Open AccessThe Manner Result Complementarity and the Lexicalization Pattern of Chinese Motion Verbs
Author(s) -
Lei Qiu
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
theory and practice in language studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2053-0692
pISSN - 1799-2591
DOI - 10.17507/tpls.1012.13
Subject(s) - lexicalization , motion (physics) , complementarity (molecular biology) , linguistics , categorization , mathematics , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , genetics , biology
Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1998, 2010) propose manner/result complementarity hypothesis (MRC), i.e. verbs can not lexicalize manner and result simultaneously at a time. As to the encoding of motion events, Levin et al. (2009) also claim that manner of motion verbs across languages simply lexicalize manner and no direction is entailed. However, three basic motion verbs in Chinese--zǒu ‘walk’, pǎo ‘run’ and fēi ‘fly’, which are regarded as prototypical manner of motion verbs but also seem to lexicalize directed motion when used in some constructions. Then questions arise: do these verbs lexicalize direction of motion and are they counterexamples of the MRC? Based on evidence gained from a series of linguistic tests, this study argues that on the one hand different from views of Levin et al. (2009), the three manner of motion verbs can indeed lexicalize directed motion, but on the other hand they never encode the manner and direction of motion simultaneously and thus they are not counterexamples of the MRC. The fact that manner of motion verbs exhibiting similar lexicalization pattern can also be found in other languages indicates that the prototypical manner encoded in these verbs may be the conceptual condition for the special lexicalization pattern.