ABSTRACT
The human mind constructs complex conceptual models of real-world situations. Yet much of this information is not explicitly represented in the linguistic messages people use to communicate about these situations. This chapter, following Talmy (1985), is concerned with the relation between conceptual structures and linguistic elements. We focus on how typologically different languages encode information about motion events: in particular, which conceptual elements are encoded, and by what linguistic means. The present study compares American Sign Language (ASL) with English, drawing data from adults’ retellings of the story Frog, where are you?
