Centre for Languages and Literature. COGNITIVE AND COMMUNICATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY

Taking perspectives on events Whenever we compose a message in words, we take a perspective. Indeed, it’s impossible to utter or write a sentence without, at the same time, deciding how to “frame ” the content that we are trying to express. Furthermore, we must make use of the tools that are provided by the particular language we are using. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that each language provides a set of preferred perspectives on events. Of course, one has a range of choices in any particular language; nevertheless, some choices seem more “natural ” than others, depending on the language. I will try to demonstrate this point by exploring a domain of experience that is central in all languages: statements about how living creatures move from place to place. Motion events The linguist Leonard Talmy (1991, 2000) has analyzed motion events into a set of components: Motion: displacement in space (different location at time1 and time2) Path: direction of motion (into, upwards, etc.) Figure: the entity that is moving (person, animal, etc.