Benjamin Fagard | Laboratoire Lattice (CNRS, ENS, Sorbonne Nouvelle; PSL)
Anetta Kopecka | Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage & Université de Lyon
This paper compares the expression of Source and Goal in German and Polish, on the basis of descriptions elicited with a
series of video clips. As satellite-framed languages (Talmy 1985, 2000), both German and Polish mainly rely on grammatical morphemes to encode Path of motion with respect to Source
and Goal. Nevertheless, despite this shared typological feature, these languages also display fine morphosyntactic and semantic differences.
Our study reveals that the expression of Source and Goal is more asymmetrical in German than in Polish, both in types of
linguistic resources and in semantic distinctions. We show that German speakers tend to combine Path satellites with Path verbs – including
both deictic satellites and deictic verbs – more frequently in Source-oriented events, depicting them with finer semantic distinctions than
Goal-oriented events. In the expression of the Ground, however, they tend to make finer distinctions in the expression of Goals as compared
to Sources, by using a greater variety of prepositions. Polish speakers, by contrast, tend to express Source and Goal in a more symmetrical
fashion. These cross-linguistic differences are discussed in the light of language-specific characteristics and their role in the
expression – symmetrical or asymmetrical – of Source and Goal.
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