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Part of
Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions
Edited by Yo Matsumoto and Kazuhiro Kawachi
[Human Cognitive Processing 69] 2020
► pp. 205–234

Chapter 7
Should Talmy’s motion typology be expanded to visual motion?

An investigation into expressions of motion, agentive motion, and visual motion in Sidaama (Sidamo)

 | National Defense Academy of Japan
This chapter addresses the question of whether or not Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000b) motion typology should be expanded to visual motion (Matsumoto 2001, 2017; Slobin 2009; Cifuentes-Férez 2014), by examining how Sidaama (Cushitic; Ethiopia) expresses (i) self-agentive/non-agentive motion, (ii) agentive motion, and (iii) fictive motion along a visual emanation path. It shows that although this language closely follows the verb-framed pattern in expressing (i) and (ii), it does not do so in expressing (iii), as in many other verb-framed languages. A possible reason for this is that (iii) is not conceptualized as a macro-event, whereas Talmy’s typology is built on expression patterns of macro-events. This study also observes that there are other types of events to which Talmy’s typology does not apply, presumably for the same reason: they are not really macro-events.
Keywords: fictive motion, macro-event, verb-framed language, visual emanation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Data
    • 3.1Profile of Sidaama and morphemes used for motion events
    • 3.2Multiple-verb constructions in Sidaama
    • 3.3Patterns of expressing self-agentive/non-agentive motion and agentive motion events in Sidaama
      • 3.3.1Motion events with a manner of motion as a co-event
      • 3.3.2Motion events with a means of causation as a co-event
    • 3.4Patterns of expressing visual emanation events in Sidaama
  • 4.Analysis and discussion
    • 4.1Can visual emanation be conceptualized as a macro-event?
    • 4.2Another type of case where V-languages can deviate from their characteristic pattern
    • 4.3Types of cases where Sidaama can deviate from the V-language pattern
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 11 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.69.07kaw
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2024. The colexification of vision and cognition in Mandarin: controlled activity surpasses uncontrolled experience. Cognitive Linguistics 35:3 ► pp. 345 ff. DOI logo
Matsumoto, Yo, Kimi Akita, Anna Bordilovskaya, Kiyoko Eguchi, Hiroaki Koga, Miho Mano, Ikuko Matsuse, Takahiro Morita, Naonori Nagaya, Kiyoko Takahashi, Ryosuke Takahashi & Yuko Yoshinari
2022. Linguistic representations of visual motion. In Neglected Aspects of Motion Events Description [Human Cognitive Processing, 72], ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo

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