The Motion Event: Figure, Ground, Path and Manner
It is here that the concept of Motion Event is revealing. The components in the Motion Event are Figure, Ground, Motion, and optionally, Path and Manner. Figure is the salient moving or stationary object in a motion event (we center here on moving objects). In our previous example the children functions as Figure, while the beach serves as a point of reference or Ground with respect to which the Figure’s Path is conceptualized. Path refers to the one or more paths occupied by the Figure. In the example Path is fully expressed by the adverb-like particle down plus the preposition to. The lexical verb went expresses Motion.
In English the notion of Manner is easily incorporated together with Motion in the lexical verb, giving combinations such as ran down and walked down, which encode the different ways in which the movement is carried out. Talk +down or + through are now being used to mean ‘effect an action, giving instructions by radio or internet’, as in the following true instance of a passenger taking over and landing the plane after the pilot suffered a heart attack:
The passenger flew over the airport a couple of times and was then talked down by two flight instructors. (The Guardian)
In this way, the manner of movement is integrated into the verbal group without the need to add an adverbial phrase or clause of manner.
Both Path and Manner are important components of phrasal verbs. In many clauses which express motion in English, the particle expressing Path can stand alone without the preposition, and also without the rest of the Ground, as in The children went down/ walked down. When the information in the Ground can be inferred from the context, it is conventionally omitted, as is the bracketed part in 1 and 2. In 3 the whole of the Ground is retained (back on the shelf):
1 The bus stopped and we got on/got off (it, the bus).
2 We turned off (the main road) down a side-road.
3 Put all the books back on the shelf.
Non-literal uses of Path combinations may not admit this reduction of the Path component. Compare the literal use of into as in go into the house with the non-literal use as in go into (examine) the matter: They went into the house/They went in. They went into the matter/ *They went in.
While many adverb-particles have the same form as prepositions (get on/off the bus – get on/ off), the two categories are distinguished by certain features:
• A preposition is unstressed or lightly stressed; a particle receives heavy stress, even when they have the same form: compare come to class vs come TO (= recover consciousness).
• A preposition is followed by a nominal element (noun, pronoun, -ing clause), a particle does not need to be followed by anything cf. climb up the cliff vs climb up.
• The category of particle includes words that don’t function as simple prepositions: apart, together. Conversely, from and at are always prepositions, never particles; consequently, apart from and together with are complex prepositions.
English admits multiple expressions of Path, which include both particles and a preposition, as in:
Paul ran back down into the garage.
In this very ordinary English sentence, a great deal of information has been packed in: that the manner of motion was by running (ran); that Paul was returning to the place where he had been before (back); that his starting-point was higher than the garage, so that he had to descend (down), and that he went inside the garage, which was an enclosed place (into). Note that, in a semantic roles analysis, the preposition (in)to is a marker of Goal, the final location after the movement.
A further (optional) component of the Motion Event is Cause. This is incorporated into English verb roots such as blow and knock, while the particle encodes Path as usual:
The paper blew off the table. = The Figure (the paper) moves from the
Ground (the table) (due to the air blowing on it)
I blew the crumbs off the table. = The Figure (the crumbs) moves from the Ground
(the table) (due to my blowing on it)
He knocked the lamp over. = The Figure (the lamp) moves from a vertical
position (on an unspecified Ground) to a
horizontal one (due to his giving it a blow
with his hand)
The causer is not necessarily expressed, and when it is, the cause may be deliberate or accidental.
