A Corpus-Based Cognitive Study Of Manner Motion Verbs

Motion plays a special role in human thinking. Its logical extension is localism, which assumes that motion provides the cognitive framework for more abstract domains of meaning, such as possession, transformation and communication. Motion verbs are the purest and most prototypical verbs and they comprise an important semantic domain in all languages. The research of them concerns the relationship between language, world and mind. Therefore, it has attracted great attention from cognitive linguists.This thesis is a corpus-based study of manner motion verbs. Based on a thorough semantic analysis of 424 sample sentences of RUN from Brown Corpus, the metaphorical and non-metaphorical senses are identified. All the evidence shows that "fast pedestrian motion" is the prototype sense or literal meaning, from which all the other related meanings derive by means of metaphor and other cognitive instruments. Most of the senses of RUN are metaphorical.Metaphorical use of motion-manner verbs, represented by RUN, are characterized mostly in the following event structure metaphors: STATES ARE LOCATIONS; CHANGES ARE MOVEMENTS; PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS; MEANS ARE PATHS TO DESTINATIONS. Metaphor is not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Conceptual metaphor can account for all the metaphorical expansion mechanisms occurring in all event structures, including Fictive Motion Event.On the basis of naturally occurring language data, a tentative discussion is carried out about Fictive Motion Event Construction and conceptual working mechanisms. It is assumed that the determinant factor in the establishment of such a typology proposed by Matlock is the semantic distinction between inherently directed motion verbs and manner motion verbs instead of the association of the trajector with motion; Fictive Motion sentences are metaphorical expressions and they need not involve vivid imagery whereby the listener imagines himself or herself moving through the scene depicted.