NEŠTO O SPEKTRU ZNAČENJA KONSTRUKCIJA INTRANZITIVNOG KRETANJA U ENGLESKOM I SRPSKOM JEZIKU: POGLED KA PERIFERIJI
CONTRASTING INTRANSITIVE MOTION IN ENGLISH AND SERBIAN: TOWARDS THE PERIPHERY OF THE CONSTRUCTIONAL CONTINUUM

Summary/Abstract: Set within the theoretical account proposed by Levin (1993) and Goldberg (1995) the paper deals with intransitive motion constructions in English and in Serbian. Specifically, it deals with those instances of the construction where the head element of the structure is a verb of emission (either a verb of sound or light emission). The overal theoretical framework of the research is the combination of two theoretical models, namely the model ofprojectionist and the model of constructional semantics, while formal descriptions of the construction are offered within the semantic framework proposed by Zwarts ( 2005, 2006). Theoretical results presented in the paper are backed up by literary examples from original texts in English and Serbian, as well as by examples from various online language corpora, serving as empirical support to the theoretical conclusions of the reserach. The research positions the intransitive motion construction within a larger set of similar resultative constructions in a contrastive perspective, showing that resultatives are a relevant trans-language phenomenon. It is also shown that the full range of meanings exhibited by intransitive motion constructons belongs to a semantic continuum which depends on identical formal and structural restrictions in all of its instances and that this range of meanings is simlarly manifested in both languages under inspection.

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