A study of visual path expressions in Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of motion event typology

Abstract

Much attention has been paid to the typology of motion event expressions, and a recent focus is on whether the lexicalization pattern of motion event expressions is associated with other factors, such as event and construction types. This study made use of a Mandarin corpus to explore the extent to which the lexicalization pattern and associated linguistic features of motion event expressions transfer to one type of fictive motion event expressions, i.e., visual path expressions. Three types of visual path expressions were focused on, including the ones involving visual paths from the Experiencer to the Experienced entity with the person as the subject (Human-experiencer-subject visual paths), the ones of the same direction but with the eye-associated entity as the subject (Eye-experiencer-subject visual paths), and the ones from the Experienced entity to the Experiencer (Stimulus-subject visual paths). The results show that, in Mandarin, both Human-experiencer-subject and Stimulus-subject visual path expressions inherit the lexicalization pattern and associated linguistic features from motion event expressions, whereas Eye-experiencer-subject visual path expressions do not and they follow the pattern seen in a verb-framed language. Our results suggest that the lexicalization pattern of motion event expressions is associated with event and construction types.