The many ways to search for a frog: Linguistic typology and the expression of motion events

The chapters in this volume, along with the extensive list of frog-story studies in Appendix II, provide a rich database for the exploration of particular questions of language use and acquisition. The studies reported in Part I reflect a range of languages of different types, making it possible to focus on the role of linguistic typology in narrative construction. 1 A recurrent concern in those studies is the expression of motion, which is one of the dominant themes of Frog, where are you? In one way or another, all of the studies confront Talmy’s by now familiar typology of verb-framed and satellite-framed languages (Talmy 1985, 1991, 2000b). Briefly, the typology is concerned with the means of…