Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7 (2009), 1–29. doi 10.1075/arcl.7.01lam issn 1572–02 / e-issn 1572–027 © John Benjamins Publishing Company Serializing languages as satellite-framed he case of Fon* Renée Lambert-Brétière Languages expressing motion events through serial verb constructions are cat- egorized in various ways according to the typology of motion events. his paper challenges the typological classiication of serializing languages by proposing that a serializing language like Fon is better analyzed as a satellite-framed lan- guage, lexicalizing the core-schema of motion — Path — in a verb satellite, than as verb-framed or equipollently-framed. Semantic and syntactic arguments are presented and lead to a new deinition of verbal satellite in functional terms. It is further demonstrated that there is no need for a special treatment of serializing languages like Fon when conceiving the typology of motion events as a bipolar typological continuum, with at one end the verb-framing pattern and at the other end, the satellite-framing pattern. Keywords: typology, motion events, serial verb constructions, path, semantics, Fon 1. Introduction his paper addresses the question of the lexicalization of motion events in Fon, a Kwa language mainly spoken in South Benin, and raises the issue of serializing languages in motion events typology. Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000) distinguishes two types of languages, according to the pattern of lexicalization of the core schema of motion, that is, Path. One group of languages lexicalizes Path in a verb satellite, such as verb particle or preix, while the other one lexicalizes Path in the verb itself. Satellite-framed languages include Germanic, Slavic, and Finno-Ugric, and Verb- framed languages are mostly Romance languages, Semitic, Japanese, and Bantu. Another important characteristic of the two types of lexicalization of motion events concerns the expression of Manner: for satellite-framed languages, Path is expressed in a verb satellite while Manner is lexicalized in the verb; for verb-