Typological Framework Compartmentalization of Motion Event in Chinese and French Languages

Abstract

Following Talmy’s Typological Framework Theory, the article reexamined Slobin’s Thinking-for-speaking Hypothesis and Kopecka’s French-Polish comparative study with attempt to investigate the spatial relationship and linguistically typological framing of Chinese and French languages in terms of such distinctive cognitive factors of motion events as path, manner and figure. The following three inductive interpretations can be revealed. First, taking account of the categories, amount and frequency of their pattern to realize PATH, Chinese and French are categorized as untypical satellite-framed Language and untypical verb-framed Language respectively. Second, a few verbs signifying motion manner exist remarkably in French, which exhibits French’s trend prediction of being verb-framed Language. Third, the grammatical and semantic functions of directional verb V2 in Chinese’s V1+V2 structure justified Slobin’s Thinking-for-speaking Hypothesis that Chinese is characterized by equipollently-framed language.