Thing-place distinction and localizer distribution in Chinese directed motion construction

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4754552
AutoresJingxia Lin (0000-0001-9930-7368, Nanyang Technological University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Volumen51
Número5
Fecha de publicación2013-01-15
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
EditorialWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling-2013-0031
OpenAlexW2329377644
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4

A language sensitive to a thing-place distinction (e.g., cup vs. Paris) may use thing-to-place conversion devices to allow a thing to be conceptualized as a place. Mandarin Chinese behaves inconsistently in the use of the conversion device – the addition of a localizer (e.g., li ‘inside’) to a thing noun – in that the device is not required in every situation where a thing is understood as a place, cf. dao chezi-*(li) arrive car-inside and jin chezi-(li) enter car-inside. Drawing evidence from Chinese directed motion contractions, I argue that such inconsistency is closely related to the other function of localizers: specifying the search domain of a ground that a figure is located with respect to. Specifically, Chinese adheres to a Localizer Condition according to which a localizer is not required if the information conveyed in the path verb and the (thing) ground is sufficiently specific to identify the figure's final location with respect to the (thing) ground. I show that the effects of the condition are observed in other languages such as Likpe and French, despite differences in encoding spatial relations

Distribution (mathematics) · Linguistics · Mathematical analysis · Motion (physics) · Advanced Computational Techniques and Applications · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Hand Gesture Recognition Systems · Mathematics · Optics and Image Analysis · Philosophy