Do metaphors we move by follow the same patterns across structurally different languages?

Speakers across different languages of the world talk about a wide array of abstract concepts in terms of spatial motion (i.e., metaphorical motion events; e.g., idea crosses the mind, time flies by, emotions run wild; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). In this study, we asked what aspects of a metaphorical motion event show crosslinguistic similarities as well as differences across three structurally different languages (German, Polish, Spanish). Our analysis of 450 metaphorical motion descriptions, extracted from novels written in each of the three languages (150/language) using random sampling, showed robust cross-linguistic similarities: productions in all three languages described the metaphorical motion of the same types of target domains (abstract entity, abstract state, perceptual activity, fictive activity) with the same metaphorical mappings (abstract concept is a moving entity; abstract concept is a location) at similar rates. The robust crosslinguistic similarities were accompanied by patterned variability in the specification of the source domain, largely following a binary typological split between the world's languages (Talmy, 2000): Polish and German writers produced greater metaphorical motion descriptions with manner compared to Spanish writers. Our results thus provide strong evidence for both universal and language-specific forces that jointly shape the way we structure and talk about abstract concepts as physical motion.