A Cross-linguistic Study Of Manner Of Motion In Children’s Storybooks

Motion is one of the most pervasive empirical activities of human,and the perception and expression of motion is an important part of human language.However,the same motion event is not necessarily represented in the same way in different languages.Existing studies have revealed that English,French and Chinese show significant typological differences in manner salience.However,to the author’s knowledge,no studies have yet focused on these differences in their children’s literature.Given that,this thesis uses the English children’s storybook Charlotte’s Web,the French children’s storybook Le Petit Nicolas,and the Chinese children’s storybook The Adventures of Shuke and Beita as a closed corpus and makes a multifaceted comparative analysis of the expressions of manner of motion.The aim is to explore whether such differences in manner salience are already reflected in their children’s language.First,the tokens,types and specificity of manner verbs in these three children’s storybooks are examined.The results show that English has the most frequent,diversified and elaborate use of manner verbs,followed by Chinese,while manner verbs in French are far less frequent and rich than in English and Chinese.Second,the frequency and function of alternative expressions of manner(AEMs)in these three children’s storybooks are investigated.It is found that AEMs are used most frequently in Chinese,followed by French,and least in English.In addition,in English and Chinese,AEMs are mainly used to qualify manner verbs to add additional nuances to manner descriptions,while in French,most are used to modify non-manner verbs to compensate for the absence of manner information.Third,this thesis compares Charlotte’s Web and its French and Chinese translations,serving as supplementary materials.The comparison shows that although the French and Chinese translators resort to manner adverbials to augment attention to manner to cater to the rhetorical style of English,there is still a loss of manner information,particularly in the French translation.In conclusion,cross-linguistic variations of manner salience in English,French and Chinese are already reflected in their children’s literature.On this basis,two relative questions are discussed and the following findings are obtained:(1)English and French children’s literature exhibit a similar degree of manner salience to their non-children’s literature.In contrast,Chinese children’s literature shows far less attention to manner of motion than its non-children’s literature,from which it can be inferred that Chinese children’s attention to manner grows significantly during language acquisition.(2)There are at least three factors contributing to crosslinguistic variations of manner salience in English,French and Chinese,namely,the accessibility of manner expressions,the typological shift in lexicalizing motion events,and the differences in morphological typology.The significance of this study is as follows.Theoretically,this study extends the typological study of Chinese,English and French,and provides some references to the typological classification of Chinese.In terms of practical application,this thesis has some guiding significance for the translation and teaching of the three languages.