Oct 20, 2026: Veera Hämäläinen

Enriching the view of path lexicalisation in satellite-framed languages: Ascending and descending Paths in Finnish, English, and translations between them

Building a bridge between cognitive linguistics and translation studies, the presentation discusses Path lexicalisation patterns in ascending and descending motion in two non-related languages – Finnish and English and translations between them – considered to be in the same group within the Talmyan typology (e.g. Talmy, 2007) and examines possible effects of translation while developing suitable methods for this. Translations provide a specific type of data combining lexicalisation patterns of each language and indications of the transfer process between language systems. To gain insight into the variation within satellite-framed languages and investigate the process impacting the representation of the translated language, source text and target text lexicalisation patterns in two languages with similar lexicalisation strategies were compared to answer two questions: What differences are there in Path lexicalisation in ascending and descending motion between English and Finnis, and how are these differences reflected in translations between the languages?

Keywords: path lexicalisation, gravitational pull hypothesis, language typology, cognitive semantics, cognitive translation studies