Events of putting things in places, and removing them from places, are fundamental activities of human experience. But do speakers of different languages construe such events in the same way when describing them? This volume investigates placement and removal event descriptions from 18 areally, genetically, and typologically diverse languages. Each chapter describes the lexical and grammatical means used to describe such events, and further investigates one of the following themes: syntax-semantics mappings, lexical semantics, and asymmetries in the encoding of placement versus removal events. The chapters demonstrate considerable cross-linguistic variation in the encoding of this domain, as well as commonalities, e.g. in the semantic distinctions that recur across languages, and in the asymmetric treatment of placement versus removal events. This volume provides a significant contribution within the emerging field of semantic typology, and will be of interest to researchers interested in the language-cognition interface, including linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, and philosophers.
1. Contributors, pix-x; 2. Preface (by Levinson, Stephen C.), pxi-xvi; 3. Putting and taking events: A crosslinguistic perspective (by Narasimhan, Bhuvana), p1-18; 4. Part I. Lexical semantics; 5. The linguistic encoding of placement and removal events in Jahai (by Burenhult, Niclas), p21-36; 6. "She from bookshelf take-descend-come the box": Encoding and categorizing placement events in Mandarin (by Chen, Jidong), p37-54; 7. To put or to take?: Verb semantics in Tzeltal placement and removal expressions (by Brown, Penelope), p55-78; 8. The encoding of placement and removal events in Akhoe Hai om (by Rapold, Christian J.), p79-98; 9. The semantics of placement and removal predicates in Moroccan Arabic (by Nouaouri, Nadi), p99-122; 10. Placement and removal events in Basque and Spanish (by Ibarretxe-Antunano, Iraide), p123-144; 11. On the use of PUT Verbs by multilingual speakers of Romansh (by Berthele, Raphael), p145-166; 12. Probing the linguistic encoding of placement and removal events in Swedish (by Gullberg, Marianne), p167-182; 13. The semantic role of agentive control in Hungarian placement events (by Andics, Attila), p183-200; 14. Putting and Taking in Tamil and Hindi (by Narasimhan, Bhuvana), p201-230; 15. Part II. (A)symmetries in encoding placement vs. removal events; 16. The Thaayorre lexicon of putting and taking (by Gaby, Alice), p233-252; 17. The expression of putting and taking events in Japanese: The asymmetry of Source and Goal revisited (by Ishibashi, Miyuki), p253-272; 18. Put and Take in Yeli Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island (by Levinson, Stephen C.), p273-296; 19. Take it up, down, and away: Encoding placement and removal in Lowland Chontal (by OConnor, Loretta), p297-326; 20. Semantic granularity of placement and removal expressions in Polish (by Kopecka, Anetta), p327-348; 21. How to put and take in Kalasha (by Petersen, Jan Heegard), p349-366; 22. Language index, p367-368; 23. Subject index, p369-372