The many ways to search for a frog: Linguistic typology and the expression of motion events

The chapters in this volume, along with the extensive list of frog-story studies in Appendix II, provide a rich database for the exploration of particular questions of language use and acquisition. The studies reported in Part I reflect a range of languages of different types, making it possible to focus on the role of linguistic typology in narrative construction. 1 A recurrent concern in those studies is the expression of motion, which is one of the dominant themes of Frog, where are you? In one way or another, all of the studies confront Talmy’s by now familiar typology of verb-framed and satellite-framed languages (Talmy 1985, 1991, 2000b). Briefly, the typology is concerned with the means of expression of the path of movement. In verb-framed languages (“V-languages”) path is expressed by the main verb in a clause (‘enter’, ‘exit’, ‘ascend’, etc.), whereas in satellite-framed languages (“S-languages”) path is expressed by an element associated with the verb (‘go in/out/up’, etc.). This dichotomy has engendered a good deal of research and debate in the literature on motion-event descriptions over the past decade or so. 2 In this concluding chapter on typological perspectives I suggest that several different sorts of factors “conspire” to produce a range of frog-story varieties. These varieties result from combined influences of linguistic structure, on-line processing, and cultural practices. Talmy’s typology was designed to characterize lexicalization patterns, and it has provided important insights into the overall set of structures that define individual languages. However, the typology alone cannot account for discourse structures, because language use is determined by more than lexicalization patterns. It is striking how much has been learned by application of the V-language/S-language contrast, and it still plays a part in the mix of factors considered here. But a fuller account of narrative organization will require attention to a range of morphosyntactic, psycholinguistic, and pragmatic 220factors. Some of these factors are explored in this chapter, with regard to motion events in the frog story. The aim is to come to a fuller explanation of the ways in which languages differ in rhetorical style.