The aim of this section is to discuss the existence of differences in the resources used for the expression of location among languages from a cross-linguistic and intra-linguistic point of view. As will be shown, even if two languages belong to the same Talmyan group or language family, they may exhibit differences in the way they encode stationary motion, or stasis, since each language may have a preferred construction to do so. Among other factors, the properties of the figure or the configurational setting may trigger the use of a specific posture verb or copula in a locative predication.
Additionally, it may be necessary to consider the lexical availability of these items to express posture and location in a given language. We may ask, if all languages count with a set of intransitive (process) posture verbs, why are they more productive or widely used in some languages? Furthermore, why is there intra-linguistic variation pertaining to manner saliency among Germanic languages? That is, since some languages seem to exploit the satellite-framed pattern more productively, as attested for English, is there a cognitive correlate to this linguistic tendency?
To determine if there is intra-typological variation in this domain, it is necessary to look into how languages belonging to the same group express location. For that purpose, drawing on previous dialectal and cross-linguistic studies, this section contrasts the constructions used by Germanic and Romance languages to express location. The argumentation will be organized around two main discussion points: the different
resources used for locative predication in Romance and Germanic languages, and the cross-typological and intra-typological variation among them. Finally, I will introduce the notion of co-event and consider whether it is relevant for posture verbs in these languages, building on the discussion in section 4.3 of chapter 1.
A locative predication specifies a stationary relation between a figure and a ground, in which the location of the former is determined with respect to the latter.
Since stationariness is an integral part of location, that is, absence of motion is implied in this type of predication, the argument structures do not contain dynamicity.
Additional configurational information about the figure such as shape, disposition, angle, etc. may be encoded in locative predications via posture verbs. Dialectal and typological studies show that languages may use different ways to express locative predication and may differ intra-typologically in the preferred strategy to encode it.
According to Ameka & Levinson (2007), there are four different constructions to express location, namely, (i) use of a verbless construction, (ii) a single locative verb, (iii) a small contrastive set of locative verbs, or (iv) a large set of dispositional verbs. The four types of locative constructions used across languages are shown in table 1. To determine the preferred construction used to express location, Ameka & Levinson resort to where-questions to trigger unmarked locative statements, or basic locative constructions (BLC), in their terms, as the most neutral context to elicit locative statements from
In table 1, we observe that the Germanic languages English, Dutch, and German are classified as belonging to types I, II, and III, respectively. The resources of which these languages make use to express location are listed below in (42). While English capitalizes on the use of the copula be, Dutch and German employ disparate repertoires of posture verbs and differ in the number of items, German being the one with the largest number of posture verbs.
(42) Means to express locative predication in Germanic languages a. English: be
b. Dutch: staan ‘stand’, liggen ‘lie’, zitten ‘sit’, hangen ‘hang’, lopen ‘run’
(van Staden et al. 2006: 475-511) c. German: stehen ‘stand’, liegen ‘lie’, hängen ‘hang’, lehnen ‘lean’, stecken ‘be in tight fit, be stuck’, klemmen ‘be stuck, be jammed’, kleben ‘stick by means of glue’, haften ‘adhere’, schwimmen ‘be afloat in liquid’, schweben ‘be afloat’
(Kutscher & Schultze-Berndt 2007)
The tendency to use one of the four constructions to express locative predication in a language, as reported by Ameka and Levinson, does not mean that a language disallows the use of the remainder constructions. As a case in point, consider the fact that English can use the copula be as well as posture verbs for this type of predication, even if it is not the default option, thus, allowing in the latter case for the inclusion of posture information in the predicate, which Talmy (2000) identifies with a co-event, that is, a secondary event that specifies a cause or manner component synchronous to the main event (see section 3.1 of chapter 1 for further discussion).
Following Slobin (2004), Berthele (2004) makes the claim that dialects can also be classified in a scale or cline of manner saliency to account for intra-typological variation.42 For example, according to his research, the Swiss German dialect Muotathal (43) and the Standard German dialect (44) differ significantly in the way they codify movement schemata even if both can be classified as satellite-framed languages,
42 It has been reported that manner saliency, for example in the form of a co-event, may vary among languages. This has been shown to be true not only from a cross-linguistic point of view (see Slobin 2004) but also in studies considering intra-linguistic variation such as Lewandowski & Mateu (2016), who analyze the differences in manner and path descriptions among satellite-framed languages.
since Muotathal rarely codifies manner in the verb as is the case in Standard German, thus, patterning in this respect closer to a typologically different language such as French (45), a verb-framed language. In spite of these differences in the preferred strategy to express location, the sequences elicited from speakers of these languages did not only include posture verbs, but also copular expressions followed by a participle.
(43) a. De chittel isch amene haggä ufghänht (Muotathal) the jacket is at-a+DAT peg up-hung
‘The jacket is hung up on a peg’
b. Dr Schluuch hanged über de baumwürz the hose hangs over the stump
‘The hose hangs over the stump’
(44) a. Der Schlauch liegt auf dem Baumstumpf (German) the hose lies on the+DAT stump
‘The hose lies on the stump’
b. Das tuch ist um den kopf geschlungen the cloth is around the+ACC head wrapped ‘The cloth is wrapped around the head’
(45) a. Le veston est suspendu à un crochet (French) the jacket is hung on a peg
‘The jacket is hung on a peg’
b. La cordelette gît sur le tronc the rope lies on the stump ‘The rope lies on the stamp’
Berthele (2004:108-109)
On the basis of the data collected for his study, Berthele argues that French also counts with verbs instantiating the manner co-event pattern as is the case in Muotathal and Standard German. That is, in addition to using a participle and the copula être ‘be’ to express a location state in the case of verbs whose lexical entry specifies three subevents (i.e., init, proc, and res), as proposed in chapter 2 of this dissertation, French also has
process verbs denoting non-dynamic events such as gésir ‘lie’ to predicate a location relation between a figure and a ground. If Berthele is right, co-event conflation would then be possible for both satellite-framed and verb-framed languages and, thus, a co-event would be available for non-dynamic process verbs.
Moreover, Berthele et al. (2015) argue that even if languages have a slot available for manner co-event expression in static spatial descriptions it won’t necessarily be used by speakers. This conclusion is reached after studying a sample of five Germanic languages: Frisian, Standard High German, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swiss German. In spite of the fact that these languages belong to the satellite-framed pattern, speakers do not necessarily prefer manner co-event expression to describe static spatial location. Berthele et al. report that the addition of manner (posture) information seems to be the default choice made by speakers. Nevertheless, it is possible to establish a cline of manner saliency pertaining to posture for these languages.43 While Frisian and Standard High German show a high percentage of co-event expression in their static spatial descriptions, Swiss German and Norwegian show a limited percentage of co-event expression. In contrast, Icelandic rarely expresses co-event information. These tendencies are telling about the strategies used to express static spatial location. Frisian and Standard High German exploit the satellite-framed pattern more effectively in comparison to the rest of languages. Thus, the posture information is expressed preferentially in the verbal slot in these languages. Swiss German and Norwegian show a comparatively lower usage of the co-event pattern and prefer the use of the resultative construction. Finally, Icelandic favors the use of complex prepositions and adverbs indicating orientation.
To summarize, in Germanic languages, several resources are available for the expression of stationary motion, namely, copulas, such as be, and posture verbs. Even if
43 The existence of a cline of manner saliency among these languages might suggest a cognitive bias in speakers of some languages that favors the encoding of manner information in the verbal slot. However, studies such as the one carried out by Pulverman el al. (2008) show that there is not such a cognitive bias.
In their study, they show that 14-month-old children of English and Spanish can track or attend to both path and manner changes in non-linguistic dynamic events. Thus, even though Spanish does not encode manner information along with path in motion events, children are still sensitive to this information when they are tracking events in non-linguistic tasks. Similarly, Bosse & Papafragou (2010), in their study of how speakers of English and German encode static spatial relations involving inanimate entities, show that the cross-linguistic differences between these two languages do not affect the way in which speakers notice changes in the spatial position of inanimate figures in non-linguistic memory tasks, even though German speakers tend to encode posture, that is, manner, a 90% of the time, while English speakers tend to do so only a 32.3% of the time.
both these resources are available in all Germanic languages, they may still not be the default option to express location in some of them. Similarly, Romance languages such as French can express locative states by means of a copula and past participle, or a posture verb. Talmy (2000) has argued that posture verbs contain a manner component in its semantics, that is, a co-event. This option is allegedly only possible in satellite-framed languages, although this assumption has been challenged for Romance posture verbs by Berthele (2004) and for existential unergative verbs that behave as unaccusative in Romance languages (see Mateu & Rigau 2002, Acedo-Matellán 2010 for further discussion). One may ask how it is possible for some languages to include additional information, manner or causation, in the semantics of verbs denoting stationary motion and, if so, how this is achieved. I dissent from the above-mentioned point of view and argue that posture verbs in these contexts should not be considered instances of conflation of a state and a manner co-event. To be more accurate, their “stative”-like semantics derives from the presence of a (non-dynamic) process phrase in the lexical entry of these verbs, which contains a stage, that is, a spatio-temporal unit. Following up the discussion in chapter 1, in section 3 I will argue that the manner co-event component stems from the type-B meaning codified in the verb root, while the location information will be argued to derive from the presence of a locational complement. An additional possibility, which has not been dealt with yet, is that the posture verb may work not only as a full lexical verb but also as a ‘light’ verb or copula, in which the posture or manner information has been lost. This so-called ‘light’ verb use of posture verbs will be dealt with in depth in section 4 of this chapter. For now, let us qualify the claim that posture verbs do not introduce a manner co-event to later compare this full-fledged lexical use with the ‘light’ verb use.