The expression of path in three satellite-framed languages. A cognitive study of Polish, Russian, and English

Abstract: Cross-linguistic studies of the lexicalization of motion tend to contrast satellite- with verb-framed languages (e.g. Slobin 1996; 2004; Cardini 2008; Özçalışkan & Slobin 2003; Kopecka 2004; Fargard et al. 2013, etc.) and concentrate less frequently on intra-typological analyses (but cf. e.g. Filipović 2007; Hasko 2010; Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2009; Ibarretxe-Antuñano & Hijazo-Gascón 2012). Even fewer studies contrast genetically related languages (but cf. e.g. Łozińska 2018). The main aim of this study was to establish the path-saliency cline of three satellite-framed languages: Polish, Russian, and English. The analysis was based on elicited data. The overall patterns of expressing the path of motion in the three languages were shown to be caused by their belonging to the same typological category. The differences could be attributed, to a large extent, to differences in the morphological structures and in the lexical repertoires of motion-coding expressions available to the speakers of the three languages. However, the analysis of descriptions of three specific spatial situations (i.e. vertical, boundary-crossing, and deictic relations) pointed to other factors that may influence path coding in the three languages. Thus, despite the satellite-verb character of the languages examined and the morpho-syntactic differences between them, all our participants, who were native speakers of the three languages examined, tended to code vertical relations by means of path verbs. The number of tokens of path verbs used to code this particular spatial relation was found to be higher than the number of tokens of path verbs used to code deictic or boundary-crossing motion.