Cause and motion meet manner in translation

Abstract

The SEND‐NP‐V‐ING‐PP construction, the transitive variant of the V‐V‐ING‐OBL pattern, also incorporates the Goal of Motion (cf. Dragan 2016b). According to Talmy (1985; 2000), the Goal of Motion is favored by speakers of Germanic languages to describe motion events, but it is not generally available in Romance, where motion is typically expressed by Path verbs and optional PPs, and Manner is omitted. Building on Talmy's claims, the article explores the compensation strategies selected to translate the SEND‐NP‐V‐ING‐PP construction from English into Romanian and relates the resulting syntactic structures to his theory of lexicalization patterns. It is shown that, at least in the translation of narratives, Talmy's lexicalization pattern for Romance is the exception rather than the rule as Manner is frequently translated to preserve the visual dynamism of the scenes.