Organization of the Thesis - 中文移動事件中的路徑標記

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.4 Organization of the Thesis

The thesis is organized as follows: Chapter 1 is the general introduction of the study.

Chapter 2 reviews previous works related to the notion of Path and the decomposed component, Route. The studies on the spatial usage of guò 過 ‘cross/pass’, jīng 經 ‘pass’

and yuè 越 ‘cross’ are also reviewed in this chapter. Chapter 3 describes the database, theoretical framework and methodology applied in this study. Chapter 4 presents the preliminary findings motivating this reaserch. Chapter 5 proposes a tentative analysis of the three Mandarin Route markers on their lexical status and meaning. In addition, the anaylsis is incorporated into a frame-based structure to illustrate the relation between Route and Motion.

Chapter 6 concludes the study with the significance of the study and notes further research issues.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 The Approaches to define Path Verbs

To define the semantic components of a verb in motion events, generally speaking, there are two approaches that present different ways to encode the concept of motion, including the notion of Path, into a language. One is the verb-internal approach, which probes into the semantic components lexicalized in verbs of motion, looking for verb-internal lexical features.

With this approach, Path is viewed to be encoded in verbs as a semantic attribute. The other is the verb-external approach, which attempts to identify the frame-specific elements coexisting in a motion event, i.e., verb-external participant roles. From this point of view, the verb-external participant roles define the verbs evoking the frame of Path as Path verbs.

Seeing Path is a semantic attribute lexicalized into the verbs, Talmy (2000) proposes Path is a single course/route which the Figure moves along in a motion event. He divides languages into two major types according to whether path information is encoded in a verb or not : verb-framed languages such as Korean, Turkish, Japanese lexicalize path into verbs as shown in (2a) while satellite-framed languages like English, Russian and German encode manner, the way the moving entity moves, into the verb and path is expressed in a satellite to the verb as shown in (2b). On the other hand, Slobin (2004) proposes a third type of languages: equipollently-framed languages such as Mandarin and other serial verbs languages express path and manner using morphemes with equivalent grammatical status as shown in (2c).

(2) a. La botella entró a la cueva (flotando). (Talmy 1985) [Figure] [Move+Path] [Ground] [Manner]

‘The bottle moved-in to the cave (floating).’

b.The bottle floated into the cave. (Talmy 1985) [Figure] [Move+Manner] [Path] [Ground]

c. fēi chū yì zhī māo tóu yīng (Slobin 2004) [Move+Manner] [Move+Path] [Figure]

‘An owl flies out.’

Talmy (2000) claims that Chinense is a satellite-framed language because the path is not expressed in the main verb. However, Tai (2003) is in a different position. He believes Mandarin encodes the information of Path into a verb. Tai (2003) proposes that what Talmy has called path satellites are main verbs for they can occur alone and be suffixed with the aspect marker -le 了 as shown in (3).

(3) a. 約翰飛過英吉利海峽 (Tai 2003) Yuēhàn fēi-guò yīngjílì-hǎixiá John fly-cross English-Channel ‘John flew across the English Channel.’

b. 約翰過了英吉利海峽 (Tai 2003) Yuēhàn guò-le yīngjílì-hǎixiá

John cross-ASP English-Channel ‘John crossed the English Channel.’

Adopting Slobin (2004)’s work, Chen and Guo (2009) suggest Mandarin is an equipollently-framed language, extend the semantic components of motion verbs, and further classify Mandarin motion verbs into four types which include Path verbs. In their work, verbs such as dào 到 ‘arrive’, xià 下 ‘go down’, guò 過 ‘cross/pass point out the trajectory over which a figure moves, which is typically with respect to another reference object, the Ground.

Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) indicate that, in the domain of motion events, the distance of the figure with respect to the ground could be understood as a scale which is composed of points belonging to a set of contiguous locations which together form a path. In view of this, verbs which encode the scale are verbs lexicalizing Path, such as recede, return, and enter. Lin (2011) adopts the framework of scale structure into Mandarin motion morphemes, claiming Mandarin has morphemes which encode the scale, that is, morphemes lexicalizing Path, such as tui 退‘recede’, hui 回 ‘return’ and jin 進 ‘enter’.

Researches on semantic components of Path verbs could be complemented with another approach to lexical meanings. Fillmore and Atkins (1992) propose a frame-based approach, in which ‘a word’s meaning can be understood only with reference to a structured background of experience, beliefs, or practices, constituting a kind of conceptual prerequisite for understanding the meaning.’ Based on this approach, a verb evokes a semantic frame, in which the participant roles related to the verb help define the semantics of the verb. In other

words, the verb evoking the frame of Path is semantically specified with a set of core participant roles. Accroding to FrameNet (http://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/), which catergorizes verbs into frames based on Frame Semantics, Path is defined as follows: ‘Path is a series of conncected locations, traversed by a moving entity moving under its own power or under the influence of a physical force. The path may be described in various terms depending on whether it is bounded or not. If it is bounded, the path may be identified by its endpoints, which may be presented separately as source and goal.’ In this verb-external view, the verb-external elements, a moving entity and a source or goal, help us indentify the path verbs.

With these two different ways of defining semantic components, Path, the basic semantic component in describing motion events, could be viewed as a verb-internal lexical attribute or a verb-external participant role, as outlined below:

Verb-internal Lexical component encoded in a verb Enter [PATH V]

Verb-external Frame-specific component in the structured background

into + NP [PATH PP]

Table 1: Path as a verb-internal vs. verb-external lexical element²

To sum up, Path receives different treatments in different approaches. It may be lexicalized verb-internally as a semantic attribute in the meaning of the verb enter, or it can be specified verb-externally as a frame participant realized in the prepositional phrase [into+NP], serving as a core frame element in the structured background.

Integrating the two views of Path, Liu et al. (2012a) shows there is an apparent link between the verb-external and verb-internal components. They further indicate that the

2 Adopted from Liu et al.(2012)

sequence of role components defining the conceptual framework can be mapped onto the sequence of verb morphemes with the same range of lexically specified semantic attributes.

To be more specific, the range of semantic roles corresponds to the range of lexical semantic attributes. Examining Path verbs both verb-internally and verb-externally, Liu et al. (2012a) suggest the notion of Path proposed by Talmy (1985, 2000) and adopted in other previous studies (e.g., Slobin 2004, Lamarre 2007, Chen and Guo 2009) is quite broad in its sematic range and thus redefine the notion of Path as Route (the contour of moving), Direction (spatial orientation), and Endpoint (final point of the contour). As illustrated below, the same range of semantic components: Manner, Route, Direction and Endpoint can be realized as semantic participant roles in (4a) or be encoded into serial verb morphemes in (4b). Moreover, the mapping between semantic participants roles and serial verb morphemes which lexicalize the semantic components—[Manner][Route][Direction][Endpoint] is shown as Figure 1:

(4) a. 他 Manner[飛] Route[經日本] Direction[往東] _Endpoint[到美國] (Liu et al. 2012a) tā fēi jīng rìběn wǎng dōng dào měiguó

he fly through Japan toward east arrive America

‘He flew east through Japan to America.’

b. 球 Manner[滾] Route[落] Direction[進] Endpoint[到]洞裡 (Liu et al. 2012a)

qiú gǔn luò jìn dào dònglǐ

ball roll fall enter arrive hole

‘The ball rolled and fell into the hole.’

Figure 1. The mapping between semantic participant roles and serial verb morphemes (Liu et al. 2012a)

Liu et al. (2012a) identify the conceptual components lexicalized in Mandarin motion verbs in relation to the role components required in motion events, integrating the conceptual components into a structured background schema. Based on the integration of verb-internal and verb-external approaches, Liu et al.(2012a) decompose the notion of Path into three separate but related components and thus propose the concept of Route, the contour of moving.

2.2 Definition of Route

Liu et al (2012a) propose that Route is defined as a single course along which the Figure moves. It can be realized overtly with a Route-marker jing 經 ‘ pass’, which denotes a given route by specifying a passing point. Such a marker is used to mark a specific landmark and can only be followed by a passing point (a Route NP). Moreover, there are Route-encoded verbs such as yí 移 ‘move’. The Route verbs denote an act of moving along an implicated route that signals a locational change, without specifying a direction or endpoint. There are also some Route-encoded verbs, which on the other hand, may contain other components than “Route”. They may be lexically specified with a direction, forming Route-Direction verbs such as jiàng 降 ‘descend’, shēng 升 ‘ascend’, tuì 退 ‘recede’ ,

luò 落 ‘fall’. Besides, Route-encoded verbs may also lexically encode Direction as well as Endpoint. Such verbs as huí 回 ‘return’ denote a path with contour of moving, the direction of moving and the goal of the motion. To probe into the concept of Route in Mandarin motion events, this study focuses on the morphemes that only encode this semantic component, functioning as Route markers which introduce a given trajectory into the motion event by specifying/marking an intermediate point.

2.3 Previous Analysis of guò 過. yuè 越 and jīng 經

Among the three commonly-used Route markers, guò 過 is discussed in a vast volume of studies for its interesting polysemy. This section reviews previous analysis of guò 過. jīng 經 and yuè 越 on their meaning related to motion events.

2.3.1 Previous Analysis of guò 過

Based on Talmy’s work on motion events, Wu (2000) notes that the trajectory encoded in guò 過 involves some Figure moves past some Ground, which is seen as the central meaning of guò 過. With the diverse nature of the Landmark, the central meaning is modified: the route in the motion event is either ‘going through’, or ‘going over/across’. In other words, guò 過 has more than one sense, which depends on the properties of the landmark. Wu further explains that Mandarin speakers do not always distinguish three-dimensional passing from two-dimension passing and thus encode both of these two ways of passing into guò 過. In Mandarin, the role of the contours and properties of landmarks seems not crucial enough to require some element to specify. Unlike English, which needs a preposition to refer to the route varying with the relation between the landmark and the trajector, the moving entity, Mandarin expresses the motion of traversing/crossing in the cases of going through an enclosed space (e.g., a tunnel or a bush) or in those of going over/across a surface (e.g., water surface, bridge, or street) by a single motion verb guò 過.

Similar to Wu’s view on the derived path-oriented senses of guò 過,Wang (2002) proposes a central image schema of guò 過 as shown below with an example guò mǎlù 過馬路 ‘to cross a road’:

Figure 2. Central schema for guò 過 (Wang 2002)

Wang (2002) illustrates the central meaning of guò 過 with the image schema above. In this schema, the arrow represents the route that the trajector/Figure is moving along, and the route goes across the Landmark from the boundary of one side to the boundary of the other side. That is, the core meaning of guò 過 describes a motion event in which the moving entity moves across the landmark. It is also noted that there is a contact between the trajector and the Landmark. This central schema can alter with the relation between the Figure and the Landmark and thus generate some elaborations referring to other route-oriented senses, ‘going through’, ‘going over’ and ‘pass by’. Though the trajectory has some contact with the Landmark, there are instances without contact as shown in the schema below with an example guò mén bú rù 過門不入 ‘pass by the door without entering’:

Figure 3. Variant of the central schema for guò 過 (Wang 2002)

In addition, since the trajectory varies with the relation between the landmark and the trajector, the nature of the landmark also influences the route. The landmark may be viewed as different geometric shapes: as a two-dimensional arc in guò qiáo 過橋 ‘ to cross a bridge’, illustrated in Figure 4, or as a three-dimensional form with a passage through it as in guò shāndòng 過山洞 ‘to go through a tunnel’ shown in Figure 5:

Figure 4.Variant of the central schema for guò 過 (Wang 2002)

Figure 5.Variant of the central schema for guò 過 (Wang 2002)

In summary, as long as some information of the relation between the moving entity and the landmark is added to the central schema, other related senses of guò 過 can be derived.

Wang (2002) concludes that the central schema could be modified with the rotation of the landmark (vertical or horizontal) or the transformation of the landmark (two dimensional or three dimensional). It is also noticed that there may be contact or no contact between the trajector and the landmark.

A bit different from the view of the central meaning of guò 過 in these two previous studies, Hsiao (2003) proposes that guò 過 predicates a prototypical activity such that a participant passes a particular intermediate point and reaches an endpoint. Mandarin conceptualizes two typical spatial senses of the verbal guò 過. First, it profiles the motional transition through an intermediate point of a crossing movement. Second, it profiles the post-transitional movement to an endpoint, focusing on the arriving movement. These two spatial senses of guò 過 are shown as below:

Figure 6.The image schema of the motional transition through an intermediate point of a crossing movement (Hsiao 2003)

Figure 7. The image schema of the post-transitional movement to an endpoint of an arriving movement (Hsiao 2003)

In these two schemas above, the rightward arrow at the bottom stands for the domain of conceived time, while the domain of physical space is represented by the larger vertical rectangles; the smaller horizontal rectangles refer to the states of the landmark, which is the intermediate point in Figure 6 and the endpoint/ destination in Figure 7. The little circles occurring at different distances from the landmark illustrate the sequential states of the trajector. The first spatial sense of guò 過 is shown in Figure 6 where the landmark profiles the intermediate points of a crossing movement such as in the events described by guò mǎlù 過馬路‘cross the road’ or bāxiān guòhǎi 八仙過海 ‘the eight immortals cross the sea.’ The road and the sea are the passing point the figure moves past in the crossing event. Figure 7 shows the second spatial sense of guò 過, which profiles the destination of an arriving

movement, such as the motion events in Tángshān guò táiwān 唐山過台灣 ‘Tangshan crossed (the Straits) to Taiwan.’ and guò fǔ yí xù 過府一敘 ‘go over to your home to have a chat.’ In these two events, Taiwan and your home are the goals of the arriving movement.

In addition to seeing guò 過 as a motion verb, Hsiao considers guò 過 a preposition when it follows a verb. Besides the two spatial senses mentioned above, He suggests that with the various landmarks, the prepositional guò 過 displays a set of route-oriented senses such as ‘over’ in (5a), ‘through’ in (5b) ‘across’ in (5c) and ‘via’ or ‘passing by’ in (5d).

(5) a. fēi-guò shāntóu 飛過山頭

‘fly over the hill.’

b. chuān-guò suìdào 穿過隧道

‘pass through the tunnel.’

c. chuān-guò cāochǎng 穿過操場

‘go across the sports field.’

d. jīng-guò yóujú 經過郵局

‘passing by/via the post office.’ Hsiao (2003)

In summary of these previous strudies, guò 過 introduces a route into the motion event.

Furthermore, there are three different routes involved in the motion event: 1) go over/across 2) go through 3) pass by. With various Landmark seen as different shapes, when guò 過 is followed by a surface (two dimensional) landmark, it denotes a contour of ‘go over/across’ ; while the landmark is an enclosed space (three dimensional), the Figure in the motion event described by guò 過 moves with a contour of ‘go through’. Moreover, if there is no contact

between the Figure and the landmark, in other words, the relation between them is not so intimate, the route in the motion event would be ‘pass by’. To conclude, the variants of the central schema of the motion verb guò 過 are specified by adding some further external information of the relation between Figure and the landmark, either the properties of landmark or the contact between the moving entity and the landmark.

As an intergration of these previous strudies on guò 過, Zeng(2008) proposes that the Figure in the motion event described by guò 過 can move past the reference object in all possible contours. By adding further information of the relation between the Figure and the reference object, various contours are generated. Depending on the relation, the reference object may be seen as a point, a line, or even a surface. Moreover, there may or may not be a contact between the Figure and the reference object. The following sentences adopted from Zeng (2008) illustrate the various possible contours by adding further information of the relation between the Figure and the reference object as shown in (6).

(6) a.他正在過橋 ‘go across’ (Zeng 2008) tā zhèngzài guò qiáo

He ASP cross bridge ‘He is crossing the bridge.’

b.小鳥… 飛呀飛呀，過了一座橋又過了一座山， ‘go over’ (Zeng 2008) xiǎoniǎo…fēi ya fēi ya，guò-le yízuòqiáo yòu guò-le yízuòshān Bird fly RF fly RF cross ASP a-bridge and cross ASP a-mountain ‘The bird flies over a bridge and a mountain.’

c.小蝌蚪游了很久,過了很多座橋了， ‘go past’ (Zeng 2008)

xiǎo kēdǒu yóu-le hěnjiǔ， guò-le hěnduōzuò qiáo le Little tadpole swim ASP a.long.time cross ASP many bridges CRS

‘The little tadpole has swum for a long time and gone past many brides.’

d.這是一條沿河路…一路上有一座橋，橋的附近有一個花園，你開車沿路過了那座 橋，離花園不遠的地方有一個白色房子， ‘pass by’ (Zeng 2008)

zhè shì yìtiáo yánhélù… yílùshàng yǒu yízuò qiáo, qiáo de fùjìn This is a along.river.road all.the.way has a bridge, bridge DE neiborhood

yǒu yíge huāyuán, nǐ kāichē yán lù guò-le nàzuò qiáo, lí huāyuán bù yuǎn has a garden you drive along road Cross ASP that bridge away garden not far de dìfāng yǒu yíge báisè fángzi

DE place has a white house

‘This is a road along a river. On the road, there is a bridge nearby which there is a garden.

Drive along the road and pass by the bridge, you will see a white house nearby the garden.’

In (6a), the Figure is a human being which only can move past the reference object, the bridge, in a contour of ‘go across’. The Figure in (6b), a bird, can move past the bridge by

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