Respingón

            Slobin’s article defines a typology for categorizing languages based on the means of expression for the manner of movement. Manner of movement is concerned with the connotations associated with the words chosen to describe movement. The binary typology given, cited as Talmy’s typology, is a binary classifier of languages for two distinct groups: those labeled as satellite-framed languages, or S-languages, and those labeled as verb-framed languages, or L-languages.

            In S-languages, a word (usually a preposition) accompanies a verb (like a satellite) in describing the manner of some movement. Meanwhile, within L-languages movement is described entirely by the main verb. According to Talmy’s typology, English and Spanish are examples of an S-language and a V-language, respectively. Being a speaker of both of these languages caused me to engage with Slobin’s article the most and develop a strong initial opinion regarding Talmy’s typology.

As I began to read the article, I was very skeptical of how languages were being categorized as V or S, and what was most irking in particular was the classification of Spanish as a “V-language”. To me, it seemed as though languages labeled as V-languages under Talmy’s typology were also labeled as languages devoid of any descriptive verbs, and how could I agree with this after having taking a class dedicated to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the colorful language he employed, so embellished it seems in excess at times? This prompted me to look up the first page of 100 Years of Solitude written in Spanish in order to verify my doubts. To my dismay, skimming the first few pages confirmed what Talmy was saying about Spanish as a verb-framed language.

            However, I was sure it was only GGM and not the Spanish language itself that had failed me. I couldn’t think of any specific examples for non-neutral verbs in Spanish, so I decided to inspect some of the English verbs that give English its categorization as an S-language according to Talmy. Some of those words listed are: barge, goose-step, leapfrog, pop, skedaddle, slither, slog, smash, and worm. On a superficial level, these verbs are much more visual than their Spanish counterparts. You might not know what goose-step, leapfrog, or worm are as verbs, but it is easy to deduce their meaning from their semantic heads, as we learned from Haspelmath’s writing on compounds. Verbs like smash or pop are used in comic books frequently, and thus provide an alternative visual aid to literal semantics.

After finding literal translations of some of these words in Spanish, such as the synonyms for brincar (to jump), which are saltar, botar, rebotar, retozar, triscar, piruetear, and respingar, I discovered that while most of them were neutral in the sense that they are exact descriptions of a type of motion, they all came with a connotation, and could be used as near-synonyms in different contexts much like Atkins describes for synonyms of shaking. Rebotar (to bounce) can be used to describe someone jumping in the context of a joke, for example, and piruetear (to pirouette) in the context of describing something more aesthetically.
           In the end, I was relieved when Slobin concluded that “habitual patterns of language use are shaped by ease of accessibility of linguistic forms- to producer and receiver, as well as by the dynamics of cultural and aesthetic values and the perspectives and communicative aims of the speaker”, and proposed categorizing different languages on degrees of manner salience rather than the binary typology which Talmy presents. In the end, Spanish is not inferior to English by the metrics of connotation, or lexemes.