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ABSTRACT
Extracting expressions for the description of light from a very large corpus of English reveals systematic patterns of fictive motion, e.g., the conceptualization of light as a moving fluid. An analysis of these patterns including frequency data allows us to build up a detailed picture of the conceptualizations of radiation paths conventionally used and elaborated on creatively by English speakers. This empirical study confirms the general accuracy and fruitfulness of Talmy's (2000) description of fictive radiation paths, at the same time elaborating it in specifics and providing avenues for cross-linguistic comparison of such conceptualizations that include degree of entrenchment. It is shown that fictive conceptualizations of light in English relate systematically but partially to perception as well as to conceptualizations of force and agentivity. The results therefore lend strong support to Talmy's "overlapping systems" model of human cognition.
When it's over, so they say,
It'll rain a sunny day,
I know,
Shinin' down like water.
-Have You Ever Seen the Rain,
Creedence Clearwater Revival
1. Introduction
Fictive motion is a phenomenon in which the language of motion is used to describe visual scenes that have no perceptible motion in them (Talmy 2000). Some examples are:
1. The arms of the stony hills ran down to the sea. (W. Macken)
2. The plains stretched out ahead of them, gently rolling, endless. (M. Baker, Lakhota Love Song)
3. A stream of pencil-thin rays of light poured down* 1
The sense of motion evoked for such static scenes is merely imagined; it is a conception that is not present in any perception of the described scene, in vision or in any other modality. Hence the term 'fictive'. Intuitively, the choice of a fictive motion expression instead of a static description adds a sense of dynamicity to the conceptualization of the static scene.
Fictive motion has been analyzed by Leonard Talmy in various seminal works, most comprehensively Talmy (2000), which presents an extensive cognitive typology of the phenomenon based on the examination and analysis of types of linguistic expressions attested (and unattested) in human languages.2 This typology is part of a broad and in-depth research program exploring the sets of overlaps and disjunctions between fundamental domains of human cognitive experience, including language, perception, attention, social relations, and...