English, Japanese, and the typology of motion event descriptions: A crosslinguistic experimental study with a special attention to deixis

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It has been known that English and Japanese exhibit different linguistic patterns in describing motion events. In previous works, however, the expressions of deixis have not been fully considered. In this work I compared linguistic expressions of the two languages used in describing motion events that include deictic contrasts, by examining data obtained through video experiments. Results show that the conditions for including deictic information differ between the two languages. Speakers of Japanese almost obligatorily describe deixis in representing motion events that develop before their eyes. English speakers, on the other hand, tend to limit deixis to the descriptions of motion to the speaker's domain that is typically accompanied by social interactions between the moving person and the speaker.