Summary: | This study examines and compares the lexicalization patterns of pulling and pushing events in two
satellite-framed languages: Polish and English. On the basis of the descriptions of pulling and
pushing events in two novels and their translations from Polish into English and English into
Polish, four main differences between the lexicalisation of caused motion in Polish and English
were found. First, with regards to our token analysis, Polish data includes more manner verbs (e.g.
pchać ‘push’ and ciągnąć ‘pull’) than English. English, instead, uses generic verbs (such as put,
get, take, remove). In this respect patterns of caused motion expression appear to be similar to
those described for voluntary motion in previous literature. Second, and in terms of types,
however, Polish and English data included similar number of motion verbs. Third, the obligatory
use of perfectivizing prefixes in Polish necessitates the expression of Path, which is less frequent
in the English data. Finally, our analysis also points to a higher frequency of pulling events when
compared with pushing events for both languages, which is explained by the object’s becoming
available to the agent as a result of this action. The present study contributes to the understanding
of the expression of caused motion in the category of satellite-languages and points to the influence
of morpho-syntactic characteristics of a given language on the sematic content of the descriptions
of motion events.
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