Reviewed by Mitchell R. Ferris, Northeastern Illinois University

The classification of languages according to how motion events are encoded is controversial. Leonard Talmy, who regards the semantic component of path as the core of a motion event, proposes a two-way typology based on whether the language habitually encodes path information in the main verb (i.e. a verb-framed language) or in a subordinate element (i.e. a satellite-framed language). Dan Slobin suggests a third type (i.e. an equipollently-framed language), to account for languages such as Mandarin Chinese and Thai, which characteristically use serial verb constructions to encode both manner of motion and path.

In this book, Liang Chen explores descriptions of motion events in Mandarin—in spoken discourse by children and adults and in written compositions—to validate Slobin’s classification of Chinese as an equipollently-framed language.

In Ch. 1 (1–12), C outlines the theoretical framework for Talmy’s typology as well as Slobin’s modifications. C describes what he would expect to find in analyzing Chinese narrative discourse, if Chinese were to fit one of Talmy’s two language types. He also mentions Slobin’s thinking for speaking hypothesis (which calls to mind the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis), in which descriptions of events are colored at least partly by the relative richness or paucity of the language components available to the speaker.

In Ch. 2 (13–40), C describes how motion events are expressed in Chinese and shows how Mandarin encodes the semantic components of motion. Most notably, he illustrates the use of two—and sometimes three—verbs used in serial constructions to describe motion events.

As a research base, C uses the corpus of frog stories (i.e. narratives prompted by the wordless picture books by Mercer Mayer) previously collected across several languages. To this base, he adds a set of Mandarin narratives produced by adults and children of varying ages. His analysis and comparisons with other languages are described in Ch. 3 (41–76). Analysis of motion events in written discourse (i.e. nine Chinese novels) is discussed in Ch. 4 (77–93).

C found that Mandarin (both spoken and written) patterns with satellite-framed languages with respect to the richness of motion lexis—particularly manner-of-motion verbs—and the use of multiple action clauses. However, it patterns with verb-framed languages with regard to descriptions of ground and setting. C’s conclusion is that Mandarin is legitimately classified as an equipollently-framed language.

In Ch. 5 (94–114), C examines the frog stories across the different age groups to determine if the data validate either the universal hypothesis or the language-specific hypothesis of first-language acquisition. He finds support for both hypotheses in his analysis. Ch. 6 (115–17) reprises C’s conclusions reported in Chs. 3–5.

C’s book offers a highly readable description of motion event typology, shows clearly how Mandarin expresses motion events, and adds to the corpus of crosslinguistic data in this area of research. It is recommended for those interested in first-language acquisition and in the relationship between language structure and language use.