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Ways Of Crossing A Spatial Boundary In Typologically Distinct Languages, Seyda Özçalışkan

Psychology Faculty Publications

Expression of spatial motion shows wide variation as well as patterned regularities across the world's languages (Talmy, 2000), and events involving the traversal of a spatial boundary impose the tightest typological constraints in the lexicalization of motion, providing a true test of cross-linguistic differences. Speakers of verb-framed languages are required by their language not to use manner verbs in marking the change of location across boundaries (Aske, 1989). Here we test the strength of the boundary-crossing constraint and ask how speakers convey motion events when the constraints imposed by the experimental task are at odds with the constraints imposed by …