Path encoding and manner salience in motion event descriptions: the case of Bulgarian and English

Examining motion event descriptions allows us to evaluate what information individuals deem to be salient when communicating about events. Systematic variations between languages regarding how they encode details about motion events have given rise to theories of typological classifications of languages. In this study we evaluate the classification of Bulgarian, a South Slavic language, along Talmy's typology of verb-framed and satellite-framed languages, and relate this to Slobin's concept of manner salience. Based on behavioural evidence from an experiment using free-form descriptions in Bulgarian and English, we show that path encoding in Bulgarian is distinct from that of English (a satellite-framed language), but the use of complex path expressions in Bulgarian means it cannot be easily captured by Talmy's two-way classification system. We show that Bulgarian displays a lower rate of manner salience than English and patterns similarly to verb-framed languages in its treatment of the default manner of motion (walking).