Abstract

Languages differ in how they lexicalize and grammaticalize spatial information (Talmy, 2000). Such properties constrain how speakers organize spatial information to encode motion in discourse (Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Hickmann et al., 2008; Slobin, 2004), thereby raising new questions concerning the relation between language and cognition. Germanic languages (verb-framed) such as English express manner in the root verb and path in satellites, while Romance languages (satellite-framed) such as French lexicalize path in the verb, leaving manner implicit or expressing it in the periphery of the sentence (e.g. She ran across the street vs. Elle a traverse la rue [en courant], Lit. ‘She crossed the road running’). Such striking differences are of great relevance for opening new perspectives in the study of linguistic pathology and more specifically for the study of aphasic patients who typically present dissociations between lexical and grammatical capacities and deficits.