Intra-language differences of motion event encoding – a case of advent paths in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract Despite considerable research on motion event encoding, studies from the perspective of intra-language differences are still few in number. To examine whether motion event encoding is influenced by event types (translational vs. fictive events), this study investigates lexicalization patterns and associated linguistic features of Mandarin advent path (one type of fictive motion) expressions and compares them with existing findings on translational motion event expressions. Data were collected from a self-built corpus. Results show that fictive motion expressions differ from translational motion event ones in encoding motion events. Specifically, in Mandarin advent path expressions, 1) there are three main lexicalization patterns: the satellite-framed language pattern, the double-framing pattern, and the verb-framed language pattern; 2) the frequency of path verbs is similar to that of manner verbs; 3) alternative expressions of manner information are used frequently; and 4) the complexity of Ground encoding is low. These findings suggest that event types contribute to intra-language differences of motion event encoding and that a motion event encoding pattern is better applied to a certain event type in a certain language than to a language as a whole.