Conceptualisation and the teaching of German abstract motion expressions and their case-marking

Traditionally, German case-marking constitutes one of the major difficulties for foreign learners, especially in such expressions of motion events in which so-called “two-way prepositions” (Smith, 1995) can be used: Er geht auf die Straße vs Er geht auf der Straße. The learner has to make a decision of whether to use an accusative or a dative according to the meaning conveyed. But even more problematic for the foreigner than the prototypical examples here above is the case-marking in such expressions of reduced (body-part) motion, e.g. in einen Apfel beißen or expressions of abstract motion events, e.g. Ein Wort in eine andere Sprache übersetzen. Seen in the wider context of verb-framed and satellite-framed languages (Talmy 1985, Slobin 1996, 2000), the case study explores German examples of partial motion of instrumental body parts and of abstract motion. It aims at offering a more adequate framework for explaining the case alternation used in German motion events to French speakers (as members of a typologically completely different languages). It shows that the distinction between the two language types concerns a different conceptualization of motion events and their location in both concrete and mental space. The visual representation of concrete motion events and its exploitation for non-prototypical motion events can make the whole learning task of German far more transparent and thus may help motivate the understanding of peripheral motion (such as is the case with body-part motion events), and of metaphorical motion events. The assumption underlying this research is that visual support may reinforce the intake and use of the accusative in abstract motion expressions such as sich an die Hoffnung klammern (‘to cling to hope’). This visual support may also offer the basis for a potential link with the underlying conceptual metaphor ABSTRACT ACTIVITY IS MOTION. In order to show the underlying motion the teacher of German can invite the learner to visualize how the motion is taking place. Psychologically, this visual approach is based on Paivio’s (2001) ‘dual coding’ hypothesis, which maintains that verbal and visual learning strategies are strongly intertwined. The presentation of variation in the conceptualization of motion events in French and German thus becomes the basis for learning strategies for the acquisition of typical German conceptualizations by means of case marking. References Matlock, Teenie (2004a) Fictive motion as cognitive simulation. In Memory and Cognition 32 (8): 1389–1400. Matlock, Teenie (2004b) The conceptual motivation of fictive motion. In Studies in Linguistic Motivation, Günter Radden and Klaus-Uwe Panther (eds.), 221–248. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Paivio, Allan (2001) Mental Representations: A Dual Coding Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, Michael B. (1995) Semantic motivation vs. arbitrariness in grammar: Toward a more general account of the DAT/ACC contrast with two-way prepositions. In Insights in Germanic Linguistics: Methodology and Transition, Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr. (eds.), 293–323. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Slobin, Dan I. (1996) Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In Grammatical Constructions: Their Form and Meaning, Masayoshi Shibatani and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), 195–220. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Slobin, Dan I. (2000) Verbalized events: A dynamic approach to linguistic relativity and determinism. In Evidence for Linguistic Relativity, Susanne Niemeier and René Dirven (eds.), 107–138. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Talmy, Leonhard (1985)Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol. 3: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, Timothy Shopen (ed.), 57–149. New York: Cambridge University Press. Talmy, Leonhard (1991) Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 480–519