Some Discussions on Space and Motion from Contrastive Perspective: The Expression of Motion Events by Czech Native Speakers vs. Chinese Speakers of Czech
Abstract
Thinking about space and motion and their perception has a tradition going back as far as our cultural memory reaches. Similarly long is the tradition of thinking about the nature of these categories reflected in languages.
The paper aims to introduce the ongoing study of motion events. It especially concentrates on the verbs of motion. In the study, I examine how Czech native vs. non-native speakers lexicalize motion events and what patterns of spatial encoding they follow or deviate from. For the panel presentation, Chinese native speakers learning Czech were selected. The study follows the findings of the research presented by Lin (2021).
Following Talmy's semantic classification of world languages into verb-framed and satellite-framed (Talmy 1985, 2000) that distinguishes between languages in terms of their encoding patterns of motion events, the contribution presents a comparison of the range of motion verbs used by native and non-native speakers and comments on the semantics of spatial events.
I rely on data elicited based on the so-called Frog story (Mayer 1969).
The texts of the same assignment from comparable groups of Czech native speakers and non-native Czech speakers were analysed. Both groups consisted of university students of the Czech language. The texts were obtained using an elicitation probe derived from movement acquisition research. A written production that can be categorized as a narrative in the range of 53 texts (25 texts from native Czech speakers and 28 texts from L1 Chinese learners of Czech) was elicited based on the picture book Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969).
In the analysis, I focus on the following areas (the specifics of native Czech speakers and Chinese learners of Czech are always compared):
- range of verbs used to capture elicited motion events;
- types of verbs used to capture elicited motion events;
- verbal prefixes;
- features of verb-framing and satellite-framing.