Flying, Floating, Hurtling – a Corpus-Assisted Study of astromotion Verbs in American English

Abstract

This paper establishes and explores the lexical field of astromotion (motion in outer space) from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective by investigating verb collocates of space, outer space and deep space from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (coca). The primary focus is on the moving figure and the manner of motion involved. The paper accounts for prototypical uses of the verbs and puts the results in dialogue with previous research into motion events on earth. The main findings are that (1) astromotion is primarily lexicalized by general motion verbs or relexicalizations from other domains of motion; (2) transitive verb constructions are more common than in previously studied domains of motion and; (3) control and speed are important disambiguating properties. The paper also illustrates how the lexical field has been influenced by our empirical knowledge, imagination, and embodied experiences.