1996 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Cognitive empirical study of metaphors associated with Verbs of Motion
| Project/Area Number |
07801069
|
|---|
| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
|
| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
|---|
| Section | 一般 |
|---|
| Research Field |
独語・独文学
|
|---|
| Research Institution | University of Tsukuba |
|---|
Principal Investigator |
OKAMOTO Junji University of Tsukuba, Institute of Modern Languages and Cultures Associate Professor, 現代語・現代文化学系, 助教授 (80169151)
|
|---|
| Project Period (FY) |
1995 – 1996
|
| Keywords | Verbs of Motion / German / Conceptual Structure / Cognitive Semantics / Metaphors |
|---|
| Research Abstract |
This investigation is mainly concerned with Conceptual Structure of Verbs of Motion (VMs) in German.
The aim is
1) to clarify basic characteristics of Lexical Conceptual Structures (LCSs) of VMs based on empirical data in German, and
2) to demonstrate that VMs offer rich metaphors in constituting other kinds of LCSs.
I have investigated 185 verbs in German with special reference to thematic structures, aspectual correlations and patterns of various syntactic alternations. In contrast with English, the German language shows systematic perfect-tense auxiliary alternation (from haben to sein) with attachment of directional phrases. "Manner of Motion" Verbs and Sound Emission Verbs are typically sensitive to this alternation, although some "Manner of Motion" verbs (e.g.laufen, rennen) take only sein-auxiliary and should rather be interpreted as Inherently Directed Motion Verbs. Among the data I have investigated are 19 Sound Emission Verbs, 17 of which show this alternation. Since VMs can be r
… More
egarded as one of the basic human cognitive scales, they can be transfered into other cognitive fields, such as Causation and Change of States. It is recently well-known that "Manner of Motion Verbs" in English show Induced Causative Alternation when accompanied with directional phrases. Their German conterparts, however, have no causative pattern of this sort. Only "Motion Verbs of Vehicle" behave in a similar way, but they are quite different in conceptual event structures. As one instance of "Change of State" LCSs, some verbs can be used as a resultative construction. Intransitive VMs take fake objects in completing a small clause, changing perfect-tense auxiliary into haben. This is probably because of the existence of a grammatical object that the sentence get transitivized.
The result of this investigation is to a large extent compatible with the prediction made by T.Kageyama and Unaccusative Hypothesis proposed originally by D.Permutter and developed by L.Burzio and others, provided that auxiliary selection as one of the unaccusative diagnostics is not valid for German. Further research should be done for explaning particular property of reflective VMs and great variety of directional prefixes. Less
|
