Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T13:02:20.913Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘Hollering from across the yard’: fictive path in manner of speaking events*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2014

CARLA VERGARO
Affiliation:
University of Perugia, Italy
JODI L. SANDFORD*
Affiliation:
University of Perugia, Italy
ROBERTA MASTROFINI
Affiliation:
University of Perugia, Italy
YHARA M. FORMISANO
Affiliation:
University of Perugia, Italy
*
Address for correspondence: Jodi L. Sandford, Dipartimento di Lettere - Lingue, letterature e civiltà antiche e moderne, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Palazzo San Bernardo, Via degli Offici 14, 06123, Perugia, Italia. tel: (+39) 075.585.4823; e-mail: [email protected].

Abstract

The aim of this study is to see how and to what extent the Talmyan notion of fictive motion is realized in the conceptual frame of speaking. Drawing from a previous in-depth analysis of the speaking event Manner component in English (cf. Vergaro, Sandford, Mastrofini, and Formisano, unpublished observations),1 we investigate the realization of fictive path in 186 English manner of speaking (henceforth MoS) verb entries accessed through the Corpus of Contemporary American English (henceforth COCA). Fictive path is always involved in the conceptualization of the speaking event. Communication is elaborated through the conduit metaphor, which is, in turn, motivated by the embodied act of speaking. Fictive path is further considered in relation to image schemas and windowing. Different degrees of path windowing emerge from this study, illustrating how the speaker focuses attention on a specific portion of the speaking event. Image schema distribution and an implicational hierarchy of the various types of path elaboration also become evident in this study.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, and careful suggestions.

References

references

Cifuentes-Férez, P. (2006). La expresión de los dominios de movimiento y visión en inglés y en español desde la perspectiva de la Lingüìstica Cognitiva. (Unpublished MA thesis) University of Murcia, Spain.Google Scholar
Croft, W., & Cruse, D. A. (2004). Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, J. A. (2008 [2006]). From molecule to metaphor: a neural theory of language. Cambridge, MA / London: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, M. (1990 [1987]). The body in the mind: the bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kövecses, Z. (2010 [2002]). Metaphor: a practical introduction. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1990 [1987]). Women, fire and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., Espenson, J., Goldberg, A., & Schwartz, A. (1991 [1989]). The Master Metaphor List: University of California Berkeley, online: <http://araw.mede.uic.edu/∼alansz/metaphor/METAPHORLIST.pdf>..>Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003 [1980]). Afterword. In Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason: a field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1986). Abstract motion. In Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 445471). Berkeley, CA: University of Berkeley.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Y. (1996a). How abstract is subjective motion? A comparison of access path expressions and coverage path expressions. In Goldberg, A. (Ed.), Conceptual structure, discourse and language (pp. 359373). Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Y. (1996b). Subjective motion and English and Japanese verbs. Cognitive Linguistics, 7(2), 183226.Google Scholar
Mufwene, S. S. (1978). English manner-of-speaking verbs revisited. In Farkas, D., Jacobsen, W. M., & Todrys, K. W. (Eds.), Parasession on the lexicon (pp. 278288). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Reddy, M. J. (1979 [l993]). The conduit metaphor − a case of frame conflict in our language about language. In Ortony, A. (Ed.), Metaphor and thought, 2nd ed. (pp. 164201). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rojo, A., & Valenzuela, J. (2001). How to say things with words: ways of saying in English and Spanish. META, 46(3), 467477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. (1996). From ‘thought and language’ to ‘thinking for speaking’. In Gumperz, J. J. & Levinson, S. C. (Eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity (pp. 7096). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. (1997). Mind, code, and text. In Bybee, J., Haiman, J., & Thompson, S. A. (Eds.), Essays on language function and language type: dedicated to T. Givón (pp. 437467). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. (2008). Relations between paths of motion and paths of vision: a crosslinguistic and developmental exploration”. In Gathercole, V. M. (Ed.), Routes to language: studies in honor of Melissa Bowerman (pp. 197221). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Snell-Hornby, M. (1983). Verb-descriptivity in German and English: a contrastive study in semantic fields. Heidelberg: C. Winter Universitatsverlag.Google Scholar
Talmy, L. (1996). Fictive motion in language and ‘ception’. In Bloom, P., Peterson, M. A., Nadel, L., & Garrett, M. F. (Eds.), Language and space (pp. 211276). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. I: concept structuring systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Urban, M., & Ruppenhofer, J. (2001). Shouting and screaming: manner and noise verbs in communication. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 16(1), 7394.Google Scholar
Zwicky, A. M. (1971). In a manner of speaking. Linguistic Inquiry, 2, 223233.Google Scholar