The constructional analysis of emanation fictive motion in Arabic : a cognitive semantic-syntactic study

Abstract EN

The study explores the cognitivenetwork and semantics of the Arabic fictive motion constructions of emanation paths within Talmy's framework.

One of the claims in cognitive linguistics is that motion event can be used to describe an inherently static scene without any movement in reality, but linguistically, that scene is conceptualized as dynamic movement.

Thus, fictive motion (hereafter FM), as a cognitively universal phenomenon, expresses a static physical entity by using dynamic linguistic structure.

Emanation is one of the different types of FM which has been investigated by Talmy (1996, 2000).

The central aim of this study is to investigate emanation FMin Arabic and to find whether ituses the same constructions that are used in Talmy's model.

The study also aims to find if there are other categories that can be used in Arabic and absent in his categorization and vice versa.

More precisely, the study looks for an answer to how abstract ideas are acquired and structured in Arabic.

The results revealed that more concrete verbs are used in Arabic to describe FM.

It also uses categories that are not classified within Talmy's framework.