • Xuāngōng the 2nd year, end of 5th century BC) [MoC]提弥明…就扶着赵盾走出宫殿。 Tímímíng…jiù fú-zhe
Zhàodùn zǒu-chū
Tímímíng…thensupport-PROG
gōngdiàn.
Zhàodùn walk-out
palace
‘Timiming…then supported Zhaodun with hands to walk out of the palace.’ In sum, MoC is significantly different from OC in the types of Manner verbs, frequency of Manner verbs, and adverbial elements that encode Manner.
38
4.2. Encoding of Path in discourse 4.2.1. Types of Path verbs We calculated the types of verbs that encode Path in OC and MoC. The results are summarized in Table 11.
Table 11:
Types of Path verbs in OC and MoC Types of Path verbs Monosyllabic
Disyllabic
OC
23
0
MoC
16
5
Let us look at monosyllabic verbs first. We found 23 types of Path verbs in OC data and 16 types in MoC translations. It should be noted that among these forms, 开 kāi ‘away’ is only calculated for reference. It should not be counted as a main verb in the strictest sense, for it can only function as a particle attached to a main verb, as found in 走开 zǒu kāi ‘walk away.’ The verb 入 rù ‘enter’ in MoC was used for six times. Its usage, however, is of formal register, as can be seen in the following examples, 躲入 duǒ rù ‘dodge-enter’ and 侵入 qīn rù ‘invade-enter.’ This also applies to the following cases: 往 wǎng ‘go toward,’ 至 zhì ‘arrive,’ and 归 guī ‘return’, most of which are of formal register in MoC. Although we did count these forms as Path verbs, we believe that the monosyllabic Path verbs frequently used in MoC have less than 16 types. Chen & Guo (2009) found 13 types of monosyllabic Path verbs in their data, which is consistent with the statistical results in our study. Diachronically speaking, the types of monosyllabic Path verbs from OC into MoC show a tendency to decrease. 39
In addition, five types of disyllabic Path verbs were attested in modern translations; they are 进入 jìnrù ‘enter, 经过 jīngguò ‘pass by,’ 路过 lùguò ‘pass by,’ 返回 fǎnhuí ‘return,’ and 到达 dàodá ‘arrive,’ as listed in Table 7. The frequency of these verbs used in MoC is not low, but they are not included in Chen & Guo’s (2009) investigation. Although they are originally formed from constituents of monosyllabic Path verbs, they are already lexicalized or univerbalized as single words in MoC. Thus, they should be listed separately. With these five types included, no significant difference is found in the types between OC and MoC (23 vs 21).
4.2.2. Tokens of Path verbs As indicated by Table 9, although the percentage of Path verbs diachronically decreases from 72.75% to 67.76%, no statistically significant difference was found (X2 = 1.979, df = 1, p = 0.159). The percentage is still higher than that in Turkish (67.76% vs 59%), indicating that in this respect, MoC appears to have the characteristic of a V-framed language.
4.3. Emergence of Cause In the OC corpus, we only selected autonomous motion expressions for discussion. Seven tokens of caused motion constructions, however, were added in the MoC translations, as the following example illustrates: (17) 执樊仲皮,归于京师 → zhí
Fán-Zhòngpí,
并且逮捕了樊皮押回京城 guī
capture Fán-Zhòngpí return at
yú
capital→
bìngqiě dǎibǔ le
Fán-Pí yā-huí
and
FánPí
capture
PFV
jīngshī →
jīngchéng
escort-back capital 40
‘…and captured FánPí and escorted (him) back to the capital.’ (Zuǒzhuàn • Zhuānggōng the 30th year, end of 5th century BC) Certain autonomous motion constructions in OC that were integrated into VDCs encoding caused motion, in which the main verb encodes Cause and the directional encodes Path. According to Talmy (2000), Cause is categorized as a co-event, same as Manner. Therefore, the presence of the caused constructions seems to provide a piece of evidence supporting the increasing tendency of MoC to shift away from the V-frame.
4.4. Encoding of Ground The numbers of Ground forms in OC and MoC are summarized in Table 12, compared with those of Spanish and English.
Table 12:
Frequency of [±Ground] of motion events in OC and MoC English
Spanish
MoC
OC
[+Ground]
96%
81%
75%(244)
60%(196)
[-Ground]
4%
19%
25%(83)
40%(131)
Note: The English and Spanish data come from Slobin (1996: 201, Table 8.2). The statistics in Table 12 reveals that the percentage of the constructions that overtly encode Ground in MoC translations is significantly higher than that in OC (75% vs 60%). It can clearly be seen from the following example that when no specific Ground information follows the Path verb 归 guī ‘return’ and 去 qù ‘leave’ in OC, the MoC translation adds a Ground form, respectively. (18) 由余归…遂去之秦。 41
Qín。
Yóuyú guī
… suí
qù
zhī
Yóuyú
return
…
then leave go-to Qín(-state) (OC—Hán Fēizǐ •
Shíguò, 3rd century BC) [MoC]由余回国…便离开戎国来到秦国。 Yóuyú huí
guó … biàn lí-kāi
Róng-Guó lái-dào Qín-Guó.
Yóuyú return state … then leave-away Róng-state come-to Qín-state ‘Youyu returned to his country…then he left Rong and went to Qin.’ Slobin (1996) found that the frequency of Ground elements for S-languages is higher than that for V-languages, as is indicated by the contrast between English and Spanish (96% vs 81%), demonstrated in Table 12. As shown by the following example, English original text refers to two Grounds. Its translation in Spanish, however, only refers to one. (19) a. English original …she moved out into the sun and across the stony clearing… b. Spanish translation …la muchacha salió al claro
rocoso…
…DET
to clearing
girl exit
stony…
‘…the girl exited to the stony clearing…’ (Slobin 1996: 211[16]) MoC, compared with OC, demonstrates a prominent increase in frequency of Grounds mentioned. The percentage of increase from OC to MoC roughly parallels to that of the increase in Spanish-to-English translation. This indicates that MoC evolved along the cline toward an Slanguage such as English. However, it is not entirely clear why the percentage of Ground carried in MoC is even lower than that of Spanish (75% vs 81%), which is reportedly a typical Vlanguage. 42
We further divided the constructions by distinguishing the number of Ground elements mentioned in the motion narration, as presented in Table 13.
Table 13:
Frequency of motion events carrying different numbers of Grounds Number of Grounds/events 0
1
2
3+
English
4%
61%
26%
9%
Spanish
19%
73%
8%
0%
MoC
25%
70%
4%
1%
OC
40%
58%
2%
0%
Note: The English and Spanish data come from Slobin (1996: 207, Table 8.4). As the above statistics indicate, in the translation from Spanish to English the number of motion events carrying two or three Ground elements increases. That carrying one Ground, however, decreases. In contrast, in the translation from OC to MoC the number of motion events carrying one Ground element increases significantly against that carrying two or three Grounds, which increases marginally. These differences between Chinese and English likely result from their respective languagespecific constraints. English has a more grammaticalized and full-fledged system of particles and prepositions and can accumulate multiple particle/preposition+Ground constructions for the same main Manner verb. Hence, abundant motion expressions can take more than one Ground element. This is why English is predominant in carrying two or three Grounds, as demonstrated in Table 13. Contrastingly, MoC is less full-fledged in its system of particles and prepositions and prefers VDCs that normally carry only one Ground. The percentage of motion events 43
carrying one Ground significantly increases diachronically. Those carrying two or three Grounds, however, remain relatively stable. This difference between Chinese and English can be illustrated by the following example, in which English uses the satellites off through, out of, and back onto to accumulate three Grounds to the same main Manner verb march. Its Chinese translation, however, segments the motion expression into three VDCs, each carrying one corresponding Ground element. (20) a. English original And they marched off through the crowd of curious Muggles, out of the station and back onto the side road where the old Ford Anglia was parked. (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 1999: 68) b. Chinese translation 他们快步穿过好奇的人群,走出车站,回到停在辅路上的那辆老福特安格里 亚车旁边。 tāmen kuàibù chuān-guò chēzhàn, 3PL
hàoqí
de
rénqún, zǒu-chū
PRT
people, walk-out
huí-dào
hurry go-through
curious
station, return-to tíng-zài chē
fǔlù-shàng
de nà
liàng
lǎo
fútè āngélǐyà
old
Ford
Anglia
pángbiān.
stop-atside-road-LOCabove
PRT DET
CL
car
beside (Chinese version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets translated by Ma Aixin, Renmin Wenxue Press 2000: 39) 44
When looking at the translation from OC into MoC, we do find the tendency of increase in Grounds, as shown in (18) and (21). However, MoC is still much lower than English in total frequency. (21) 晏子入坐…遂趋而归。 Yànzǐ rù
zuò … suì
qū
ér
guī.
Yànzǐ enter sit … then hurry.up and return (OC—Yànzǐ chūnqīu • Zá Shàng, 3rd–4th century BC) [MoC]晏子进屋坐下…于是就跑回家。 Yànzǐ jìn
wū
zuò-xià … yúshì jiù
pǎo huí
Yànzǐenter house sit-down … thus then run
back
jiā. home
‘Yanzi went into the room and sat down…then he ran back home.’ In sum, a twofold conclusion can be drawn from this section. On the one hand, comparing with Spanish and English, there is an arguably significant distinction between OC and MoC in terms of Ground encoding. On the other hand, it should be noted that when determining the typological status of the motion encoding of a language based on the number of overt Grounds, language-specific constraints should be taken into consideration.
5.
General Discussion
5.1. Reassessing the typological change of motion expressions in Chinese As pointed out in Section 1–2, in the research of motion encoding typology, two approaches should be distinguished: morphosyntactic pattern-based approach (the Talmyan approach) and discourse-based approach (the Slobinian approach). Although it has been constantly shown that the contrast between the S-pattern and the V-pattern to a large extent influences speaker’s 45
preference in terms of the use of semantic components in discourse, the results of the present paper reveal that the two approaches do not strictly correlate in every aspect and should be treated separately. An attempt to mix these two approaches together (as seen in Chen & Guo 2009) should be avoided. This indicates that when talking about the typology and its change in a language, one should be aware of the perspective that is taken. Taking the perspective of the Talmyan approach for the encoding of autonomous motion events, OC is a typical V-framed language in that it takes V-patterns as its primary encoding strategy (69.5%) and only has 1 token of S-patterns (0.3%). It also obeys the boundary-crossing constraint, as does Spanish (see Section 3.1). MoC, however, appears to be neither a V-framed language nor an S-framed language, because it has S-patterns and V-patterns take a similar percentage (31.94% vs 32.24%) and thus does not have a dominant or characteristic conflation type. Besides identifying a language with a dominant lexicalization pattern, Talmy (2000: 66) admits that “a language can use different conflation types with roughly comparable colloquiality in the representation of the same type of Motion event”. He calls this a parallel system of conflation. Modern Greek exemplifies the parallel system of conflation in using the verb-framed and satellite-framed types of conflation, with comparable colloquiality to represent most events of autonomous motion (Talmy 2000: 66). For example, Greek has both a Path satellite for use with a Manner-Cause verb, as in etreksa mesa (s-to spiti) ‘I ran in (-to the house),’ and a Path verb that can be accompanied by a Manner/Cause gerund, as in bika (trekhondas) (s-to spiti) ‘I entered (the house) (running).’ English is another example in the domain of state change (Talmy 2000: 240–241). For example, English has the state-change satellite shut, as in I kicked the door shut and can also colloquially use the state-change verb shut, as in I shut the door with a kick. Talmy (2000: 241) claims, in contrast to English, that MoC (Mandarin) “is a far more 46
thoroughgoing examplar of the satellite-framed type. It not only strongly exhibits satellite framing for Motion, as does English, but also for state change.” The results of our study do not support this claim. This study instead argues that for autonomous motion, MoC should be categorized as parallel framing, i.e., a parallel system of conflation. This is due to the following reasons: (i) the S-patterns and the V-patterns are both colloquial in use. This is not only evidenced by the native speakers’ intuition, but is also supported by the statistical results, i.e., that these two patterns have almost equal frequency (31.94% vs 32.24%). For most native speakers, an Spattern such as pǎo-jìn xiàoyuán ‘run-into campus’ and a V-pattern such as jìn le xiàoyuán ‘enterASP
campus’ in MoC do not have significant differences in terms of colloquiality.6 (ii) They
furthermore show no bias for the encoding of subtypes of autonomous motion. If the two patterns have different preferences for different sub-domains of autonomous motion, MoC might be a split system of conflation (see Section 5.2). This is, however, not the case. What should be noted, as mentioned in Section 3.1, is that Path satellite has undergone a significant change. It barely exists in OC but becomes a prominent inventory7 in MoC. However, this cannot lead to the conclusion that MoC is a satellite-framed language. This is because: (i) not all Path satellites are used in typical S-patterns. 22.69% (76 tokens) of the Path satellites are used in double-Path patterns, in which both main verbs and satellite forms encode Path. (ii) The Path satellite forms used in typical S-patterns in MoC take only 32.24% and V-patterns, encoding Path in main verb, still take 31.94%. Taking these factors into consideraton, MoC can only be classed as the parallel system of conflation in the sense of Talmian typology.
6 7
A well-designed questionnaire survey may be needed for future studies. We are grateful to a reviewer for pointing this out to us. 47
Consequently, different from the previous studies (as in Li 1993; Talmy 2000; Peyraube 2006; Shi & Wu 2014), the results of our investigation show that the diachrony of Chinese does not demonstrate a typological shift from the V-frame to the S-frame, but rather a shift from the Vframe to the parallel-frame. This claim seems to be solid despite differences in various aspects of motion encoding from OC into MoC that have been found. Concerning the preference of semantic components distributed in discourse, OC exhibits the characteristics of a typical Path-salient language in that it encodes Path with a very high frequency. It is a Manner-insignificant language in that it mentions Manner with a low frequency. It is also a Ground-insignificant language in that it carries Ground with a relatively low frequency. Taking these factors into consideration, OC stands in line with other typical V-framed languages. With reference to MoC, it is rather difficult to attach a unitary label to it, such as S-frame, Eframe, or V-frame, as has been previously proposed. As for the expression of Manner, MoC is incremental compared to OC in the types and tokens of Manner verbs and Manner adverbials. That seems to indicate that MoC is typologically different from OC. However, it is somehow farfetched to say that MoC is Manner salient. MoC is still insignificant in terms of the encoding of Manner, due to the following reasons. First, the frequency of Manner verbs in MoC is almost the same as that in the V-framed Turkish (30.26% vs 30%) and much less than that in the S-framed English (51%). Second, on most occasions, the instantiation of Manner verbs in MoC is limited to quite a few verbs with general Manner meaning. For example, the first three Manner verbs – 走 4 zǒu ‘walk’ (28 tokens), 逃 táo ‘escape’ (14 tokens), and 跑 1 pǎo ‘run’ (10 tokens) – account for 47% of the total frequency of Manner verbs in MoC (see Table 7). This means that the use of these Manner verbs is not to enhance the richness and vividness of Manner information, but only to fit the main verb position in a VDC. As far as the expression of Path is concerned, MoC is still 48
a Path-salient language in the following aspects. First, the percentage of Path verbs in MoC (67.76%) is still more than that in the V-framed Turkish (59%). Second, the difference in types of Path verbs from OC into MoC is not significant (23 vs 21). Third, double-Path patterns (i.e., both the main verbs and satellite forms encode Path) are also common in MoC (23%), which enhances the weight of expression for Path information. In that sense, Tai’s (2003) argument that the directional complement in a VDC in MoC is the center of predicate seems reasonable, although it has been challenged in literature (e.g. Shen 2003; Shi & Wu 2014). As for the expressions of Ground, MoC is poor in that the percentage of carrying Ground elements is even lower in Spanish (75% vs 81%) and English.
5.2. Domain-specific variation in motion encoding Talmy (2000: 64) states that “a language can characteristically employ one conflation type for one type of Motion event, and characteristically employ a different conflation type for another type of Motion event”. This can be called a “split” or “complementary” system of conflation. For example, for the domain of motion, English exhibits the satellite-framed pattern as its most characteristic type. But in the domain of state change, it exhibits more of a parallel system of conflation. In particular, it often has parallel forms, satellite-framed and verb-framed, both of them colloquial. The results in the present study also show that the dominant pattern for lexicalizing motion events in Chinese varies from one sub-domain of motion to another. For the expression of autonomous motion in general, OC prefers the V-pattern whereas MoC uses S-pattern and Vpattern equally. However, for the expression of autonomous motion when Manner and Path cooccur, OC uses predominantly E-framed constructions (77%) but MoC uses S-framed 49
constructions (72%) as the main strategy. It has been found in Lammare (2003) that MoC prefers S-patterns when expressing caused motion but can use both S-pattern and V-pattern for the expression of autonomous motion (self-agentive motion and non-agentive motion). It was also found in Ji et al. (2011)8 that while expressing an accompanied caused motion (the object or causee undergoing movement accompanied by the agent or causer along the same trajectory), Chinese is neither S-framed like English nor V-framed like French. Instead, it shows both Sframing and V-framing properties, and thus demonstrating a parallel system (viz., with both Sframing and V-framing systems). Therefore, different typological judgments can be made for a language based on the encoding of different sub-domains of motion. It should be specific about which sub-domain is talked about when the typology of motion expressions is being examined.
5.3. Typological shift and maintenance of motion encoding Talmy (2000: 118) proposes that some languages maintain their dominant pattern for lexicalizing motion by rebuilding a morphosyntactic system, such as the prefix system in German. Talmy has not directly spoken of maintaining force in a language when it has been significantly different from its former pattern. Previous studies have mostly been concerned with factors that give rise to a typological shift of lexicalization pattern, for example V- frame to S-frame in Chinese (Li 1993; Peyraube 2006; Shi & Wu 2014), S-frame to V-frame in Roman languages (Stolova 2008, 2015; Acedo Matellán & Mateu 2013; Verkerk 2015), and a diachronic development in English (Fanego 2012). Despite this, previous studies concerning typological shifts of lexicalization patterns have paid little attention to the maintaining or interrupting effects in a language. Our study shows that the diachronic change with respect to the typology of motion encoding in 8
As a reviewer points out, it is worth noting that the data in Ji et al.’s study is based on visual stimuli and not taken from written corpora. 50
Chinese is definitely not a smooth one. The process is rather blended with interrupting ingredients. For instance, the development of disyllabic Manner verbs increases the types of Manner verbs (Section 4.1). However, the development of disyllabic Path verbs, as demonstrated in Table 6–7, increases the types of Path verbs and enhances the Path salience in Chinese. The emergence of zhe constructions is not only to modify Manner verbs, but also to modify Path verbs (Section 4.3). The newly developed double-Path patterns, in whch both main verbs and satellite forms encode Path, are syntactically the same as an S-framed construction (VDC) but semantically encode two segments of Path, which further enhances the weight of Path information in MoC to a large extent (Section 3.1). The co-occurrence of motivating and blocking effects brings about the issue of the relationship between the typology of motion expressions and morphosyntactic systems. Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) classification of V- frame versus S-frame is based on meaning-form pairing; that is, encoding Path by main verb or satellite. Each language has its own morphosyntactic features. These features are not born to realize the distinction of the V-frame versus S-frame. Take the zhe construction in MoC for instance. Although it was included in Ji et al.’s (2011) investigation as a strategy of encoding accompanied caused motion, the zhe construction is just a subordinated clause in a broader sense. Its function is to convert an action into background information relative to the main clause in a discourse. Thus, it can encode Cause in caused motion and Manner in autonomous motion, as in tā fú zhe lángān zǒu-xià lóutī ‘he hold-ZHE handrail walk-down staircase; He walked down the staircase holding the handrail.’ To encode accompanied caused motion, English, French, and MoC employ different dominant strategies. English uses a verb-particle structure (e.g., push down) which is S-framing, French uses the Vframed structure, and MoC uses the zhe construction (as well as ba construction), which has no 51
bias with respect to V-pattern or S-pattern. It would not be surprising to find that languages vary in morphosyntactic strategies and in their bias in discourse when expressing sub-domains of motion. We consequently argue that it is the morphosyntactic-prosodic system that endows the language with certain typological status of motion encoding (cf. Beavers et al. 2010). Diachronically speaking, it is the diachronic change of the morphosyntax and prosody that gives rise to the typological shift or maintenance of the language. As for the diachrony of Chinese, the disyllabification appears to be the most significant double-fold factor. Specifically, OC is rich in using monosyllabic words and isolated morphosyntactic patterns. The majority of its words are formed by monosyllables and are used for lexical (vs. grammatical) functions, such as nouns and verbs. OC has almost no long subordinated sentences as in Indo-European languages. Consequently, to encode motion events, the default choice would be to express the core semantic component (i.e., Path) by single verbs. Thus, it is not surprising that OC lacks S-patterns because an S-pattern needs a satellite of Path (i.e., a functional or grammatical form to encode the Path). When it is necessary to express both Manner and Path, the default choice for OC would be the juxtaposition of a Manner verb and a Path verb, but not S-framed constructions; so, it is no wonder that OC has a certain amount of E-framed constructions. Second, OC is to a large extent a discourse-driven language. It only provides discursively primary information in narration but leaves other kinds of information to be inferred from the discourse. As for the encoding of motion events, much information about Manner and Ground is left to be inferred by addressees, without being linguistically encoded. Since the Middle period (after the first century AD), disyllabification has been a prominent tendency in Chinese, which becomes a crucial factor motivating the development of verb-complement patterns. These patterns not only include S52
patterns (Shi 2014a) but also disyllabic Manner verbs, disyllabic Path verbs, and double-Path patterns. The use of the latter three structures brings about the blocking effects in the lexicalization pattern shift of Chinese. The development of disyllabification is also responsible for the decrease of the hybrid patterns, as discussed in Section 3.1.
6.
Conclusion
This paper presents a corpus investigation drawing on parallel texts made up of autonomous motion expressions in OC and their translations into MoC. The study has demonstrated in detail, while depicting similar motion scenes, that MoC differs from OC in various morphosyntactic resources and prosodic patterns, as well as in the distribution of semantic components in discourse. The parallel corpus also sheds new light on the typological status of motion encoding of the Chinese language. Based on the above discussion, the values of various aspects of autonomous motion expressions in OC and MoC can find their approximate position in the respective cline of scale, as listed in Table 14.
Table 14:
Clines of scale of autonomous motion expressions in OC and MoC
Lexicalization pattern
S-frame
Parallel-frame
V-frame
Path salience
low
> > >
high
Manner salience
high
< <
