How English Uses Motion to Express Results: When States Become Destinations

What is it about?

This paper explores how motion—literal or figurative—structures the way English expresses results, focusing on resultative constructions (RCs) and caused‑motion constructions (CMCs). It begins by distinguishing several kinds of events that English can express: adjectival resultatives (hammer the metal flat), fake‑reflexive property changes (drink oneself silly), figurative motion in result (break into pieces), literal changes of location (jump over the fence), figurative CMCs (laugh me out of the studio), and externally induced motion (walk me to the library) The key contribution is a principled account of how English chooses between adjectival phrases (APs) and figurative motion prepositional phrases (PPs) to encode results. The authors argue that figurative motion is preferred when the affected entity undergoes a more radical or holistic transformation, whereas APs are used when the entity merely acquires a new property while retaining its identity. They formalize this as three patterns: A→B: complete transformation → PP required (smash to pieces) A→A′: new property but same entity → AP (paint the door red) motion‑A→A′: figurative PP that encodes a result but without total transformation (starve the kid to death, eat oneself into a stupor). The paper revisits Goldberg’s hypothesis that the RC is a metaphorical extension of the CMC. Using developmental evidence and linguistic argumentation, the authors argue the reverse: AP resultatives arise earlier and are not metaphorical instances of motion, whereas PP resultatives systematically rely on the high‑level metaphor A CHANGE OF STATE IS A CHANGE OF LOCATION. High‑level metaphors and metonymies (e.g., AN ACTIVITY IS AN EFFECTUAL ACTION, INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION, A CAUSED EVENT FOR AN ACTIVITY) are shown to motivate how verbs fuse with resultative or caused‑motion constructions, enabling coerced or non‑canonical uses such as run one’s Nikes threadbare or fly me to L.A.

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Photo by Robin Pierre on Unsplash

Photo by Robin Pierre on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This paper is important because it provides a unified, cognitively grounded explanation of when and why English uses different constructional resources to express results. Instead of treating resultatives as idiosyncratic, the authors show that their distribution follows predictable semantic principles based on the degree and nature of change experienced by the affected entity—principles deeply rooted in high‑level metaphor and metonymy. They also challenge the well‑known Goldbergian claim that AP resultatives inherit metaphorically from caused‑motion constructions. The authors demonstrate, with both conceptual and developmental arguments, that only PP resultatives clearly rely on figurative motion, while AP resultatives do not. This correction has consequences for Construction Grammar, refining how inheritance relations and metaphorical extensions should be modeled. Finally, the article highlights that lexical–constructional integration depends on cognitively motivated operations rather than pure syntactic coercion, advancing the explanatory power of the Lexical Constructional Model within cognitive linguistics.

Perspectives