Expression verbale du mouvement fictif et effectif

Verbal structuring of fictive and actual motionFictive and actual motion phenomena are generally structured via prepositional and verbal items which delineate the linguistic realisation of path constructions. The notion of “path” or “trajectory” refers to the motion of some entity which is located in reference to the position of some other entity in a spatial area. This phenomenon reveals the path followed by entities in motion, hence referring to their non-localisation. The units’ motion is thus revealed through “non-localisation paths” (e.g. The officer ran into the house). By comparison, entities can be linguistically structured through “localisation paths” (e.g. The valley goes from south to north), highlighting the stationary positions of entities in a given spatial area, on the basis of which a path can be (mentally) followed. These trajectories denote the entities’ localisation and their linguistic arrangement turns out to be fairly similar to that of non-localisation paths. So far, little attention has been paid to localisation paths. The present work aims to revise the existing typology relative to these specific paths. This study accounts for the conceptual, semantic, and syntactic characteristics pertaining to localisation paths, which differentiate them from non-localisation paths. Based on corpus analyses, the taxonomy suggested in this article highlights the divergent linguistic realisations which separate the structuring of fictive motion, closely associated to that of actual motion