A Contrastive Study on Motion Events: Encoding Manner and Path Information in English and Turkish

Abstract

Leonard Talmy’s typology divides languages into two categories; satellite-framed and verb-framed languages. This paper, by focusing on the typological tendencies of the languages, examines English (s-framed language) and Turkish (v-framed language) motion verbs. The analysis is divided into four main questions which focus on the typology, manner encoding, and function of adverbs. Data, comprised of 360 motion verbs from ten novels in total, is analysed quantitatively to find an answer to the research questions. The results show that English and Turkish behave accordingly within the typology. However, the most significant finding is that Turkish can encode Manner information as much as English despite previous claims through alternative mediums, subordinated motion verbs, and adverbial expressions while employing the former more frequently.