Expressing Motion in a V-language as a native S-language Speaker

In this week’s selection of four chapters/articles, we are introduced to the more high level ideas of the subtle differences in words superficially classified as synonyms and of existing classification systems for languages based on their expression of motion, as well as to the more fundamental ideas of morphology and compounds.

Similar to how phonemes constitute the most atomic instances of a sound in any language and serve as the basis for any language’s phonology, morphemes constitute the most atomic instance of phonetic sequences which manage to maintain a distinct (although sometimes abstract) meaning and serve as the basis for any languages morphology.

Morphemes present themselves in the form of affixes, which are appended, inserted, etc. to the morphological stem of any one lexeme to provide the new word form with a inflected but distinct meaning (similarly, affixes exist which produce derivational morphemes of different lexemes). But it should be noted that morphological variation can also be achieved through other means (vowel substitution, which may be considered a deletion and insertion of any one morpheme), can be influenced by the phonemes involved, and are not always consistent in the way by which a certain meaning is achieved.

What I found most interesting (even if the author later proposed more distinct typologies based on how preferential path and manner were treated in a languages expression of motion) is the distinction between languages which express motion primarily through the verb and those which achieve this with satellite words (e.g. prepositions in, out, etc.). French happens to be a V-language, and English a S-language, so as a native speaker of English and a learner of French, I always finding myself at odds with how I know a certain idea can and should be expressed in French because the extra clause often sounds too lofty. I am left at times searching for more explicit vocabulary to capture what each satellite word adds to a certain expression. In addition, I find that much of this confusion comes in the form of wanting to too explicitly describe the manner in which an item moves – I was surprised to learn that in French, to say “I walked to the store” is incorrect, and that one should say “I went to the store walking”.