Motion in Language and Experience

Motion has attracted much attention in the field of semantics. In cognitivesemantics, it is seen as a basic and universal domain for language and cognition.In semantic typology, languages have been suggested to follow a binary typologyof ?motion events?. However, the validity of these claims has bee [...]
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Motion has attracted much attention in the field of semantics. In cognitivesemantics, it is seen as a basic and universal domain for language and cognition.In semantic typology, languages have been suggested to follow a binary typologyof ?motion events?. However, the validity of these claims has been disputed inrelation to cross-linguistic diversity.By bringing together insights from Husserlian phenomenology and CognitiveLinguistics, Motion in Language and Experience develops a framework foraddressing important questions in contemporary semantics. In order to accountfor both universality and variation across languages, this framework proposesthat linguistic meaning is motivated from experience, but strongly adaptable tolanguage-specific conventions.Semantic and typological issues are addressed in two cross-linguistic studiescarried out with speakers of Swedish, French and Thai. The first study investigatesthe expression of actual motion, where an object changes its position against abackground. The second study focuses on the expression of non-actual motion,where motion expressions are used to describe situations without any apparentpositional change, such as The road runs through the forest.