Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies - Publications

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Browsing Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies - Publications by Author "Blomberg, Johan"
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    Holistic spatial semantics and post-Talmian motion event typology: A case study of Thai and Telugu
    ( 2018-11-01) Naidu, Viswanatha ; Zlatev, Jordan ; Duggirala, Vasanta ; Van De Weijer, Joost ; Devylder, Simon ; Blomberg, Johan
    Leonard Talmy's influential binary motion event typology has encountered four main challenges: (a) additional language types; (b) extensive "type-internal"variation; (c) the role of other relevant form classes than verbs and "satellites;"and (d) alternative definitions of key semantic concepts like Motion, Path and Manner. After reviewing these issues, we show that the theory of Holistic Spatial Semantics provides analytical tools for their resolution. In support, we present an analysis of motion event descriptions by speakers of two languages that are troublesome for the original typology: Thai (Tai-Kadai) and Telugu (Dravidian), based on the Frog-story elicitation procedure. Despite some apparently similar typological features, the motion event descriptions in the two languages were found to be significantly different. The Telugu participants used very few verbs in contrast to extensive case marking to express Path and nominals to express Region and Landmark, while the Thai speakers relied largely on serial verbs for expressing Path and on prepositions for expressing Region. Combined with previous research in the field, our findings imply (at least) four different clusters of languages in motion event typology with Telugu and Thai as representative of two such clusters, languages like French and Spanish representing a third cluster, and Swedish and English a fourth. This also implies that many other languages like Italian, Bulgarian, and Basque will appear as "mixed languages,"positioned between two or three of these clusters.
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    Motion event descriptions in Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu: a study in post-Talmian motion event typology
    ( 2021-01-01) Zlatev, Jordan ; Blomberg, Johan ; Devylder, Simon ; Naidu, Viswanatha ; van de Weijer, Joost
    Motion-event typology has moved into a “post-Talmian” terrain of approaches focusing on an open-ended number of patterns across languages and constructions. Following a proposal to distinguish between four typological clusters, we systematically compared the motion event descriptions in four languages suggested to exemplify these clusters: Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu, with the help of an elicitation-based study. 20 adult native speakers of each language were asked to describe 52 motion events, 38 of which were translocative. The stimuli varied with respect to the parameters caused/uncaused, bounded/unbounded motion as well as the viewpoint from which they were filmed. The descriptions were analyzed following Holistic Spatial Semantics and compared with respect to the categories Path, Direction, Region, Landmark, Manner and Cause, as well as the means of expressing these. The four languages patterned differently in significant ways. In terms of Path expression, French lagged behind the other languages, but with respect to Direction, it patterned together with Swedish. We demonstrate a number of such criss-crossing patterns, showing that there is no way to group the languages, thus implying at least four distinct typological prototypes. Further, we show that different kinds of motion situations, corresponding to different constructions, need to be compared separately.