Typological insights into motion event encoding: A case study of Turkish subordination and case marking patterns

Motion events like (1) “The man swam into the cave” [1] are crucial to human experience from early childhood [2] and involve one Figure object (The man) moving or located in relation to another Ground object (the cave) with the use of a motion verb (swam) towards a path or

direction (into the cave).

Lexicalization patterns of languages provide insights into how speakers of different languages encode their experiences of these events:

(2) “Adam mağara-ya yüz-erek gir-di”
Man.NOM cave-DAT swim-CVB enter-PST.3SG

‘The man entered into the cave by swimming.’

In contrast to the use of manner verb (satellite-framing) ‘swam’ in English sentence (1) above, ‘gir’ (enter) encodes path in the main verb (verb-framing) and ‘yüzerek’ (by swimming) displays the manner component subordinated in Turkish example in (2). While prior work on motion event semantics, such as the Verb/Satellite-framing typology [3] [4], has been fruitful in describing languages, a contemporary approach [5] [6] posits that motion-independent properties governing the morphological, lexical, and syntactic resources available to languages influence motion framing. To date, little is known about whether Turkish aligns strictly with a V-framed typology or exhibits flexibility in motion event encoding. This study sets off to question this recent approach by focusing on motion events in Turkish, exploring the role of subordination and case marking in motion expressions. Two tasks were employed for the analysis of motion expressions. By using animated clips/real-life video sequences several recent studies (i.e., [7]) analysed motion event elicitations more efficiently. Due to the nature of the content, the absence of verbal expressions, and easy operability, the Pear film [8] and 35 animated video clips [9] were taken as stimuli in two tasks in which individual participants – native Turkish speakers (n=60) – watched and then narrated the story on the screen. The findings showed that participants used certain subordinate constructions (adverbial cl: n=789; relative cl: n=209; complement cl: n=162) to elaborate their narrations of motion expressions in the main clauses of motion as encoding mainly the manner of motion, modifying the figure and/or ground elements of motion expressions. Participants also used three case markings frequently with motion expressions: dative (n=762), ablative (n=500), and locative (n=134), linked to trans-locational dynamics of motion expressions, depicting Source to Goal or ground locatedness. This evidence suggests: 1) analysing subordinate clauses alongside main verbs provides a more comprehensive understanding of languages' framing behaviour in motion typology; 2) the traditional V/S framing should be reconsidered, advocating for a more nuanced analysis with deeper exploration of main-subordinate clause relations. Aligning with similar studies ([5] [10] [11]), this study proposes a flexible motion typology, challenging rigid two- or three-way classifications. Overall, the present study sheds light on new insights emphasizing the clausal patterns in description of motion events in Turkish where path and manner verbs are supported via additional uses of subordinate clauses for extended motion events and descriptions via case markings. These insights contribute to the broader understanding of motion typology, emphasizing the complexity and flexibility languages exhibit in encoding motion events.