Granularity, space and motion-framed location

The ways in which different languages encode motion events has been the topic of intense analysis and dissection in recent years, especially with regard to Talmy’s (1991, 2000) verb/satellite-framed typology. This chapter shifts course by moving away from motion event typologies and the encoding of canonical motion events. Instead, it shows that English speakers can conceptualise space in terms of motion events, even when they set out to encode locative events: This represents a second order function of motion-event conceptualisation. Such instances of motion-framed location, as lexicalised by the spatiotemporal prepositions ‘before’, ‘after’ and ‘following’, show that speakers can consider locative relationships in ways which differ markedly to the static perceptions of space behind the use of prototypical locative prepositions. This suggests that the salience of motion in everyday spatial perception colours the way in which locative relationships are encoded in English.