A nanosyntactic approach to the parameterization of directed motion constructions in English, Korean, and Russian

The aim of this paper is to propose a typology of how languages differ in packaging specific semantic elements into the verb and the goal complement in directed motion expressions. We build on the nanosyntactic approach to crosslinguistic variation in directed motion constructions, as proposed by Son and Svenonius (2008),and provide supporting experimental data. Three language types are distinguished based on the lexicalization patterns of the semantic elements PathGOAL and Dir, exemplified by Korean, Russian, and English. Our experimental study reveals a strong association between the presence of an overt goal and the use of the deictic motion verb ka-tain Korean, which we attribute to the encoding of PathGOAL in ka-ta. In contrast, no such correlation was observed in English and Russian, in which PathGOAL is not lexicalized by verbs. English and Russian differ in that English manner-of-motion verbs do not encode Dir, while Russian manner-of-motion verbs distinguish unidirectional and multidirectional motions through verbal stem variation. This difference results in the distinctive use of unidirectional verbs in Russian for unidirectional motion events both with and without overt goals, whereas in English, there are no specific patterns related to directionality.