This study intends to investigate the conceptualization and typology of stationary events(i.e., spatial stationary events, SEs or SSEs) from the perspective of Cognitive Semantics(Talmy,2000a,2000b,2006,2012a,2017a,2019;Li&Liu,2022).SEs are termed as locatedness by Talmy,the founder of Cognitive Semantics(Talmy,2000b:25).But the conceptualization and typology of spatial stationary events is seldom touched upon in the research of motion events which are the prototypes of macro-events(Talmy,2000b).The main purpose of this study is to analyze the conceptualization process of this type of events(Shipley&Zacks,2008).The methodology adopted is a combination of qualitative analyses and empirical quantitative researches.
Verb-framed language and satellite-framed language are the dichotomy of languages(Talmy,2000b:221).Leonard Talmy holds that both English and Chinese are satellite-framed languages(S-language).In a language, if the core schema(cf.Section 3.2.1,Chapter 3)is pervasively represented in the verb,this language is grouped into verb-framed languages,such as Spanish.If,however,the core schema is pervasively represented in the satellite,the language is grouped into satellite-framed languages,such as English and Atsugewi(Talmy,2000b:117-118). This typological dichotomy of languages has been discussed by many researchers in the past more than 30 years.This study intends to investigate into the typology of stationary events .The term of stationary event is first used by Li(2013a:134)and refers to one particular type of motion event(Talmy,2000b),as shown in(1.1-1.2).
(1.1)The lamp was on the table.
(1.2)The lamp lay on the table.(Talmy,2000b:29)
Li(2013b) has falsified Talmy's claim about the typology of Mandarin by investigating stationary events,but there are still further issues to be elaborated(this will be discussed in more details in Section 2.3.2,Chapter 2).To provide a satisfying account of the typology of stationary events in Mandarin,we have to tackle the following issues.
The first issue is the definition and typology of stationary events.Talmy treats“a situation containing motion and the continuation of a stationary location alike as a Motion event (with a capital M)”(Talmy,2000b:25).The former is a dynamic motion event which has been extensively studied.And the latter is a stationary event which is the focus of the current study.Similar to a motion event(cf.Talmy,2000b),a stationary event consists of four components: Figure , Ground , Path and Motion .The Figure is“located”(ibid.:25)with respect to the Ground .The Path is the Site “occupied by the Figure object(with respect to the Ground object)”(ibid.:25). Motion refers to the presence of locatedness.Location is represented by BELOC.The Motion component here implies Zero-motion , i.e., the “nonoccurrence”(ibid.:25) of translational motion. Besides these four internal components, a stationary event can also possess an external Co-event which bears one of the following six relations to it: Precursion, Enablement, Cause, Manner, Concomitance and Subsequence.Co-events are usually represented by positional verbs such as the verb lay in(1.2).
The typology of stationary events refers to the V-L/S-L distinction of representation of stationary events,which is determined by whether the Path or Site component is expressed by a verb root in a sentence or by a satellite in it.The satellite to the verb or the satellite(abbreviated as Sat or simply S)is a term used in Talmyan typology and refers to“the grammatical category of any constituent other than a noun phrase or prepositional-phrase complement that is in a sister relation to the verb root”(Talmy,2000b:102).
The second issue is how we will cope with the typology of those events.As for stationary events , the path or site component is closely related to the spatial structuring of language, because those events actually indicate stationary spatial situations.This,however,has been completely neglected in previous research.In previous study,spatial structuring of language has been separated from whole stationary events,with the former's sole emphasis on the semantics of sentence constituents such as adpositions and the latter on the meaning and typology of the whole sentences.Filipovic' and Ibarretxe-Antunano have stated that“The initial localistic approaches to spatial semantics,centered around one specific element of the sentence,have given way to more holistic approaches”(Filipovic'& Ibarretxe-Antunano,2015:527).With our general attention on a whole sentence,however,if necessary,specific elements in it,for instance,the spatial adpositions ,shall be reanalyzed in the typological analyses of such events.In this study, spatial adpositions include most closed-class morphemes used before or after the referential nominal ground object.For instance,they include the spatial prepositions in English,the spatial prepositions and spatial postpositions in Chinese,and the spatial case markers in Mongolian(Bai,2016)and Uighur(Bai,1990).Particularly,the conceptualization of space is a bottle-neck problem to the determination of stationary events typology.And thus,an exhaustive semantic description of those spatial adpositions in data will lay a reliable foundation for a precise characterization of the typological features of the events.
Since English and Mandarin Chinese are two genetically unrelated languages,similarities between them are usually universal.This situation renders a comparison between the two languages meaningful.And the previous research renders us to focus on the following three aspects: the conceptualization of spatial adpositions, the conceptualization of positional verbs , and the typology of stationary event expressions .Thus,we intend to answer the following three research questions related to the elicited and empirical data:
(i)How is the conceptualization of the spatial adpositions conducted in the English and Chinese stationary events?
(ii)How are co-events represented by positional verbs in the English and Chinese stationary event expressions?
(iii) What are the typological features of the English and Chinese stationary event expressions?