2013. Submitted manuscript under review

Figurative and non-figurative motion in the expression of result in English[1]

Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (University of La Rioja)

Alba Luzondo Oyón (University of La Rioja)

Abstract

This articleinvestigates the role played by motion in the conceptualization of result in the English resultative and caused-motion constructions. We argue that there is a strong preference for the figurative use of caused motion to express a state change when the affected entity experiences a complete transformation. However, if the affected entity acquires a new property but retains its essence, an adjectival phrase is preferred. Another category encompasses figuratively exploited resultatives that formally employ the caused-motion construction, but semantically do not codify the same kind of change. Thisarticlealso discusses the motivating role of the metaphor A CHANGE OF STATE IS A CHANGE OF LOCATION to express result and proposes the additional activity of other high-level metaphors and metonymies.

Key words: caused-motion construction, metaphor, metonymy, motion, result, resultative construction.

1. Introduction

This articleanalyzes the family of resultative constructions in English (cf. Goldberg and Jackendoff 2004), paying special attention to thosemembers of the family that denote result through figurative and non-figurative motion.[2]

English can express, among others, the following kinds of resulting events:

a. Prototypical, non-figurative changes of state where the verbal object is also the object of change (e.g. The blacksmith hammered the metal flat).

  1. Changes of state where the change of state holds true of the clausal subject through a fake reflexive object (e.g. They can’t drink themselves silly (COCA, 2004)).
  2. Changes of state expressed in terms of figurative motion (e.g. The plane broke into three pieces (COCA, 2006); Miners drank themselves into oblivion (COCA, 1996)).
  3. Prototypical, non-figurative changes of location (e.g. A bull jumped over the fence (COCA, 1999)).
  4. Self-instigated changes of location figuratively expressed as the result of caused motion (e.g. They laughed me out of the studio (COCA, 1993)).
  5. Self-instigated changes of location re-construed as externally caused events (e.g. Sheena walked me to the library (COCA, 1994)).

As is clear from the examples given in brackets above, English can codify changes of state either in the form of an Adjectival Phrase (AP) (cf. types (a)-(b)) or through a Prepositional Phrase (PP) expressing figurative motion (cf. type (c)). Both cases are two broad variants of the resultative construction (RC), which can be further classified into more specific subcategories. By contrast, the result component in types (d)-(f) involves a self-instigated or externally induced change of location, but no change of state. Thus, the remaining sentence types are instantiations of the caused-motion construction (CMC), expect for (d) which is a case of the intransitive motion construction. In this article, we argue that these realizations are motivated by specific cognitive constraints.

Configurations like (a)-(f) above have been studied by Goldberg (1995), Boas (2003, 2008, 2011), Goldberg and Jackendoff (2004), Iwata (2006), Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal (2008, 2011), Peña (2009), and Torre (2012), among other linguists that abide by the constructionist approach to linguistic explanation.[3] The present proposal also adheres to the constructional view of language according to which a construction is a form-meaning/function pairing that holds an empirically demonstrable psychologically real status (Bencini and Goldberg 2000, pp. 649–650; Eddington and Ruiz de Mendoza 2010).[4] In this view, in the oft-quoted sentence The blacksmith hammered the metal flat, the resultative ingredient (flat) does not arise from the argument-structure characterization of the verb hammer (which has two arguments, one acting as the agent and another as the object) but from a higher-level construct, i.e. the RC, with which the verb hammer is compatible. Recognizing the existence of this construction, which is symbolized by Goldberg (1995) as X CAUSES Y TO BECOME Z, allows the analyst to avoid the problem of positing an extra resultative sense for the verb in question. One clear advantage of postulating fewer verb senses is that it provides the linguistic account with a greater degree of generalization.[5] In this perspective, the analyst’s task is to find the conditions under which verbs can be incorporated into a given construction. For example, the analyst may notice that contact-by-impact verbs like hammer, strike, and slap can be used in a resultative pattern (e.g. She really wanted to slap some sense into her head (COCA, 2011)), while transitive verbs that do not involve impact on an object, such as climb, touch, and own,cannot be utilized in the same way. A plausible reason behind this observation can easily follow: climb, touch, own, and the like, denote actions that have no relevant physical effect on their objects. In fact, the objects of these transitive verbs only denote the scope of development of the verbal action.

Consider now the case of the following transitive use of the naturally intransitive verb sneeze: She sneezed the napkin off the table. According to Goldberg (1995), it would be unrealistic to assume an extra caused-motion sense for the verb sneeze. It is simpler to postulate the possibility of fusing this verb with the CMC (symbolized as X CAUSES Y TO MOVE Z) given the right interpretive circumstances. For the example above, the forcible expulsion of air from the nose may reasonably cause a light paper object to move from one location to another. However, the fact that we can use the verb transitively in the CMC does not mean that sneeze can be transitivized in other contexts. Thus, while a caused-motion verb can be used transitively outside the CMC, as in He kicked the ball (cf. He kicked the ball into the net), this is not the case with sneeze: *He sneezed the napkin. This is so because there is no way in which the napkin can be seen as an effectual object (i.e. an object that experiences an action in terms of direct physical impact or affectedness) of the verb sneeze (cf. He tore the napkin in half, where the napkin is directly affected).

In this context, we provide the reader with a qualitative analysis of the use of motion events to express result as illustrated byexamples (c)–(f) above. In order to endow our account with explanatory adequacy (cf. Dik 1997, pp. 12–13), two abstract cognitive operations, which we shall call high-level metaphor and high-level metonymy (cf. section 4), are shown to be vital motivating and licensing factors in the construal of change. The high-level metaphor A CHANGE OF STATE IS A CHANGE OF LOCATION (cf. Ruiz de Mendoza and Pérez 2011) will be of special interest for our purposes here, although we will also address other high-level mechanisms underlying the constructions under scrutiny. Finally, in compliance with the usage-based approach to linguistic analysis (cf. Gonzálvez-García and Butler 2006, pp. 42–45), the examples treated in this articlehave been extracted from systematic searches within the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and Google Books: American English Corpus (GBAC).[6]

The remainder of this articleis structured as follows. Section 2 approaches the intricacies of the RC, in particular those related to motion, pointing out several differences among the various realizations under examination. Despite the manifest variable behavior of RCs, we argue in favor of the existence of a general law that, to a large extent, motivates the distribution of resultative phrases. Section 3 revisits the connection between the RC and the CMC, which Goldberg (1995) claims to be a case of metaphorical extension. Continuing with the issue of motivation, section 4 is entirely devoted to the analysis of examples involving motion, paying especial attention to high-level metaphor and high-level metonymy as two of the crucial factors that play a role in either licensing or constraining lexical-constructional integration between various verbal predicates and the RC and CMC. Section 5 briefly summarizes the main conclusions emerging from our discussion.

2. A preliminary assessment of the constructions under analysis

Let us first focus our attention on the transitive resultative patterns illustrated in (1)–(2) below. More specifically, these can be described as goal-oriented transitivity patterns that designate the outcome of a change of state (with or without a motion ingredient) undergone by the patient or affected object:

(1)Mabel wiped the table clean (COCA, 2003).

(2)Men danced themselves into a frenzy (GBAC, 2008).

As briefly mentioned in the introduction, the notation employed here is the following. Examples such as They laughed themselves silly (COCA, 2000), He hammered the metal flat,etc. are labeled AP RCs, irrespective of whether they are exploited figuratively, as in the case of ‘laugh oneself silly’, or non-figuratively, as in ‘hammer the metal flat’. Examples like He broke the vase to pieces, They danced themselves into a frenzy, etc., where the change of state is invariably perceived as a metaphorical change of location, are termed PP resultatives. The reader may note that the PP in this variant of the RC is but a figurative use of the motion PP of canonical (caused) motion constructions (e.g. Jimmy pushed the boat into the water (COCA, 1999)). Both the AP and PP versions of the RC will collectively be referred to herein as ‘resultatives’ since both designate the end-point of a change of state (cf. Goldberg 1995, p. 181, for a similar view). PP resultatives will in turn be distinguished from the CMC, which involves the actual or prospective change of location by an instigator of motion in such a way that an entity moves along a path (cf. Goldberg 1995, p. 152). As was the case with AP resultatives, the CMC may be figuratively exploited, as in They laughed the actor off the stage, which conveys self-instigated motion as a result of psychological impact being metaphorically understood in terms of physical impact, or they may refer to literal, externally caused changes of location (e.g. He kicked the ball into the net) (Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal 2007, 2008; Ruiz de Mendoza and Luzondo 2012).

Semantically, PP resultatives and the CMC differ in that whereas in the former the patient undergoes a change of state (expressed through figurative motion), in the latter, the result element is that of a change of location. Despite slight formal and semantic divergences, all these instantiations form part of a broader family, i.e. the family of the resultative, first studied by Goldberg and Jackendoff (2004) (cf. Boas 2005 for a critical revision).[7]

Terminological issues aside, even though Saurenbach (2008, p. 227) is “hesitant to give resultative and directional phrases a unified conceptual treatment”, we believe that from the point of view of the semantics of the RC, a unified approach in which the resultative element can take the form of both an AP and a PP is desirable. In addition, authors like Boas (2008, p. 128) assume that, especially in the case of RCs, it is difficult, if not almost “impossible, to predict a verb’s distribution of arguments based on a construction’s capability of contributing arguments to the semantics of a verb.” In this view, verbal predicates tend to exhibit idiosyncratic behavior when incorporated into the resultative syntactic frame, often being reluctant to subtle lexical or syntactic changes, as shown in (3):

(3)a. He drank himself {into a coma/sick/?ill/?comatose/?into sickness}.

b. He hammered the metal {flat/into a flat sheet/?to flatness /*long/*tubular}.

However, rather than being an arbitrary phenomenon, at the end of this section we argue that the selection of an AP or a PP in RCs is motivated by general tendencies or principles.

The reader will concur on the fact that, depending on factors such as the nature of the affected object, the type of activity carried out by the subject referent, etc., entities can undergo various kinds of transformations, thus resulting in specific changes of state. We may thus expect language to reflect an array of (conceptually akin) syntactic patterns capturing such diversity. By way of illustration, consider the following sentences:

(4)a. The lake froze solid.

b. Richard drank himself silly (COCA, 2010).

c. Richard ate himself sick (COCA, 2000).

d. Erin talked herself hoarse (COCA, 2012).

e. The blacksmith hammered the metal flat.

f. The new owners painted the front door red (COCA, 1996).

In these sentences, an (explicit or implicit) agent acts on a patient that, as a result of the activity denoted by the verb, changes its original state by acquiring a new property: in (4a) all or at least a significant part of the water in the lake is now solid owing to the effect of low temperatures; in (4b) Richard was acting in a silly way as a result of the influence of excessive alcoholic consumption; in (4c) Richard’s excessive eating caused him to be sick; in (4d) Erin talked so much that she became horse; in (4e) the metal became flat as a result of the blacksmith hammering it; in (4f) the novel state of the door being red results from the action of painting it. Although superficially similar, there are yet differences among the various realizations of the AP resultative presented in (4). One such difference has to do with the temporal duration of the outcome events. Some, as in the case of (4a)–(4d), are only transitory changes of state, while others, as in (4e)–(4f), are permanent. In other words, eventually, the affected entities in the first four examples will naturally go back to their initial state. By contrast, in the default scenario, the resulting features of being respectively flat and red in (4e)–(4f) will always prevail unless the objects are again manipulated and therefore caused to change. Whether the resulting state is permanent or temporary, we want to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that when patients are partially affected (i.e. only a new property or a set of new properties, such as a different shape, color, consistency, is acquired), an AP tends to be employed. Some additional examples illustrating this claim are: The joggers ran their Nikes threadbare (given in Boas 2003, p. 47), She wiped the floor dry with a floor rag (COCA, 1996), I’m going to slap you silly (COCA, 2008), He drank himself blind (GBAC, 2003), Jeff falls to the ground and hits his head knocking himself unconscious (COCA, 2007), He pulled his finger out of the box and licked it clean (COCA, 2005), His father scraped the boot clean (GBAC, 2011). As with the examples in (4) above, in none of these realizations does the essence of the patient change substantially: the floor is now dry, although it is exactly the same entity, a person’s finger does not suffer any conspicuous change just because it is licked clean, etc.

But AP resultatives may also vary in relation to the period of time spent in accomplishing a (usually conventionally expected) result (cf. Boas 2003), which often hinges on the nature and kind of affected objects involved in conjunction with the type of activity in which they are engaged. The following examples bear this point out: He drank his glass empty (COCA, 1999) < He hammered the metal flat < They painted the house green.[8] In default scenarios, whereas one can drink the liquid contained in a glass in a few seconds, it usually takes longer to make a piece of metal flat by hammering on it, and it even takes longer to paint a whole house. Note, additionally, that the verbal and the constructional subevents are not necessarily coextensive (see Goldberg and Jackendoff 2004, pp. 545–546 for a discussion). While in ‘drinking a glass empty’ we tend to think of the state of being empty as the final stage of the drinking event, in ‘hammering a metal flat’ and ‘painting the house green’ the states of being flat and green can more easily be seen as temporally co-extensive with the verbal action than becoming empty. The reason for this lies in the fact that a glass is not empty until its contents have been fully finished, while metal can gradually achieve greater and greater degrees of flatness and one can say that a house has been painted green even if still not fully coated with paint. The same rationale applies to (4a), since, according to Iwata (2006, p. 458) the events of freezing and becoming solid “are co-extensive and unfold at the same time.”

Yet more importantly for ourpurposes here is the fact that divergences also occur between low-level pairs employing an AP and those adding motion to the state of affairs:

(5)a. He bought a bottle of whiskey (…) fully intending to drink himself asleep (GBAC, 2004).

b. He drank himself to sleep (COCA, 2005).

(6)a. Jensen broke the cage open (COCA, 2000).

b. The glass or vessel being empty, the bridegroom throws it on the ground and breaks it to pieces (GBAC, 2003).

(7)a. The blacksmith hammered the metal flat.

b. We hammered hot iron into knives (COCA, 1991).

Before examining these examples, there are two relevant issues that need to be pointed out. First, the crucial feature setting apart the sentences employing an AP and those resultatives including a motion preposition is that only the latter build on A CHANGE OF STATE IS A CHANGE OF LOCATION (cf. Lakoff 1987, 1993; Lakoff and Johnson 1999), a high-level metaphor which we discuss in more detail in the following sections. However, this does not mean that AP resultatives, like the CMC, are not motivated by other high-level metaphors and metonymies, as shown in section 4. Second, it is interesting to note that the choice of a PP over an AP is, in many cases, dictated by the fact that English has no adjective available that can capture the intended meaning and thus, speakers resort to the use of the more productive category of PP resultatives.[9] With this in mind, let us now discuss each of the examples above.