Open AccessMoving up and down in real space
Author(s) -
Åke Viberg
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
bergen language and linguistics studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1892-2449
DOI - 10.15845/bells.v11i1.3439
Subject(s) - locative case , german , motion (physics) , linguistics , zero (linguistics) , expression (computer science) , space (punctuation) , point (geometry) , signal (programming language) , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , philosophy , geometry , programming language
The paper focuses on the role of the Swedish spatial particles upp ‘up’ and ner ‘down’ to signal the endpoint-of-motion in the description of motion situations and is based on Swedish original fiction texts and their translations into English, German, French and Finnish. Frequently the endpoint is marked with a locative preposition such as på ‘on’ or i ‘in’, and then a particle is required to signal change-of-place. In German and Finnish, the particle is often zero translated and change-of-place is indicated by case. The particle is often zero translated also in French, a V(erb)-framed language. This leads to contrasts at the conceptual level since verticality is not expressed. The result points to radical intra-typological differences between S(atellite)-framed languages in the expression of Path depending on general morpho-syntactic differences. Another important conclusion is that several different classes of motion verbs must be distinguished even in S-languages to describe the expression of change-of-place.