Motion Verbs with Locational/Directional PPs in English and Japanese

Abstract

AbstractAccording to Talmy’s typology of “lexicalization patterns” for a motion event, English is the type of language that conflates Motion and Manner in the verb root, whereas Japanese is the type of language that conflates Motion and Path in the verb root. This article provides an explanation for why there is such a difference between English and Japanese within the framework of Hale and Keyser’s syntactic approach to argument structure. It extends Hale and Keyser’s approach to motion verbs and locational/directional Ps in English and Japanese and shows that given a “Lexical Relational Structure” of a motion event, the difference between English and Japanese derives from the fact that the former has a variety of directional Ps, allowing the insertion of a manner-of-motion verb into the Motion V, whereas the latter has a variety of directed motion verbs with the Path P incorporated into the Motion V. This suggests that Talmy’s lexicalization patterns are constrained by general syntactic principles.