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Investigating Motion Events in Austronesian Languages

Investigating Motion Events in Austronesian Languages Abstract: S. Huang and M. Tanangkingsing found that six Western Austronesian languages share the common property of giving greater attention to path information than to manner. They proposed that Proto-Austronesian was probably path-salient. In order to ascertain the validity of their hypothesis, this study compares the motion events in a Yami Frog story with six Western Austronesian languages, followed by a research design using VARBRUL (a logistic regression analysis program) to analyze the factors that account for the variation between path and manner verbs in 20 Yami texts. In the process, a clear set of operational definitions is proposed. Our quantitative analysis indicates that Yami is a path-salient language in that (i) path verbs are more frequent than manner verbs, (ii) path verbs favor cooccurrence of figure and ground even more than manner verbs, and (iii) manner is usually not expressed after the path verb. If it is expressed, it is coded as a serial verb construction. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Oceanic Linguistics University of Hawai'I Press

Investigating Motion Events in Austronesian Languages

Oceanic Linguistics , Volume 51 (1) – Jun 30, 2012

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Publisher
University of Hawai'I Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 University of Hawai'i Press.
ISSN
1527-9421
Publisher site
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Abstract

Abstract: S. Huang and M. Tanangkingsing found that six Western Austronesian languages share the common property of giving greater attention to path information than to manner. They proposed that Proto-Austronesian was probably path-salient. In order to ascertain the validity of their hypothesis, this study compares the motion events in a Yami Frog story with six Western Austronesian languages, followed by a research design using VARBRUL (a logistic regression analysis program) to analyze the factors that account for the variation between path and manner verbs in 20 Yami texts. In the process, a clear set of operational definitions is proposed. Our quantitative analysis indicates that Yami is a path-salient language in that (i) path verbs are more frequent than manner verbs, (ii) path verbs favor cooccurrence of figure and ground even more than manner verbs, and (iii) manner is usually not expressed after the path verb. If it is expressed, it is coded as a serial verb construction.

Journal

Oceanic LinguisticsUniversity of Hawai'I Press

Published: Jun 30, 2012

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