Expression of spontaneous motion events in Stieng

Abstract

This study investigates the expression of Source and Goal in spontaneous motion events in Stieng (Cambodia, Vietnam). The analysis is based on data collected in Cambodia, using theTrajectoirevideo kit (Ishibashi et al. 2006). Regardless the type of Ground, Stieng data includes a wide range of constructions in describing motion events, combining lexical and grammatical tools (verbs and adnominals). While morphosyntactic resources available to express Source and Goal are formally similar, Stieng data shows that the Goal tends to be privileged compared to the Source, at the semantic, morphosyntactic, and syntactic levels. However, Source and Goal tend to be symmetrical with respect to the semantic distinctions of the verbs, and potential (a)symmetries with respect to the discourse level remain to be clarified. Instances of asymmetries in favor of the Goal tend to support previous studies that postulated a tendency for languages to privilege the Goal in the linguistic expression.