Motion Expressions In English And Chinese Novels: A Typological Perspective

With its characteristics of cognitive universal and language specificity,the domain of space has drawn many linguists' attention.In recent decades,fruitful work has emerged from studies of spatial motion expressions with a typological perspective.However,the typological status of Chinese is still pretty controversial.The current study attempts to reveal the similarities and differences of English and Chinese by comparing the motion expressions of the two languages.Consequently,a proper typological status of Chinese was proposed through comparison with English,a typical Satellite-framed language.The current study collected data from two sets of detective novels in English and Chinese:The Complete Sherlock Holmes and Huo Sang Tan An Ji(???????).Both Voluntary motion events and Caused motion events were analysed in three dimensions(Manner,Path,Ground):(1)the number,frequency and locus of Manner information;(2)the number,frequency and locus of Path information;(3)provision of Ground information in a clause.Through both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the two sets of data,we found that:(1)in Voluntary motion events,Chinese differed from English in the frequency and locus of Manner information,as well as the number,frequency and locus of Path information,but resembles English in the number of Manner verbs and Ground information;(2)in Caused motion events,Chinese and English show significant differences in all the dimensions investigated,and the gap between the two languages is bigger in Caused motion events than in Voluntary motion events.In terms of the Ground information,Chinese even performed like a Verb-framed language in Caused motion events.Chinese showed both similarities and differences in Voluntary motion expressions,thus it cannot be taken as a typical Satellite-framed language.In Caused motion expressions,Chinese differs from English in all aspects,and even performs like a Verb-framed language in certain aspects.Chinese can thus be placed in the midway of the typological continuum,as an Equipollently-framed language as proposed by Slobin(2004).The paper concludes by discussing how to make use of the findings of this study to facilitate language teaching and learning for English and Chinese educators and learners.