The place of Bulgarian and Russian in post-Talmian motion event typology : A Holistic Spatial Semantics Analysis
(2024) In Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 56(2). p.147-179- Abstract
The traditional Talmian binary typology of satellite-framed vs. verb-framed languages has proven to be insufficient for showing the diversity across the world’s languages. One approach within post-Talmian motion typology follows Holistic Spatial Semantics, which has been applied to languages like Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu, but not to Slavic languages. This motivates the present research. We used “frog stories” and analysed translocative motion event descriptions, given by nine native speakers of Russian and seven of Bulgarian, all adults. The descriptions were first segmented into clauses and each clause was analysed with respect to the key categories of Path, Direction, Region and Manner. The results show that the two languages... (More)
The traditional Talmian binary typology of satellite-framed vs. verb-framed languages has proven to be insufficient for showing the diversity across the world’s languages. One approach within post-Talmian motion typology follows Holistic Spatial Semantics, which has been applied to languages like Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu, but not to Slavic languages. This motivates the present research. We used “frog stories” and analysed translocative motion event descriptions, given by nine native speakers of Russian and seven of Bulgarian, all adults. The descriptions were first segmented into clauses and each clause was analysed with respect to the key categories of Path, Direction, Region and Manner. The results show that the two languages pattern differently, most significantly in the expression of Path and Manner. We conclude that Russian shares features of languages like Telugu by encoding Path by case markers, and features of languages as Swedish, through a predominance of Manner verbs. Bulgarian differs typologically from Russian by lacking cases and using motion verbs, either to express Path, similarly to French, or to express Manner, similarly to Swedish. These findings show that Slavic languages should not be simplistically placed within a single type and provide additional support for Holistic Spatial Semantics.
(Less)
- author
- Krumova, Ralitsa and Zlatev, Jordan LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2024
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- case marking, Direction, frog stories, Holistic Spatial Semantics, Manner, mixed patterns, Path, Region
- in
- Acta Linguistica Hafniensia
- volume
- 56
- issue
- 2
- pages
- 33 pages
- publisher
- Routledge
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85214701523
- ISSN
- 0374-0463
- DOI
- 10.1080/03740463.2024.2414651
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- additional info
- Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
- id
- 2079d889-e75f-47e1-b064-be774af63e3c
- date added to LUP
- 2025-03-13 12:35:12
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 14:44:40
@article{2079d889-e75f-47e1-b064-be774af63e3c,
abstract = {{<p>The traditional Talmian binary typology of satellite-framed vs. verb-framed languages has proven to be insufficient for showing the diversity across the world’s languages. One approach within post-Talmian motion typology follows Holistic Spatial Semantics, which has been applied to languages like Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu, but not to Slavic languages. This motivates the present research. We used “frog stories” and analysed translocative motion event descriptions, given by nine native speakers of Russian and seven of Bulgarian, all adults. The descriptions were first segmented into clauses and each clause was analysed with respect to the key categories of Path, Direction, Region and Manner. The results show that the two languages pattern differently, most significantly in the expression of Path and Manner. We conclude that Russian shares features of languages like Telugu by encoding Path by case markers, and features of languages as Swedish, through a predominance of Manner verbs. Bulgarian differs typologically from Russian by lacking cases and using motion verbs, either to express Path, similarly to French, or to express Manner, similarly to Swedish. These findings show that Slavic languages should not be simplistically placed within a single type and provide additional support for Holistic Spatial Semantics.</p>}},
author = {{Krumova, Ralitsa and Zlatev, Jordan}},
issn = {{0374-0463}},
keywords = {{case marking; Direction; frog stories; Holistic Spatial Semantics; Manner; mixed patterns; Path; Region}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{2}},
pages = {{147--179}},
publisher = {{Routledge}},
series = {{Acta Linguistica Hafniensia}},
title = {{The place of Bulgarian and Russian in post-Talmian motion event typology : A Holistic Spatial Semantics Analysis}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2024.2414651}},
doi = {{10.1080/03740463.2024.2414651}},
volume = {{56}},
year = {{2024}},
}