Motion in Language and Experience : Actual and Non-actual motion in Swedish, French and Thai
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis deals with motion in language and non-linguistic experience, distinguishing between actual motion (AM) and non-actual motion (NAM). AM is the experience of continuous change in an object’s position, expressed in sentences such as 'The man runs through the forest' and 'The woman is walking'. NAM refers to dynamic qualities involved in conceiving or perceiving static situations and is expressed in sentences such as 'The road runs through the forest'. I investigate conceptual, theoretical and empirical issues such as the following: what is motion and what is the relationship between language and experience more generally? What kind of theory can account for the proper balance of universality and language-specificity in the expression of motion? How is motion expressed in different languages and what is the relation between expressions of AM and NAM? Insights from Husserlian phenomenology guide the investigations. With respect to AM, an experiential taxonomy of motion situations with three independent parameters is proposed. This taxonomy was used in an elicitation-based study with speakers of Swedish, French and Thai. The produced descriptions were analyzed according to the framework of Holistic Spatial Semantics, which assumes a set of semantic categories and claims that these are distributed across clauses and descriptions rather than being localized to a select few form classes, such as verbs and so-called satellites. The descriptions in the three languages conformed to the proposed universal semantic categories and the taxonomy of motion situations, at the same time as displaying language-specific properties. To differentiate between the different types of motion situations, the Swedish speakers used verbs, adverbs and prepositions, the French speakers mostly verbs and prepositions, and the Thai participants relied on serial-verb constructions. The speakers of the three languages also differed in the motion information typically expressed. For example, …
abstract: This thesis deals with motion in language and non-linguistic experience, distinguishing between actual motion (AM) and non-actual motion (NAM). AM is the experience of continuous change in an object’s position, expressed in sentences such as 'The man runs through the forest' and 'The woman is walking'. NAM refers to dynamic qualities involved in conceiving or perceiving static situations and is expressed in sentences such as 'The road runs through the forest'. I investigate conceptual, theoretical and empirical issues such as the following: what is motion and what is the relationship between language and experience more generally? What kind of theory can account for the proper balance of universality and language-specificity in the expression of motion? How is motion expressed in different languages and what is the relation between expressions of AM and NAM? Insights from Husserlian phenomenology guide the investigations. With respect to AM, an experiential taxonomy of motion situations with three independent parameters is proposed. This taxonomy was used in an elicitation-based study with speakers of Swedish, French and Thai. The produced descriptions were analyzed according to the framework of Holistic Spatial Semantics, which assumes a set of semantic categories and claims that these are distributed across clauses and descriptions rather than being localized to a select few form classes, such as verbs and so-called satellites. The descriptions in the three languages conformed to the proposed universal semantic categories and the taxonomy of motion situations, at the same time as displaying language-specific properties. To differentiate between the different types of motion situations, the Swedish speakers used verbs, adverbs and prepositions, the French speakers mostly verbs and prepositions, and the Thai participants relied on serial-verb constructions. The speakers of the three languages also differed in the motion information typically expressed. For example, …
author: Blomberg, Johan
language: eng
keywords: Languages and Literature, motion situations, non-actual motion, Swedish, elicitation, cognitive linguistics, phenomenology, Thai, French, subjective motion, fictive motion, semantic typology, motion, spatial semantics, motion events
date published: 2014
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:59:49Z
provider: University of Lund
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Faculties of Humanities and Theology