A fine-grained analysis of manner salience

要旨

Abstract This chapter delves into the typological discussion of “manner salience” ( Slobin 2004 , 2006 ) by means of a fine-grained examination of different kinds of manner expressions. Our two speech elicitation experiments revealed that English speakers are clearly more manner salient than Japanese in the use of the “default” general manner expression (i.e. walk ) in describing human walking motion. On the other hand, Japanese speakers use mimetic adverbs which significantly contribute to the expressive power of manner expressions, especially in describing the sounds that moving entities make. These results indicate that manner salience is a complex phenomenon that involves multiple parameters in the form and meaning of manner expressions, rather than a mere epiphenomenon of the typology based on path coding positions.

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