The Conceptual Motivation of Fictive Motion

Beginning with Talmy’s work in the late 1970’s and early1980’s, cognitive linguists have argued that fictive motion—roughly, mentally simulated motion along a path or linear configuration—motivates the use and structure of a class of figurative uses of motion verbs. On this view, a motion verb describes an inherently static scene, as in The road runs along the coast or A trail goes through the desert, but evokes the simulation of “movement” or “scanning” along a trajectory through imagined space. The imagery is believed to be subjective in that the conceptualizer enacts the movement or scanning, and its purpose is believed to be functional— allegedly, simulating motion allows the language user to infer or convey information about the physical layout of a scene, especially the configuration and position of the path or trajectory (e.g., road). The goal of this chapter is to examine the linguistic behavior of fictive motion constructions (e.g., The road runs along the coast), and to discuss whether simulated motion and scanning motivates the use and comprehension of fictive motion constructions. Central to the discussion is relevant work from psychology, * Acknowledgments: Many thanks to Herb Clark, Dan Schwartz, and Leonard Talmy for many enlightening discussions, and to Ravid Aisenmann, Ben Bergen, Frank Brisard, Maria Cristobol, and Paul Maglio, for insightful comments on early drafts. Thanks also goes to Michel Achard, Adrian Bangerter, Alex Cozzi, and Pernilla Quarfordt for non-English linguistic examples, and to my research assistants Nicole Albert, Jeremy Elman, Kat Firme, Sydney Gould, Krysta Hays, and John Nolan, for helping with the experiments discussed in this paper. A special thanks is extended to Günter Radden, co-editor of the volume, who provided many helpful suggestions.