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‘MOTION’ AND ‘MOTION VERBS’ IN IGBO: A CROSS- DIALECTAL EXPLORATION AND DOCUMENTATION BY ILECHUKWU, CHINASA DORATHY 1. BRIEF BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Motion verbs have not been a major research topic in Igbo language studies, neither has there been any effort to examine the cross-dialectal dimensions of this group of verbs. To the best of my knowledge, my MA thesis was like the first incursion into it. This is the main motivation for my wanting to delve more into it. Moreover, a couple of ideas were conceived in the course of the MA research which point to the fact that there is room for more research in the area.In addition, the amount of findings that resulted from the first research and the positive remarks it attracted are additional motivating factors for the proposed research. 2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES This research shall investigate various Igbo dialects with a view to documenting the motion verbs that exist in them, examining their lexicalization patterns using Talmy’s (1985, 2000) framework, and comparing them with each other so as to establish the dimensions of the coding of motion in the Igbo language. The project shall also lay the foundation for further works in the area of Igbo lexicology and lexicography. 3. METHODOLOGY The approach here is in three parts. First, is a brief review of the literature on the key concepts, followed by a review of the framework that will be adopted in the proposed research.The third is the description of the method through which the data for the proposed research shall be collected. In layman’s terms, motion refers to ‘movement’. An average English language dictionary like the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines it both as ‘the act or process of moving’ or ‘the way something moves’ and also ‘to make a movement, usually with the hands or the head to show somebody what you want them to do’. In the natural sciences, especially in physics, motion according to Nave (2014) refers to the change in position of an object with respect to time and it is described in terms of displacement (x), time (t), velocity (v) and acceleration (a). He lists types of motion to include Periodic motion, Linear motion, Reciprocal motion, Random motion, Brownian motion, Circular motion, Rotary motion, Curvilinear motion, Rotational motion, Rolling motion, Oscillation and Combination or Simultaneous motion. The proposed research shall also examine these types of motion in order to establish the ones that are expressed in the Igbo language;this is an area the first research did not cover. Motion verbs on the other hand refer to those lexical itemsof a language that denote movement. According to Pablo and Gutiérrez (2001), they are words which describe the situation in which an object moves with regard to a reference point, following a trajectory. Harley (2002) describes them as those verbs that involve motion or change of position as a whole,whilethey are also referred to as words that can describe motion through space(O’ Grady and Archibald 2008:203). However, Schalley (2002), points out that for a verb to qualify as a motion verb, there has to be a movement of the whole body.It can either be a movement along a path as in walking or movement at a location as in jumping.Levin (1993) identifies and classifies the English motion verbs comprehensively into seven types which 1 include verbs of inherently directed motion, leave verbs, manner of motion verbs, verbs of motion using a vehicle, waltz verbs, chase verbs and accompany verbs with some of them having subclasses. With regard to the Igbo language, Ụwalaka (1988) identifies and classifies some Igbo motion verbs into two main groups which are concrete motion verbs and abstract motion verbs with concrete motion verbs having direction of motion verbs and manner of motion verbs as its subclasses. Prezi (2012) also examines some Igbo motion verbs and classifies them based on three criteria which are morphological, tonal and semantic. The subclasses under the morphological criterion include: Simple motion verbs, Compound motion verbs and Complex motion verbs. Those under the tonal criterion are High tone motion verbs and Low tone motion verbs, while those under the semantic criterion are Path of motion verbs, Manner of motion verbs and Manner-path motion verbs. These two works on the Igbo motion verbs were a strong basis for my MA thesis which focused on identifying and morphologically classifying the Igbo motion verbs and examining their lexicalization patterns. With regard to the concept of lexicalization (which is a major concept in the proposed research), it is viewed and used in the diachronic and synchronic senses. Authors that use it in the diachronic sense include Bauer (1983), Antilla (1989), Lewandowski (1992), Lessau (1994), Bussmann (1996), Wischer (2000), Blank (2001), Lehmann (2002), Plag (2003) and Brinton and Traugott (2005). Their views can be summarized in five ways. First, lexicalization is the process by which new linguistic entities, whether simple or complex, become conventionalized on the level of the lexicon, or when a lexical item receives a permanent listing in the mental lexicon and can be recalled from there for use. The second view is that it belongs to the ordinary processes of word formation like compounding, blending, conversion, derivation and so on, all of which create new lexemes in a language. The third view is that it is the unification of a syntactic phrase into a single word or the process whereby monomorphemic words are formed from more complex constructions. For the fourth view, it is a process that moves a compound away from being pragmatically interpretable to being indivisible lemmas which might not be possible to be analyzed on the level of structural representation. This view is also seen as idiomatization which occurs when the original meanings can no longer be deduced from the individual elements of a lexical item.The fifth and final view, is when a linguistic form falls outside the productive rules of grammar by taking a form which it could not have if it had arisen by the application of productive rules or when complex forms must (for semantic, morphological or phonological reasons) be listed separately rather than generated by a productive set of rules. On the other hand, the authors that have used lexicalization in the synchronic sense areLyons (1968), Rappaport and Levin (1998), Talmy (1985, 2000) and O’ Grady and Archibald (2008).They view the term as the coding of conceptual categories, the process whereby concepts are encoded in the words of a language or the fusion of meaning components into a single lexical form.In this synchronic sense, lexicalization is used interchangeably with ‘conflation’. Talmy (1985, 2000), whose framework shall be adopted in the proposed research, points out that lexicalization is a process commonly found in motion verbs of languages.He describes the ways in which this process occurs in the motion verbs of languages and refers to these ways as the lexicalization patterns of motion verbs.According to him, various semantic elements are conflated in the motion verbs of various languages. Such elements include; ‘the figure’ which is the salient moving entity, ‘the ground’ which is the reference frame against which the figure moves, ‘the path’ which is the course followed by the figure, ‘motion’ which is the situation denoting movement and soon. It is the various patterns in which these semantic elements conflate that make up his framework. Talmy’s (1985, 2000) framework positseight (8) patterns in which concepts conflate in the verbs of motion as well as three (3) systems in which these conflation patterns may occur in languages in the course of expressing motion events. The patterns in which concepts conflate in motion verbs include the 2 following: (1)Motion + Manner where the concept of motion and the style in which the motion takes place are encoded in a verb. (2)Motion + Cause where the concept of motion and the cause of that motion are encoded in a verb. (3) Motion + Path where the concept of motion and the direction in which the motion takes place are encoded in a verb. (4) Motion + Figure where the concept of motion and the particular moving entity are encoded in a verb.(5) Motion + Ground where the concept of motion and the ground object or the reference frame on which the motion occurs are encoded in a verb. (6) Motion + Two semantic components where the concepts of motion as well as two semantic elements are encoded in averb. (7)Motion + No further semantic component where the concept of motion alone is expressed by a verb without the conflation of any other semantic element. (8) Motion + A minimally differentiated semantic component where the concept of motion conflates with any other element that has not already been mentioned above; such elements may be the numerousity of the figure that moves or the speed at which the movement takes place. According to Talmy, the systems in which these conflation patterns may occur in languages in the course of expressing motion events include; (1) Split system of conflation which is when a language characteristically employs one type of conflation for one type of motion event and employs a different conflation type for another motion event type. (2) Parallel system of conflation which refers to when a language uses different conflation types for different types of motion event with a roughly comparable colloquiality. (3) Intermixed system of conflation which occurs when a language exhibits no consistent pattern of conflation for some type of motion event, but rather intermixes different forms of conflation for the various members of that motion event type. The framework above has been adopted in quite a number of researches. While some of these researches were based on identifying the motion verbs of languages alongside establishing their lexicalization patterns, others were based on exploring other issues relating to the already established lexicalization patterns. The researches that were based on identifying the motion verbs of languages and establishing their lexicalization patterns include Schaefer (1985), Narasimhan (1998), Weschler (2004), Dillon (2004) and Adjei (2013) who investigated Tswana, Hindi, Korean, Nigerian Pidgin English and Ewe language respectively, just to mention a few. Other researches that were based on issues relating to the already established lexicalization patterns of languages include Gennari, Sloman, Malt and Fitch (2002) who investigated English and Spanish to establish whether their different lexicalization patterns of motion events predict how speakers of these languages perform in non-linguistic tasks.Also, Meinschaefer and Kelling (2004) studied French and English to establish how the systematic crosslinguistic variations in terms of lexicalization patterns can be related to a language production model in such a way as to predict the syntax of their motion verbs. No research however has been carried out using this framework on the Igbo language apart from my incursion into it in my MA thesis. There I focused on identifying and morphologically classifying the motion verbs of standard Igbo, establishing their lexicalization patterns as well as exploring the relationship between the lexicalization patterns and the Igbo serial verb construction. The proposed research goes further at the theoretical level to investigate and establish the additional configurational pattern of the Igbo language as either verbframed or satellite framed. The data for this proposed research shall be collected from chosen dialects of all the Igbo speaking states which are Abia, Anambra, Delta,Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo and Rivers using a questionnaire structured from Levin’s (1993) list of English motion verbsin addition to the Igbo motion verbs extracted from Igbo dictionaries. Also, oral interviews shall be recorded for the documentation of sentences involving the use of the identified motion verbs. 3 4. EXPECTED OUTCOMES The following are the expected results from the project: i. The establishment of a general cross-dialectal pattern of lexicalization in Igbo. ii. Based on the established lexicalization patterns, the categorization of Igbo as a verb-framed or satellite-framed language. iii. A cross-dialectal documentation of Igbo motion verbs in the form of a dictionary of motion verbs in Igbo. 5. REFERENCES Adjei, Francisca. 2013. Learning to express motion events in Ewe. An unpublished Ph.D dissertation. Anttila, Raimo. 1989. Historical and comparative linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishers. Bauer, Laurie. 1983. English word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blank, Adreas. 2001. Pathways of lexicalization. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehardkönig, Wulf Oesterreicher& Wolfgang Raible (eds), Language Typology andUniversal, Vol. 2, 1596-1608. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Brinton, Laurel & Elizabeth Traugott. 2005. Lexicalization and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bussmann, Hadumod. 1996. Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics. London and New York: Routledge. Dillon, Caitlin. 2004. Verbs of motion in Nigerian Pidgin English: Manner, Direction and Serial VerbConstructions. https://www.indiana.edu/~iulcwp/…/45 (7 January, 2015) Gennari, Silvia, Steven Sloman, Barbara Malt & Tecumseh Fitch. 2002. Motion events in language and cognition. Cognition 83, 47-49. Harley, Heidi. 2002. Motion Verbs & Manner. http://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-899.html (18 September, 2014). Lehmann, Christian. 2002. New reflections on grammaticalization and lexicalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publisher. Lessau, Donald. 1994. A Dictionary of Grammaticalization, Vol 3. Bochum: Universitatsverlag Brockmeyer. Levin, Beth.1993. English verb classes and alternations.University of Chicago Press. Lewandowski, Theodor. 1992. Dictionary of Linguistics. Madrid: Catedra. Lyons, John. 1968. Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meinschaefer, Judith & Carmen Kelling. 2004. How lexicalization patterns influence syntax: Motion 4 Verbs in French and English. In Mary Andronis, Erin Debenport, Anne Pycha& Keiko Yoshimura (eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 38(1).437-452. Nave, Rod. 2014. Description of motion: Hyperphysics. gsu.edu/hbase/mot.html. (26 June, 2015) Narasimhan, Bhuvana. 1998. The Encoding of complex Events in Hindi and English. PhD dissertation, Boston University. O’Grady, William & John Archibald. 2008. Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction. Canada: Pearson Education. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 8thedn. 2010. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pablo, Juan &Mora Gutiérrez. 2001. Directed Motion in English and Spanish. http://elies.rediris.es/elies11. (18 September, 2014). Plag, Ingo. 2003. Word-Formation in English. Cambridge. CambridgeUniversity Press. Prezi, Grace O. 2012. Motion verbs in Igbo. Paper presented at the Igbo Language symposium 4, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, 26th to 27th November 2012. Rappaport, Hovav& Beth Levin. 1998. Building verb meanings. In Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder (eds), The Projection of Arguments: Lexical and compositional factors. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Schaefer, Ronald. 1985. Motion in Tswana and its Characteristic Lexicalization, Studies in African linguistics. 16, 56-87. http://elanguage.net/journals/sal/article/…/848. (18 September, 2014). Schalley, Andrea.2002.Motion verbs &Manner.http://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-899.html (18 September, 2014). Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In Timothy Shopen (ed), Language Typology and syntactic description vol 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. MIT Press. Ụwalaka, Mary Ann. 1988. The Igbo verb: A Semantico- Syntactic Analysis. Wien: Afro-Pub. Wechsler, Stephen. 2004. Formal syntax, Word meaning and Second Language Teaching. Austin: University of Texas. Wischer, Ilse. 2000. Grammaticalization versus Lexicalization: ‘Methinks’ there is some confusion. InOlga Fischer, AnetteRosenbach& Dieter Stein, Pathways of Change: Grammaticalization in English, 355-370. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 5