* AQUA-motion *
Lexical typology of predicates
denoting motion in a liquid medium

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Publications

The main publication that appeared after five years of working on the project (2002—2006) is the collective volume:

Глаголы движения в воде: лексическая типология / Ред. Т. А. Майсак, Е. В. Рахилина. — М.: Издательство «Индрик», 2007. — 752 с.

Glagoly dvizhenija v vode: Leksicheskaja tipologija [Verbs of aqua-motion: lexical typology] / Ed. by Timur Maisak & Ekaterina Rakhilina. — Moscow: Indrik, 2007. — 752 pp.

Most papers of the book are in Russian. The list of contents and all papers are available in PDF format on this page (in Russian). English summary of this book is provided here. You can also download the English summary and those papers of the volume that are in English:

Lexical conflation patterns in Dutch aquamotion verbs (by Dagmar Divjak & Maarten Lemmens) [PDF]

Some aspects of the Hebrew verb saxah 'swim' (by Maya Arad) [PDF]

Summary [PDF]

Apart from this, main results of the project are summarized in the following papers:

Koptjevskaja-Tamm M., Divjak D. & Rakhilina E. Aquamotion verbs in Slavic and Germanic: A case study in lexical typology // Victoria Hasko & Renee Perelmutter (eds.) New Approaches to Slavic Verbs of Motion. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2010. Pp. 315–341.

The paper contrasts the verbs plyt’/plavat’ in Russian and plynac/plywac in Polish with their correspondences in Dutch, English and Swedish against a broader typological background. The three Germanic languages use several verbs for what is covered by a pair of derivationally related verbs in each of the two Slavic languages. The Germanic languages lexicalize the activity/passivity of motion, but vary considerably as to how they carve up the conceptual space. Russian and Polish, on the other hand, use plavat’/plyt’ independently of the activity/passivity of motion and focus on the uni- or non-unidirectionality of the motion. Nonetheless, it appears that the different lexicalizations in the Swedish-English-Dutch systems of aquamotion verbs are reflected in constructional differences in the Russian-Polish systems.

Lander Y., Maisak T. & Rakhilina E. Domains of aqua-motion: a case study in lexical typology // Emile van der Zee & Mila Vulchanova (eds.) Motion Encoding in Language and Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010 (to appear) [PDF]

This paper elaborates on an approach to the cross-linguistical comparison of lexical (sub)systems based on distinguishing between typologically valid semantic domains. We illustrate this approach exploring the semantic field of motion / being in a liquid medium (aqua-motion), within which three general conceptual domains (SWIMMING, SAILING and FLOATING) are differentiated. On the basis of this tripartition, we suggest a typology of aqua-motion systems which distinguishes between rich, poor and ‘middle’ systems of aqua-motion expressions depending on what contrasts a given language displays within this semantic field.

Related lexico-typological projects of other international teams include:

Core vocabulary in a typological perspective: semantic shifts and form/meaning correlations (TypVoc)
http://www.ling.su.se/staff/juvonen/INTAShomepage/TYPVOCl

Motion encoding in language: A theoretical and experimental investigation of lexical semantic structures and constructions
http://www.hf.ntnu.no/motionencodingfiles/