The proto-motion event schema: Integrating lexical semantics and morphological sequencing

The present paper investigates Mandarin verbs of MOTION, one of the fundamental domains of human activities and extensively discussed areas in linguistic research.¹ Previous studies on Mandarin motion verbs are done primarily with a typological concern. However, given the iconic nature of serial motions in Mandarin, this paper attempts to provide a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the semantic-to-morphological and lexical-to-grammatical distinctions pertaining to the colloconstructional sequencing of motion verbs. Based on the Proto-Motion Event Schema (PMS), it offers an overarching framework for a top-down analysis of the conceptual structure of motion and a bottom-up examination of corpus-based collocations. Representing the iconic sequence of serial motion events, the Schema helps to identify the crucial semantic components, both verb-internally and verb-externally, for a systematic investigation and classification of motion progression. It attempts to establish a link for lexical semantic studies of motion from various perspectives. By probing into the conceptual basis of proto-motion event, the study ultimately offers an iconically-motivated account of the possible ranges of verb meaning and the semantic-to-morphosyntactic sequencing of Mandarin motion verbs. © 2015 Journal of Chinese Linguistics.