The representation of motion concepts in Azari Turkish language

This article investigates the representation of such motion concepts as manner and path in Azari Turkish language with regard to Talmy's typological theory (2000 A & B). Talmy has classified languages into two groups: verb-framed languages (in which the motion event is represented by the verb); and satellite –framed languages (in which the motion event is represented by the argument of the verb). The main goal of this paper is to find out the group to which Turkish language belongs and to challenge the verb-framed hypothesis in Turkish language. Thus, a corpus of 160 motion verbs was collected from Turkish dictionaries and recorded sounds of Turkish speakers. Examination of the verbs shows that Azari Turkish language has the properties of both groups. That is, the motion event can be represented by the verb itself and by the argument--particularly in complex predicates. Thus, Azari Turkish is placed in the middle of a continuum ranging from verb-framed to satellite-framed languages. This quality reveals that the category of motion verbs, previously considered verb-framed, has changed appreciably under the influence of Persian language.