1 On the Lexicalization Pattern Shift of Motion Events: A Study Based on Language Structure Wenlei Shi Written by Wenlei Shi Proofread by Armin Wisselink  Abstract: This paper revisits the issue of diachronic shift of linguistic typology with respect to lexicalization pattern of motion events (Talmy 1985, 1991, 2000), with particular emphasis on language structure, as well as language use. This study compares the Chinese language with Romance languages, two groups of typologically different languages, and shows that (i) Chinese has been undergoing a typological shift from a verb-framed toward a satellite-framed language; (ii) Romance languages show an inverse tendency of evolution, i.e., from satellite- toward verb- framed; (iii) the mechanisms through which Chinese and Romance undergo typological shift are opposite as well. The mechanisms of pattern shift in Chinese include grammaticalization, analogy of verb-complement construction, and split of semantic components, but mechanisms applied to Romance are strong lexicalization and integration of semantic elements; and (iv) Both Chinese (including Old Chinese and Modern Chinese) and Modern Romance show a certain degree of diversity in terms of lexicalization patterns, which is due to the maintenance-and-shift in these languages and linguistic relics inherited from their old ancestors. Key words: motion events, lexicalization pattern, typological shift, grammaticalization, lexicalization, Romance languages, Chinese 1 Introduction According to Talmy’s typology (Talmy 1985, 1991, 2000), languages of the world can be classified into two major types, namely verb-framed languages (henceforth V-languages) and satellite-framed languages (henceforth S-languages) in terms of the way the core feature of a motion event, i.e., the path of motion, is encoded. Specifically, V-languages and S-languages display two distinct patterns of lexicalization, with the former typically encoding path in the main verb of a clause, and the latter typically encoding path in a satellite ① (e.g., particles, prepositions, or prefixes) of the main verb. According to Talmy, Spanish and English are two languages representing the two poles of the typological dichotomy, as illustrated in (1a–b) below where the path information is conveyed by the main verb salir ‘exit’ and the manner information by a gerundive form (satellite in Talmy’s terminology) flotando in Spanish, whereas the path information is expressed by a satellite down to the main verb roll (encoding the manner information) in English. (1) a. La botella [figure] salió [motion+path] de la cueva [ground] (flotando) [manner] .  Wenlei Shi, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310028, China. Armin Wisselink, College of Foreign Languages, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China. ① In this paper, the grammatical category “satellite” is used in a broad sense to cover particles, prefixes as well as prepositions, which are excluded in Talmy’s original framework (see Stringer 2002; Filipović 2007; Beavers et al. 2010 for discussion). Following Shi (2010, 2014), we regard the semantic component motion as a head mapped from morphosyntax to semantics.