The Lexicalization Patterns of Manner Motion Events in Vietnamese

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how Vietnamese students lexicalize or express in words the idea of motion.  This study was conducted on the traditional foundation of Talmy’s (1985) lexicalization patterns. This theory involved in the way of people’s experience is rendered into languages via the semantic content of lexical items to express experiential categories. The data were derived from the analysis of the writings of fifty 12^th- graders and fifty 6^th- graders at Phu Rieng secondary school, Binh Phuoc province, Vietnam about the picture story “Frog where you” are by Mayer (2003). The results of the research provided insights into how Vietnamese speakers express the experience of motion in their language. These results suggest that there are considerable differences between Vietnamese and some other languages in the accounts of motion events.