Cross-linguistic categorization of throwing events

Abstract

Research on cross-linguistic categorization reveals that there were universal principles constraining the categorization of motion events across languages, and variations only distributed in a limited range. However, this finding has not been widely verified across languages and semantic domains. In this paper, we will address whether the universal constraints exist in the cross-linguistic categorization of throwing events, with the data collected with a behavioral approach. We asked 79 adult native speakers of English(12 male, 17 female), Chinese(15 male, 15 female), and German(18 male, 12 female) to perform actions denoted by near-synonymous ‘throw’ verbs in their native languages. Then we coded the features of their actions and compared them across individuals and languages. The results support the finding of previous studies that event categorization is constrained across languages. In addition, the top-down approach we adopted in this study allowed us to capture the focal and extensional semantic range of each verb involved, which advanced our knowledge of event categories and different semantic representations of a class of near-synonyms.

How bilinguals refer to Mandarin throwing actions in English

“…The bilinguals also performed both the labeling and the word-choice task for the very same throwing actions in Mandarin. We expected the bilinguals to choose the target word, as has been found for Mandarin monolinguals in Wang and Gao’s (2016) study.…”

“…The purpose of the present study was to test the strategies Mandarin-English bilinguals use when referring to typical Mandarin throwing actions in English (following the methodology in Wang & Gao, 2016 ). While both Mandarin and English have rich vocabularies to refer to throwing events, there is little to no exact overlap in the words referring to these events in the two languages ( Gao et al, 2016 ; Wang & Gao, 2016 ).…”

“…3) Bilinguals’ choices might be related to the degree of overlap in Mandarin and in English. Specifically, they might use similar words as monolinguals for words with close equivalents, specifically for rēng (i.e., throw ) and diū (i.e., toss ), since these actions are closely equivalent in the two languages ( Wang & Gao, 2016 ). Where the concepts are only partially equivalent (i.e., pāo, tóu, shuāi, shuǎi ), the bilinguals might show more varied responses than monolinguals (as found in Ibarretxe-Antuñano et al, 2016 ) and/or select words in English with some similar characteristics.…”

“…Previous studies on monolingual and bilingual speakers’ acquisition of throw verbs in Mandarin and English show that both Mandarin and English have rich vocabularies to refer to throwing events ( Gao et al, 2016 ; Wang & Gao, 2016 ). Other than the most general terms for throwing (i.e., throw in English and rēng 扔 in Mandarin), the near-synonyms in the two languages do not map neatly onto each other.…”

“…Other than the most general terms for throwing (i.e., throw in English and rēng 扔 in Mandarin), the near-synonyms in the two languages do not map neatly onto each other. Wang and Gao (2016) asked Mandarin- and English-speaking participants to act out the throwing actions corresponding to the most frequent throw verbs in Mandarin (i.e., rēng 扔, diū 丢, pāo 抛, tóu 投, shuāI 摔, shuǎI 甩) and in English (i.e., throw, fling, chuck, cast, toss, hurl ). The results showed that, within a language, the verbs differed from each other in terms of force, directionality (both vertical and horizontal), initial arm position, and initial hand height ( Ibarretxe-Antuñano [2012 , 2016 ] have identified some similar characteristics as the basis for cross-linguistic differences in placement and removal verbs in other languages).…”