| The study explores the linguistic phenomenon of fictive motion,taking Mandarin Chinese as an example,e.g.,Cong Jinying Guoji wang qian kuaibu zou dayue wufenzhong jiushi Jinling Fandian(“Racing forward for about 5 minutes from Golden-eagle International is the very Jinling Hotel.”).This sentence is different from Xiao Wang cong jinying guoji wang qian kuaibu zou le dayue wufenzhong jiu dao le jinling fandian(“Xiao Wang got to Jinling Hotel just after racing forward for about 5minutes from Golden-eagle International.”).The difference lies in the fact that the underlined part in the former sentence,unlike its counterpart in the latter one,does not describe the actual motion of somebody but specify a spatial location.This sort of linguistic phenomenon is called in literature “fictive motion” in which language forms with dynamic import are employed to describe stationary entities or stative scenes.The majority of the existing studies merely focus on the motion verbs or path prepositions in fictive motion expressions.However,some expressions encode motion information with other parts than verbs or prepositions such as the manner adverb“kuaibu(racing)” and time phrase “wufenzhong(for 5 minutes),” while others rarely or even never encode manner or time passage of motion.For example,such motion information is not encoded in Wuzhi caihuan cong ta de zhongbu chuanguo(“Five colorful rings run across the mid of the tower.”).In other words,fictive motion expressions are different in their motion information encoding capacity,which has received insufficient concern and has not been explained in a unified way in the existing literature.This study proposes that subjectification degree should have effect upon the motion information encoding capacity of the concerned expressions and the higher the degree,the lower the capacity.In this study,the subjectification degree is defined as the degree to which the motion simulation mechanism in the conceptualizers is motivated by the stationary entities or stative scenes(which fictive motion expressions describe).Different stationary entities or stative scenes can trigger motion imagination or motivate the motion simulation mechanism to different degrees.Compared with “roads,” “mountain ranges” merely have the feature of [+extension] but not [+travelability],which means “mountain ranges”involve less elements than “roads” likely to motivate the simulated motion of conceptualizers.In other words,“roads” should be more likely to be described with fictive motion expressions in languages.In contrast to the subjective factors of conceptualizers such as age,profession,educational background and so on,the features possessed by the stationary entities or stative scenes can be called the objective factors,which are named in this study as the objective basis of subjectified motion.Within fictive motion expressions,the subjectification degree is positively correlated with the subjective factors of conceptualizers,and negatively with the objective basis.This study focuses on the effect of the objective basis on the subjectification degree.The stronger the objective basis,the lower the subjectification degree.The fictive motion expressions describing a road,with their lower subjectification degree,have stronger capacity in encoding motion information than those describing mountain ranges.For example,…Gonglu,yizhe shanshi,hu'er panxuanershang,hu'er yilierxia(“The road,…,with the sloping momentum of the mountain,circles up for a moment and winds down for another.”)encodes the temporal information of the motion with “hu'er...hu'er...(for a moment...for another),” which can hardly be encoded in the fictive motion expressions describing mountain ranges.Based on the above observation,it is hypothesized that when the objective basis motivating the simulated motion is stronger,the subjectification degree is lower and the concerned fictive motion expressions have stronger capacity in encoding motion information.Preceded by a discussion on the standards for Chinese fictive motion judgment,eight types of fictive motion commonly seen in Mandarin Chinese are chosen for contrastive study,namely,Sensory Paths,Radiation Paths,Shadow Paths,Demonstrative Paths,Frame-relative Motion,Coextension Paths,Access Paths and Site Arrival.The contrastive study is conducted in two dimensions,subjectification degree and motion information encoding capacity.The crucial part of the study is how to analyze and compare the subjectification degree of fictive motion or the objective basis of subjectified motion.The strength of the objective basis is reflected in its mode of motivating simulated motion.In the example of“Jinying Guoji(Golden-eagle International),” the situation forces conceptualizers to carry out simulated motion.This mode of motivation can be called “coercive motivation.” The trees along the road appear to be moving in the visual perception of people in a running car,and the abstract objects such as light,shadow,sound,and smell are taken as being able to move in human experience.As the objects described by fictive motion,they motivate the simulated motion by resorting to the perception and daily experience of conceptualizers.This mode of motivation can generally be called“perceptual motivation.” “Road” has the semantic feature of [+travelability],which may evoke conceptualizers' imagination of the actual motion on the road and may further motivate their simulated motion.Such a mode can be called “imaginative motivation.”In the meanwhile,“road” has the semantic feature of [+extension],which may cause conceptualizers to move their point of sight and further evoke their simulated motion.Such a mode can be called “sight moving motivation.” Coercive motivation produces the strongest motivation for simulated motion.Following it is perceptual motivation,which offers direct motivation for simulated motion.Compared with perceptual motivation,imaginative and sight moving motivations can only offer more indirect motivation for simulated motion.In terms of their strength of motivation,these four modes rank in the order of “coercive motivation > perceptual motivation >imaginative motivation / sight moving motivation.” If the stationary entities or stative scenes described by fictive motion expressions can better motivate the simulated motion of conceptualizers,the objective basis for the subjectification of the element of motion is viewed as stronger and the subjectification degree of motion is lower.The contrastive study shows that fictive motion expressions are different both in subjectification degree of motion and motion information encoding capacity.These two aspects are negatively correlated with each other.That is,with lower subjectification degree,fictive motion expressions have stronger motion information encoding capacity,represented in more specific or diverse motion paths,and/or bigger chances of encoding motion manners and/or motion duration.This result affirms the proposal made in this thesis and explains in a unified way the phenomenon that fictive motion expressions can encode motion information to different degrees.The study more naturally resolves the issue around manner of motion encoding in fictive motion expressions,much discussed by scholars such as Matsumoto.In addition,the study advances most of the existing ones merely focusing on the usage of motion verbs and path prepositions and more prominently highlights the critical status of subjective construal in meaning expression,which Jackendoffian scholars often deny by treating the motion verbs as stative “extension verbs” and by depriving the path prepositions of the dynamicity.In a word,this study in its own way affirms that meaning is conceptualization. |
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