1.3 Lexicalization Patterns of Motion Events in Chinese

As a serial verb language, Chinese may use more than one motion morpheme to encode motion events. However, as there is no overt morphological marker to indicate the grammatical status of the co-occurring verbal morphemes, there is an everlasting debate concerning the typological status of Chinese among researchers.Talmy (2000,2009) considers Chinese as a satellite-framed language. His evidence for this position is that when more than one verbal morpheme is used in motion event constructions, the manner verb is the main verb of the sentence, and the path verb is used as a subordinate complement to the manner verb, because usually pronounced in neutral tone and with reduced argument structure the path morpheme does not behave like a full-fledged verb. For example, in (12) the manner verb 走 zǒu “walk”is regarded as the main verb of the sentence and the path verb 出 chū “exit”is believed to be a complement of the manner verb. Researchers such as Peyraube (2006), Ma (2008) and Lamarre (2008) also embrace Talmy’ s position.

Contrary to the Talmy’s position to regard Chinese as a satellite-framed language, Tai (2003) identifies Chinese as a verb-framed language, because he believes that path verbs are actually the predicate center of the multi-morpheme motion constructions. His evidence for this position is that it is the path verb but not the manner verb that can be attached with aspectual marker -le. As he illustrates in (13),the verb 过 guò “cross”incorporating path is the center of the verb compound 飞过 fēi guò “fly cross”, since it can be used alone with aspectual marker -le to indicate the completion of passing the channel as in (13)b.

An obvious problem with Tai ’s analysis is that he does not make distinction between the semantic and syntactic center of the Chinese verbal compound 飞过 fēiguò “fly across”. Talmy (1985,2000,2009) suggests that, path is always the core schema of a motion event, but whether a language is a satellite-framed or verb framed is determined by what syntactic element the core schema is realized. If a language is regarded as verb-framed, it should render the path into the main verb of the sentence. Since the verb 过 guò “across”expresses the path of the motion, it is normal that it represents the semantic center of the predicate, but its status as the semantic center of the predicate does not ensure its status as the main verb of the sentence. In fact, it is the verb 飞 fēi “fly”rather than 过 guò “across”that should be considered as the main verb of the sentence and thus Tai’s argument of classifying Chinese as a verb-framed language is problematic.

Based on another line of research, i. e. the pragmatic preference for certain conceptual components (e. g. path, manner, and ground) exhibited in language use,Chen and Guo (2009) argue that Chinese is actually an equipollently-framed language, because the number of types of manner verbs used in Chinese lies between satellite-framed languages such as English and verb-framed languages such as Spanish. In addition, based on their statistical analysis of motion expressions used by Chinese native speakers, they demonstrate that Chinese native speakers use path verbs and manner verbs to the same degree. Thus they conclude that based on the Chinese patterns of expressing motion events it is neither a satellite-framed nor a verb-framed but an equipollently-framed language. Nonetheless, to determine the typological status of a language based on only pragmatic preference in language use is not reliable, as the unique morphosyntactic structures available in a specific language may make the statistics based on language use not completely comparable.

Some researchers (e.g. Shi, Wu, 2014) point out that things are not as simple as they appear to be. Languages may use varied patterns to encode motion events and thus show typological features of all three types. Moreover, questions such as why languages tend to have varied motion event expressions and where the different lexicalization patterns come from naturally arise. From a diachronic perspective, Shi and Wu (2014,2015) investigate the historical evolution of Chinese lexicalization patterns of motion events and find that from Old to Modern Chinese period,Chinese has undergone radical changes in its morphosyntactic structures and correspondingly its patterns of motion event expressions have also evolved from verb-framed to satellite-framed type. Their argument is supported by their analysis of language structures and language use of Chinese in four historical periods. As to language structures, though serial verb constructions formed as V1manner-V2path are acceptable in both Old and Modern Chinese, their grammatical status has evolved from double-head pattern to single-head pattern, which indicates that though in Old Chinese path verbs are also the head of motion constructions, in Modern Chinese they have involved into satellites subordinating to manner verbs. As to language use, the verbal constructions depicting motion events in Old Chinese mostly encode path information (74.53%), but in Modern Chinese they mostly encode manner and path by V1s the main verb and V2s the satellites respectively (70.39%).(Shi, Wu,2014) This shows that Old Chinese should belong to the family of verb-framed languages and Modern Chinese belong to the family of satellite-framed languages.

I continue this study under the assumption that though Modern Chinese language dominantly encodes motion events into satellite-framed patterns, it uses various ways to encode motion events, and more importantly it has undergone a typological shift from verb-framed to satellite-framed language since Old Chinese period.

The periodization of Chinese language in this study is adopted from Sun(1996), as given in Table 1.

Table 1 Periodization of Chinese Language

It should be noted out that the periodization of Chinese language has not been universally agreed upon. The reason that I follow Sun’s periodization is that the division into the four periods is mainly based on the syntactic development of the Chinese language. Relatively different syntactic properties of Chinese in each period provide good reference for the evolution of motion verbs and constructions.