The poverty of manner categories in motion verbs coding vertical relations. Evidence from Polish and Russian

Łozińska, Joanna

doi:10.1007/s11185-021-09237-2

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Pointing to upward targets indeed requires to integrate gravitational constraints so as to optimize the motor commands while saving muscle effort ( Gentili et al, 2007 ; Gaveau et al, 2016 , 2021 ). Interestingly, typological analyses of motion events in different languages reveal that the effort expended by the moving Figure to overcome gravity is typically coded vertically ( Łozińska, 2021 ). The saliency of verticality in language is also attested by the frequent usage of conceptual metaphors that express abstract ideas along the vertical dimension ( Lakoff and Johnson, 1999 , 2003 ; Gallese and Lakoff, 2005 ; Cian, 2017 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Polish and Russian for instance, verbs for vertical spatial relations are more frequently coded in verbal descriptions than verbs for horizontal motion. This may stem from the perceptual difference between horizontal and vertical biological movements, the latter not being canonical among most animate entities, which may in turn affect linguistic structures ( Łozińska, 2018 , 2021 ). The strategies for expressing vertical relations also diverge from those used for horizontal relations, both in verb- and satellite-framed languages.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Up right, not right up: Primacy of verticality in both language and movement

Boulenger

Finos

Koun

et al. 2022

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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When describing motion along both the horizontal and vertical axes, languages from different families express the elements encoding verticality before those coding for horizontality (e.g., going up right instead of right up). In light of the motor grounding of language, the present study investigated whether the prevalence of verticality in Path expression also governs the trajectory of arm biological movements. Using a 3D virtual-reality setting, we tracked the kinematics of hand pointing movements in five spatial directions, two of which implied the vertical and horizontal vectors equally (i.e., up right +45° and bottom right −45°). Movement onset could be prompted by visual or auditory verbal cues, the latter being canonical in French (“en haut à droite”/up right) or not (“à droite en haut”/right up). In two experiments, analyses of the index finger kinematics revealed a significant effect of gravity, with earlier acceleration, velocity, and deceleration peaks for upward (+45°) than downward (−45°) movements, irrespective of the instructions. Remarkably, confirming the linguistic observations, we found that vertical kinematic parameters occurred earlier than horizontal ones for upward movements, both for visual and congruent verbal cues. Non-canonical verbal instructions significantly affected this temporal dynamic: for upward movements, the horizontal and vertical components temporally aligned, while they reversed for downward movements where the kinematics of the vertical axis was delayed with respect to that of the horizontal one. This temporal dynamic is so deeply anchored that non-canonical verbal instructions allowed for horizontality to precede verticality only for movements that do not fight against gravity. Altogether, our findings provide new insights into the embodiment of language by revealing that linguistic path may reflect the organization of biological movements, giving priority to the vertical axis.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Up right, not right up: Primacy of verticality in both language and movement

Boulenger

Finos

Koun

et al. 2022

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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show abstract

“…Recently, more and more in-depth analyses have been conducted on the dimensions of motion descriptions that go beyond the general categories of path and manner (e.g. Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2017, Matsumoto & Kawachi 2020, Stosic 2020, Kopecka & Vuillermet 2021, Łozińska 2021, Montero-Melis 2021, Tuuri 2021, which significantly broadens the scope of studies of motion language.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speed as a dimension of manner in Estonian frog stories

et al. 2022

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Focusing on the expression of manner and path in the ‘frog story’ narrations of Estonian native speakers, this study shows that Estonian – a morphologically rich satellite-framed Finno-Ugric language – is characterised by high manner and high path salience. Furthermore, when analysing one of the core qualities of manner – speed – we show that when the participants were asked to narrate a story as if the events developed slowly, they also spoke slowly and their stories tended to be long (both in time duration and word count) and include many details. When they were asked to tell the story as if the events developed fast, they also spoke faster and used more verbs of caused motion and verbs of vertical motion. Thus, the speed of motion in the physical world seems to be mimicked by speech rate, indicating mental simulation and iconic prosody. The exact nature of speed effects in linguistic choices for expressing motion remains to be studied in future works.

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