25.3647, Diss: Indo-European; Historical Ling, Text/Corpus Ling, Typology: Verkerk: 'The Evolutionary Dynamics of Motion Event Encoding'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-3647. Thu Sep 18 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.3647, Diss: Indo-European; Historical Ling, Text/Corpus Ling, Typology: Verkerk: 'The Evolutionary Dynamics of Motion Event Encoding'

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Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 01:02:46
From: Annemarie Verkerk [annemarie.verkerk at gmail.com]
Subject: The Evolutionary Dynamics of Motion Event Encoding

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Institution: Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen 
Program: Centre for Language Studies 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2014 

Author: Annemarie Verkerk

Dissertation Title: The Evolutionary Dynamics of Motion Event Encoding 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics
                     Typology

Language Family(ies): Indo-European


Dissertation Director(s):
Fiona Jordan
Stephen Curtis Levinson
Michael Dunn

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation presents a quantitative study of diachronic change in the
typology of motion event encoding in the Indo-European language family. It
aims to describe the diverse set of constructions and verb lexicons used to
encode motion and analyze their emergence and change using comparative
phylogenetic methods. The basis of the study is a parallel corpus of
translated motion events from three literary works: Alice’s adventures in
Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there, both by
Lewis Carroll, and O Alquimista by Paulo Coelho. Included in this parallel
corpus are twenty Indo-European languages (French, Italian, Portuguese,
Romanian [Romance], Irish [Celtic], Dutch, English, German, Swedish
[Germanic], Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian
[Balto-Slavic], Hindi, Nepali, Persian [Indo-Iranian], Modern Greek
[Hellenic], Albanian, and Armenian). These twenty languages are highly diverse
in their usage of the nine different motion construction types that were
distinguished. These differences could be captured best on a continuous scale,
with languages using the satellite-framed construction most often on one end,
and languages using the verb-framed construction most often on the other end.
Phylogenetic comparative methods were used to make inferences about
proto-languages, correlations between different features, and rates of change.
First, an ancestral state estimation analysis was conducted to test the
hypothesis that Proto-Indo-European was satellite-framed and behaved similarly
to the Germanic languages, as has been proposed in the literature. The results
showed that Proto-Indo-European is more likely to be similar to languages that
can be found closer to the middle of the continuous scale, such as Modern
Greek, than has been previously thought. Next, phylogenetically controlled
correlation analyses showed that there is a relationship between the usage of
certain motion constructions and the motion verb lexicon: satellite-framed
languages have a larger class of manner verbs, and verb-framed languages have
a larger class of path verbs. Further investigation demonstrated that the rate
at which these two verb classes are evolving differs depending on differences
in motion construction usage in the different subgroups of the Indo-European
language family.
The dissertation also incorporates more traditional aspects of historical
linguistics, including a literature review of the behaviour of ancient
Indo-European languages such as Latin and Sanskrit, as well as an etymological
study. These indicated that the process through which the ancient
Indo-European preverbs merged with verb roots is of immense importance to
explain both differences in motion construction usage as well as differences
in path verb lexicon size. While no evidence for an influential role for areal
patterns was found, it seemed clear that contact between South European
languages on the one hand and North-Central European languages on the other
has played a role in creating and maintaining the diversity found in motion
encoding the Indo-European language family.







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