This paper focuses on the constructionalization and grammaticalization path of the Hebrew construction omed le-V ‘standing (up) to-V’/‘about to-V’ as denoting ‘near future’. The investigation will be ...a diachronic and historical one, from biblical to contemporary Hebrew, stage by stage, and will discuss the evolution of the omed le-V ‘standing (up) to-V’ construction from a posture verb within a motion verb construction V1 to V2 into a ‘near future construction’. i.e., We will focus on the affinity of the meaning of the motion verb with the type of future it comes to denote and we will claim that the evolution of the omed le-V construction is based on three main sources: 1. Literal omed ‘standing up’ meaning is the basis of the near future grammaticalization: standing up from a sedentary posture marks the beginning of involvement in a certain upcoming action, thus perfect as the source conceptual schema for immediacy marking. 2. The shift from spatial to temporal motion maps spatial image schemas onto timelines that correlate with temporal domains. 3. The intrinsic future-orientation of a goal action gave rise to a pragmatic (metonymic) inference from purpose to futurity, later conventionalizing as futurity. Thus, the construction omed le-V ‘standing (up) to-V/about to-V’ shifted from the literal ‘standing up in order to perform an action’ to the near future ‘about to-V’ meaning via the conditioned or interdependent temporal relation of the standing (up) action and its consecutive goal action in real-world scenarios. Lastly, a comparison to two other Hebrew motion verb-based future constructions will be conducted: the constructions holex le-V ‘walking/going to-V’ and ba le-V ‘coming to-V’. The former will be claimed to denote an ‘undefined’ future (either near or distant) and the latter: an ‘unfulfilled future’ (an action that was about to be conducted but wasn't conducted or wasn't conducted on time). This will shed additional light on the evolution of posture and motion verb constructions into future marking constructions. Our conclusions will also be supported by the results of a questionnaire examining the future realization (either ‘near’, ‘undefined’ or ‘unfulfilled’) of the three constructions among native speakers of Hebrew.
•Shedding new light on the grammaticalization of motion verbs into different types of future constructions.•Highlighting the cruciality of constructionalization processes in such change.•Shedding new light on the involvement of cognition in linguistic change.
This paper examines Tutuba, a language spoken in the Republic of Vanuatu, and clarifies how speakers choose between three motion verbs: sae ‘go up’, sivo ‘go down’, and vano ‘go across’. After an ...giving an overview of these three verbs, this paper examines the expression of motion within Tutuba Island, motion within Espiritu Santo island with its secondary urban center, and motion from Tutuba Island to other islands. It is shown that the choice between the verbs is based on oppositions in three categories: (i) physical up-and-down,(ii) psychological up-and-down, (iii) historical factors. The relationship between the verbs in these categories is analyzed.
Language is assumed to affect memory by offering an additional medium of encoding visual stimuli. Given that natural languages differ, cross-linguistic differences might impact memory processes. We ...investigate the role of motion verbs on memory for motion events in speakers of English, which preferentially encodes manner in motion verbs (e.g., driving), and Greek, which tends to encode path of motion in verbs (e.g., entering). Participants viewed a series of motion events and we later assessed their memory of the path and manner of the original events. There were no effects of language-specific biases on memory when participants watched events in silence; both English and Greek speakers remembered paths better than manners of motion. Moreover, even when motion verbs were available (either produced by or heard by the participants), they affected memory similarly regardless of the participants' language: path verbs attenuated memory for manners of motion, but the reverse did not occur. We conclude that overt language affects motion memory, but these effects interact with underlying, shared biases in how viewers represent motion events.
This article evaluates the acquisition of directionals in Q’anjob’al, a Western Mayan language of Guatemala. The data come from a longitudinal study of two Q’anjob’al monolingual children of Santa ...Eulalia, Huehuetenango, Guatemala: Xhuw (1;9–2;5) and Xhim (2;3–3;5). The results show how these children acquire the morphological distribution of motion verbs and directionals in Q’anjob’al. They produce directionals parallel to motion verbs. Xhuw produced more motion verbs than directionals, while Xhim produced more directionals than motion verbs. Despite the omission of tense/aspect and agreement in the verb complex, these children produce two types of suffixes that distinguish motion verbs from directionals. The children acquired three groups of directionals in the following order: DIR3 (teq ‘toward X’, toq ‘away from X’) > DIR2 (el ‘out’ aj ‘up’ ok ‘enter, in’ ek’ ‘pass’ ay ‘down’) > DIR1 (kan ‘stay’).
This paper discusses the preliminary results of an exploratory study based on acceptability judgments about Pseudo-Coordination (PseCo) as found in the province of Catania (Sicily). PseCo is a ...monoclausal verbal periphrasis where an inflected verb (V1), usually of motion, is followed by another inflected verb (V2) with an optional connecting element between them (cf. Giusti, Di Caro and Ross 2022). In western Sicilian varieties, the V1 GO can occur as an invariable form (i.e., va-, vo-, uo-, o- as in Oppigghju u pani ‘I go and fetch the bread’) prefixed to the V2. An online anonymous questionnaire was administered to 295 participants (180 female, 115 male; Age M: 20,95 years, Age SD: 2,73 years) to assess whether (i) PseCo with V1 GO in the present indicative is productive among younger speakers; (ii) different forms of invariable V1 GO can cooccur in one and the same variety. The results show that PseCo in the province of Catania is still vital among younger generation of speakers and that invariable V1 GO generally occurs in at least two different forms but with no particular semantic specialization.
One of the most important issues in cognitive linguistics is Spatial Orientation. Languages use sources such as human body (body-part), landmarks, dynamic concept (typically motion verbs like come, ...go, etc.) and cardinal direction to conceptualize spatial and geographic directions. Every language uses the whole or some of these sources based on its historical and cultural issues. The present study sought to consider the features and sources of Spatial orientation in Persian language based on of Heine’s (1997) theory. The results of the study indicated that Persian language employs human body and animal body (anthropomorphic and zoomorphic model) as the main source of conceptualization, since the bodily experience in space serves as the basis for the majority of metaphorical expressions. The next source was Landmarks (environment – specific features) such as rivers, mountains and rocky places, sea and trees and other related properties. The third and final sources were motion and cardinal directions respectively
Language use in conversation requires conversation partners to consider each other’s points-of-view, or perspectives. A large body of work has explored how conversation partners take into account ...differences in knowledge states when choosing referring expressions. This paper explores how well findings from perspective-taking in reference generalize to a relatively understudied domain of perspective: the processing of grammatical perspectival expressions like the motion verbs
and
in English. We re-visit findings from perspective-taking in reference that conversation participants are subject to egocentric biases: they are biased towards their own perspectives. Drawing on theoretical proposals for grammatical perspective-taking and prior experimental studies of perspective-taking in reference, we compare two models of grammatical perspective-taking: a serial anchoring-and-adjustment model, and a simultaneous integration model. We test their differing predictions in a series of comprehension and production experiments using the perspectival motion verbs
and
as a case study. While our comprehension studies suggest that listeners reason simultaneously over multiple perspectives, as in the simultaneous integration model, our production findings are more mixed: we find support for only one of the simultaneous integration model’s two key predictions. More generally, our findings suggest a role for egocentric bias in production for grammatical perspective-taking as well as when choosing referring expressions.
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