In press: In: Dimitrova-Vulchanova, M - NTNU

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Fig. 4 Overall frequencies of the target verbs in Bulgarian 15,95 14,87 11,64 9,48 9,91 8,84 10,34 4,53 5,60 5,17 1,51 0,86 1,29 vurvja hodja ticham bjagam pulzja lazja katerja se slizam general motion more specific biological motion intrinsic motion tandem motion nonmotion The histograms in Fig. 2-4 show the scoring of lexical items across all output in target scenes for each language. As expected, the cumulative percentage of target verbs across all scenes considerably exceeds the percentage of both general (non basic-level) motion verbs as well as the percentage of other (more specific) gait or path-shape verbs. Thus, there is a close match across the three languages with a total of 68,97% of target verbs for English, 73,49% for Norwegian and 68,75% for Bulgarian. A possible confound concerning this result is that basic level motion verbs are generally phonologically shorter than the more concrete (manner) verbs (cf. e.g., walk vs. meander), and subjects might have resorted to these responses for brevity. However, this is counterevidenced by our data. As a matter of fact, many responses did contain rather detailed descriptions, including prepositional phrases, manner phrases etc. An interesting observation concerns the use of general motion verbs in Norwegian at a mere 0,43%. Most likely, this result confirms our prediction that gå which covers both go and walk pre-empts the need to use other lexical items above the basic-level category. In addition, in responses for all three languages we find verbs describing not the type of motion in the scene, but rather its purpose (e.g. play, plan/intend to take a bath). This finding is highly coherent with ideas put forward in Tomasello (2001) and Zacks & Tversky (2004) that human categorization is highly susceptible to the teleology of events, and that humans attend from very early on to agents’ intentions and goals. Furthermore, recent research in infant cognition based in eye-tracking 20
has demonstrated that infants as young as 12 months can predict other people’s action goals (cf. Falck-Ytter, Gredebäck & von Hofsten 2006). The category of “other motion verbs” in the histograms in figures 2, 3 and 4 include non-target motion verbs encoding a more specific gait pattern (e.g., strut, step, lollop) or verbs encoding path-shape, such as circle, Bulgarian obikaljam (go round) or verbs denoting tandem motion (e.g., chase) and the like. 4.4.1 Running scenes The use of running verbs in all three languages and across all 29 scenes was limited only to 9 out of the 29 target scenes, which were defined as running scenes based on the pre-screen results. As predicted, the use of target verbs in Bulgarian was divided between the two target verbs, while English and Norwegian (with the exception of one case mentioned below) used only one verb. The frequency of each Bulgarian verb alone was much smaller, compared to that of the single main running verb in English or Norwegian, but the combined frequency of the two verbs is similar to that of the single verbs in the other two languages. Both Bulgarian run-verbs appear in the description of each running scene, but there is a preference for ticham (run1) over bjagam (run2). The only scene that stands apart from this pattern is the one of a chimpanzee disappearing rapidly into a wood, moving away from the camera. Most likely, in this scene, subjects have focused on the ‘directed motion’ feature of the scene, with the chimpanzee appearing as running away from danger. Also, Bulgarian showed a clear difference from English and Norwegian in the naming of the scene of a dog running round a tree. In this case Bulgarian subjects used also verbs encoding path-shape (e.g. obikaljam –‘go round’), or figure rotation (vurtja se – ‘spin around’) at 18,75%, in addition to (basic-level) biological motion verbs at 47,5%. In English, run is the main verb used for all running scenes in 83,33% of the cases. Although a variety of other verbs of running were used in the naming of these scenes, their frequency in comparison with run was negligible (8,33%). In Norwegian, løpe was the main verb used to describe running scenes. Two of the participants used consistently another verb (springe) instead of løpe, stating that the verb løpe did not exist in their dialect of Norwegian. Some of the other participants reported hesitation between løpe and springe, but used løpe in the end. 9 This shows that springe and løpe may be viewed as a synonymous pair, similar to the Bulgarian pairs of motion verbs in this study, however with the distinction found not in the lexicon of the language, but rather in 9 This was confirmed in a brief interview after the experiment. 21
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Page 43 and 44: 13 Long-legged bird walking 14 Croc
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In press: In: Dimitrova-Vulchanova, M - NTNU

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