***This is a final post-review version of the article*** For the published version, please refer to Languages in Contrast https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.17010.geo 1 Goal realization: An empirically based comparison between English, German and Greek Thanasis Georgakopoulos, Holden Härtl and Athina Sioupi University of Liège (Belgium) | University of Kassel (Germany) | Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) Drawing upon recent insights into the role of Goal preference as reflector of cross-linguistic differences, this paper investigates the factors affecting the realization of Goals in motion event descriptions. In particular, it examines the interplay between the lexicalization pattern of a language, on the one hand, and grammatical viewpoint aspect, on the other – factors which have commonly been treated in isolation. In so doing, three typologically distinct languages were examined: English, German and Greek. The empirical basis of this paper includes: (a) a corpus study, in which we examined the distribution of Goals in a small set of verbs, and (b) an experimental verbalization study, from which we elicited descriptions of different motion event types. While the former does not give a clear picture concerning the cross-linguistic differences in Goal prominence, the latter indicates that lexicalization pattern assumes a more prominent role than grammatical viewpoint aspect in affecting Goal realization. Keywords: Goals of motion, lexicalization patterns, grammatical viewpoint aspect, corpus data, language production, English/German/Greek 1. Introduction The linguistic construal of motion is a central topic in the cognitively-oriented literature on the encoding of events and their conceptualization. In this context, a broad spectrum of event-structural factors is discussed, ranging from lexical and grammatical aspect, the prominence of Goals of motion over Sources to language-specific properties associated with verb framing. But while these variables are commonly examined in isolation, to date, only a few studies have investigated them in their interplay from a cross-linguistic perspective. The current study contributes to filling this gap with a focus on Goals 1 of motion, as the notion of Goal is particularly suitable for a better understanding of the interdependence of conceptual semantics and linguistic expression, including lexical semantic typology and even aspects of linguistic relativity. Against this background, we examine the interplay between the lexi- calization pattern of a language, on the one hand, and grammatical viewpoint 1 We use the term “Goal” interchangeably with the term “endpoint” to refer to the (potential) final point of motion. Following similar studies, these terms encompass not only instances in which the figure finally reaches this point, but also instances in which the figure simply heads towards it (see, e.g., von Stutterheim et al., 2009).