Lexicalization strategies for Arabic motion events in msa students. A study based on the Arabic learner corpus

Lexicalization strategies of motion events is an extremely important issue from a typological perspective and also with regard to second language acquisition. With some rare exceptions, little attention has been given to motion events in studies on Arabic, and no research has been dedicated to motion events within an acquisitional framework. This paper aims to fill this gap in Arabic studies through accessing the open-source Arabic Learner Corpus (ALC) and examining data from both native and non-native speakers. The data is analysed through the merging of Leonard Talmy’s (1985) central theory on motion events with Wälchli’s model regarding
word classes that express Path where the focus is extended to the whole sentence.
This perspective allows us to investigate the close relationship between semantics and pragmatics that informs learners’ choices when selecting the various constructs at their disposal. The results highlight the need to overcome the rigid classification of world languages into verb-framed and satellite-framed languages in favor of a more flexible model.