This book provides a systematic, contrastive analysis of the segmentation and representation of English and Chinese Translocative Motion Events (TMEs), which possess Macro-Event Property (MEP). It addresses all the issues critical to understanding TMEs in English and Chinese, from event segmentation, MEP principles and the conceptual structure of TMEs and their constituents, to the representation of Actant, Motion, Path and Ground. The book argues that the corpus-based alignment for the TME segmentation in both languages, the parameters of Actant, Motion, Path and Ground and their relevant statistical description are particularly important for understanding English and Chinese TMEs. The linguistic materialization of Actant, Ground, Path and Motion, together with a wealth of tables and figures, offers convincing evidence to support the typological classification of English and Chinese. The book’s suggestions regarding the Talmyan bipartite typology and Bohnemeyer’s MEP contribute to the advancement of TME studies and language typology, and help learners to understand motion events and English-Chinese typological similarities and differences.
Author(s): Guofeng Zheng
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 190
City: Singapore
About This Book
References
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
1.1 Translocative Motion Event (TME)
1.1.1 Defining Event
1.1.2 TME
1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study
1.2.1 Purpose of the Study
1.2.2 Significance of the Study
1.3 Theoretical Framework and Research Methodology
1.3.1 Theoretical Framework
1.3.2 Research Methodology
1.4 Organization of the Research
References in English
2 MEP Principles and the Segmentation and Representation of TMEs
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Theoretical Review of Motion Event Typology
2.2.1 Talmyan Dichotomy Typology
2.2.2 Dichotomy or Trichotomy
2.3 Event Segmentation
2.3.1 Event Segmentation in Psychology
2.3.2 Event Segmentation in Linguistics
2.4 Principles of MEP
2.4.1 The Biuniqueness Constraint
2.4.2 The Macro-Event Linking Principle
2.4.3 The Referential Uniqueness Constraint
2.4.4 The Unique Vector Constraint
2.4.5 The Loss of MEP
2.5 The Segmentation of Complex Motion Events and TME Constructions with MEP
2.5.1 The Conceptual Structure and Types of Motion Event Path
2.5.2 Segmentation of Complex Motion Events
2.5.3 TME Constructions with MEP
2.6 Summary
References in English
3 Research Design and Data Tagging
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Research Design
3.3 Constituents of TMEs and Their Parameters
3.3.1 Actant
3.3.2 Motion
3.3.3 Path
3.3.4 Ground
3.4 The Corpus Construction
3.4.1 The Parallel Translation Corpus
3.4.2 Sentence Selection and Tagging
3.4.3 Variables
3.5 Tertium Comparationis
3.5.1 A Brief Review of the Past TC Studies
3.5.2 TC for This Study
References in English
4 General Statistical Description of English and Chinese TME Constructions
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Constituent Combinations in English and Chinese TME Constructions
4.2.1 MEP Sentences in English and Chinese Texts
4.2.2 Subevent Constituent Combinations in English and Chinese
4.3 Linguistic Expressions in English and Chinese TME Constructions
4.3.1 Who Is Moving
4.3.2 How to Move
4.3.3 Which Road to Follow
4.3.4 Where to Go
4.4 Summary
References in English
5 Contrasting the Representation of TMEs in English and Chinese
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The Representation of English TMEs
5.2.1 English TMEs in the Original Texts
5.2.2 English TMEs in the Translated Texts
5.3 The Representation of Chinese TMEs
5.3.1 Chinese TMEs in the Original Texts
5.3.2 Chinese TMEs in Translated Texts
5.3.3 English and Chinese TME Constructions: A Comparison
5.4 Renditions of TMEs Between English and Chinese
5.4.1 From English Constructions to Chinese Constructions
5.4.2 From Chinese Constructions to English Constructions
5.5 The Representation of Motion Event Constituents in English and Chinese
5.5.1 The Representation of Actants
5.5.2 The Representation of Motion
5.5.3 The Representation of Path
5.5.4 The Representation of Grounds
5.5.5 English and Chinese TME Constituent Representation: A Comparison
5.6 Beyond Surface Representation
5.7 Summary
References in English
6 Conclusion
References in English
Appendices
Appendix 1: Actant
Appendix 2: Motion
Appendix 3: Path
Appendix 4: Ground
Appendix 5: Event composition
References in English
