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

verbs only in Norwegian. In Bulgarian the target verbs were totally absent, but the answers
contained verbs encoding path-shape (at a total of 43,75 % for that scene) or figure rotation
(12,5%). In English, both target verbs and path-shape verbs were used (the latter at 41,67 %
for that scene).
Two other walking scenes – that of a crocodile, and that of a long-legged bird – elicited
few target verbs. We assume that the relevant factor for these two scenes was the atypical
movements of the body or head that accompanied the gait. This triggered the use of more
specific manner of motion verbs (included in Fig. 2-4 as ‘other motion verbs’), like English
strut, waddle, Norwegian sprade (‘strut’), vagge (‘sway’), Bulgarian razhozdam se
(‘promenade’), kracha (‘pace’). In Norwegian also the factor of substrate showed to be
important in one scene – that of a chameleon walking along a tree branch: For this scene, the
most frequently occurring Norwegian verb was balansere (‘balance’) at 37,5 % . Another
interesting result was that in Norwegian the verb gå was used at 50% also for a scene showing
a beetle, which the other two languages predominantly described as an instance of crawling.
4.4.3 Crawling scenes
Generally, the three languages exhibited much more variation in the naming of crawling
scenes compared to the two types already discussed. All the expected crawl verbs were used
in the context of scenes of crawling. The image of a human crawling on all fours elicited
systematic crawl verb responses, in the case of Norwegian a 100% of all responses for that
scene yielded krabbe. In Bulgarian, both pulzja (crawl1) and lazja (crawl2) were used in the
naming of the images of humans crawling. However, across all scenes, as expected, the verb
pulzia (crawl1) had a much higher frequency than lazia, because of the underspecification for
[+ directed motion]. Also being more general (and underspecified) of the two, pulzia was the
only verb used to name scenes of limbless locomotion (snakes), and the one predominantly
used where the body of the agent has contact with the surface. Both verbs were almost equally
acceptable in scenes based in a clear limb cycle (with species that had limbs).
The two snake scenes showed the greatest variation and differences across the three
languages in terms of choice of verb. Only in Bulgarian, they were characterized
overwhelmingly by target verbs. In English the verb predominantly used for the snake moving
in a ‘default’ way (technically called ‘lateral undulation’) was slither, with clear emphasis on
the friction between the body and the substrate. In Norwegian the same scene and the scene of
the man crawling on his belly were predominantly characterized by verbs denoting the
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