How do languages encode different kinds of movement, and what features do people pay attention to when describing motion events? This document outlines topics concerning the investigation of “enter” and “exit” events. It helps contextualise research tasks that examine this domain (see 'Motion Elicitation' and 'Enter/Exit animation') and gives some pointers about what other questions can be explored

Levinson, S.

Pederson, E.

Wilkins, D.

English

David Wilkins

Eric Pederson

Stephen C. Levinson

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Background questions for the "enter"/"exit" research

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Please cite as: Wilkins, D., Pederson, E., & Levinson, S. C. (1995). Background questions for the "enter"/"exit" research. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 14-16). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003935.     REGULATIONS ON USE Stephen C. Levinson and Asifa Majid This website and the materials herewith supplied have been developed by members of the Language and Cognition Department of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (formerly the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group). In a number of cases materials were designed in collaboration with staff from other MPI departments.  Proper citation and attribution Any use of the materials should be acknowledged in publications, presentations and other public materials. Entries have been developed by different individuals. Please cite authors as indicated on the webpage and front page of the pdf entry. Use of associated stimuli should also be cited by acknowledging the field manual entry. Intellectual property rights are hereby asserted. Creative Commons license This material is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This means you are free to share (copy, redistribute) the material in any medium or format, and you are free to adapt (remix, transform, build upon) the material, under the following terms: you must give appropriate credit in the form of a citation to the original material; you may not use the material for commercial purposes; and if you adapt the material, you must distribute your contribution under the same license as the original. Background The field manuals were originally intended as working documents for internal use only. They were supplemented by verbal instructions and additional guidelines in many cases. If you have questions about using the materials, or comments on the viability in various field situations, feel free to get in touch with the authors. Contact Email us via library@mpi.nl Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics P.O. Box 310, 6500 AH, Nijmegen, The Netherlands 3. Background Questions for the "Enter" /" Exit" Research David Wilkins, Eric Pederson and Steve Levinson 14 The preceding tasks were developed to help answer just some of the questions outlined below. This document attempts to capture some of the many points that arose during group discussions of how to pursue the investigation of events loosely labeled "entering" and "exiting" events. THIS IS NOT A QUESTIONNAIRE. It is intended merely to help contextualise the research tasks that have been devised to examine this domain (cf. §1-2 in this manual), and to give some pointers as to what other questions could be explored (and should be explored if a researcher is interested)., Note, in all our deliberations we have assumed that the comparison between languages would be based on the linguistic description of scenarios depicting events roughly considered to be within the widely-construed semantic ballpark of "entering" and "exiting". As we understand this, an "entering" and "exiting" event, very roughly, involve movement or change which makes special reference to a containing and/or occluding and/or covering relation between the figure and ground (either at the beginning point, as in the case of 'exit', or at the endpoint, as in the case of 'enter'). [This, for instance, is in contrast to an event like 'leaving' or 'arriving' which simply refer to movement or change which makes special reference to the fact that the figure is at the ground (with the ground able to be construed simply as a point)]. We are not assuming that the point of comparison between languages will necessarily be at the 'lexical (or morphological level). Indeed, the first level of comparison will be at the level of a full utterance (typically containing one or more clauses). From this, it should be possible to discern whether a language possesses any linguistically encoded "enter"/"exit" expressions or not. An "enter" or "exit" expression, if they exist at all, could be lexical in one language, phrasal in another, clausal in yet a third, and multi-clausal or discoursal in a fourth. In other languages such notions need not be semantically encoded at any level, but may be pragmatically determined. THE FOLLOWING IS A BEGINNING LIST OF QUESTIONS AND IS NOT INTENDED TO BE COMPLETE. HOWEVER, ONCE YOU'VE ACTUALLY ELICITED SOME DATA USING THE PREVIOUS TASKS IN THIS MANUAL, YOU MAY WISH TO TRY TO ANSWER EACH QUESTION FOR PARTICULAR EXPRESSIONS THAT HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED. General Questions: a) What are the linguistic means for the expression of 'entering'/'exiting' events? How many different 'entering' and 'exiting' expressions are there? [Does a single verb convey the meaning? A verb plus a preposition? A verb plus a case? Serialisation? etc.] , -A first examination 'seems to show that languages are more likely to possess a conventional means of expression roughly corresponding to English 'enter' than they are to possess a conventional means of expression which roughly corresponds to English 'exit'. We are interested to know if this cross-linguistic assymetry is real. b) Does the 'enter' expression have a conventional opposite? (for instance as determined by word association tests, or by commonly coordinated phrases "highs and lows "; "the long and the short of it") c) Does the 'exit' expression have a conventional opposite? d) Are the forms of expression for 'enter' and 'exit' scenarios parallel? e) Where the 'enter' and 'exit' are conventional opposites (and parallel) in expression, can one discern a markedness relation between them? [different degrees of morphological complexity? differ~nt frequencies in text? etc.] f) What range of meanings/uses does the expression have? [Does the expression appear to be polysemous?] Argument Structure Related Questions For each EXITIENTER expression identified: a) Is the expression transitive or intransitive? b) How many arguments does the expression take (semantically and syntactically)? c) How appropriate would it be to characterize the expressions arguments as having the thematic roles Theme, GoaI.andlor Source? d) Is there evidence that the expression takes an Actor argument? e) If the expression is an intransitive verb, is it unergative or unaccusative or neither? t) What spatial adjuncts (as opposed to arguments) can occur with the expression, and which ones typically occur? [Source, Goal, Location, etc.] g) What argument structure changing operations does the expression undergo, and what does this reveal about the semantics and argument structure of the expressions? [e.g. transitivization, detransitivization, inchoativization, causitivization, incorporation, etc.] 15 h) What predicate class (or classes) does the expression belong to, and what are the other members 'Of the class? Change-of-State Related Questions For any EXIT/ENTER expression: a) What aspects can the expression occur in? Are there any·unique syntactic and or semantic requirements that have to be rilet before an expression can occur in a certain aspect (e~g. the verb can only occur in the progressive [or continuous] if the subject is plural)? What do these patterns of cooccurrence say about the semantics of the verb (e.g. it's boundary conditions). b) Are there any linguistic arguments for considering the expression a change of state expression? c) Are there any linguistic arguments for considering the expression a motion expression? d) Does the expression encode a definite change of state with a definite targets state,·or:does it encode a continuous process of change-over-time (focusing on the process or .trajectory rather than the endpoint or goal)? e) To what extent is a PATH notion essential to the understanding of the expression? [Where we understand PATH roughly to refer to an encoding of the act/event as unfolding continuously across distinct and connected locations in·space.] t) If the expression is complex (i.e. multi-morphemic/multi-word), what does this say about the analysis of the event into subcomponents? [i.e. what are the lexicalization patterns manifested?; does it say anything about the grouping of micro-events into macro-events?] Space-Related Questions For each ENTER/EXIT expression: a) What is the relation between the expression and the 'IN/OUT'/'INTO/OUT OF' notions in the language? [What are the 'IN/OUT'JlINTO/OUT OF' notions in the language? what part of speech are they? Do they bear any formal relationship to the ENTERlEXIT expression investigated? What do they really mean?] (i) Are the same semantic parameters manifested as the 'IN/OUT'j'INTO/OUT OF' expressions? (ii) Can the expression be paraphrased by GO, or some other motion verb, plus an expression involving an 'IN/OUT form? If not, why not? If such a complex expression is available, how does it differ semantically? (iii) Can the expression be paraphrased by a verb (or derivational form) meaning 'change' or 'become' in combination with an 'IN/OUT' form? If not, why not? If such a complex expression is available, how does it differ semantically? b) What are f:be spatial conditions on the expression? (i) does it require full containment? and is containment 2-D, 3-D or dimensionally indeterminate? (ii) does it require the ground entity to be bounded? [physically? ideationally?] (iii) What are the boundary crossing constraints? [When can one be said to be EXITING/ENTERING something else?; When can one be said to have EXITED/ENTERED something else?; etc.] (iv) is occlusion, covering and/or exposure (or some other concept) more notionally central than containment? (v) 'are there spatial constraints on what the figure (subject) can be? (pointed? cylindIical? long? made to fit the space completely? etc.) 16 (vi) are there spatial constraints on the ground (liquid? hollow? outer skin or boundary? etc.) c) Do'es the expression require ()ne to set a point of view somewhere (e.g. is it deictic?)? [What are the point of view distinctions, and how are they encoded?] d) Is vertical (upward or downward) entry ever distinguished (of necessity) from horizontal entry? Anthropology-Related Questions [See also the "Pilot Questionnaire to Investigate Social Uses of Space" by Elizabeth Keating] a) What are considered typical, and contextually appropriate, uses of the various 'enter/exit' expressions? [What locally appropriate scenes and objects do they apply to?] b) What are the social constraints on various kinds of 'ENTERING/EXITING'? [Enterin~ a home, entering a camp, entering a boat, entering a vehicle, entering an initiation ground, entering the single women's quarter's, etc.] c) What types of 'ENTERING/EXITING' are significant for everyday life? [for hunting, animals' ENTERING/EXITING their home domains; water ENTERINGIEXITING; ENTERING/EXITING in artifact manufacture; etc.] d) What are the metaphorical uses of 'ENTERING/EXITING' expressions? [sexual euphamism?; change of social status ("entering" manhood); etc.] e) Is their much ENTERING/~XITING in traditional (sacred) texts? [E.g. Among the Arremte where the Totemic ancestors emerge from and enter the ground is of extreme importance and confers spechll status on a place, and is a high point of discussion in texts] , 

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Background questions for the "enter"/"exit" research

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