Route verbs in English and Polish expressions of fictive motion

Abstract

This study discusses the use of route verbs in English and Polish expressions of fictive motion. It demonstrates that while in English the verbs cross and pass, which are prototypically used to express routing relations, can be used in most scenarios interchangeably, their Polish equivalents used in this context cannot always replace one another. This indicates that, despite sharing certain common properties, fictive motion expressions in English and Polish are highly conventionalized and subject to interactions between conceptual motivations and language specific semantic constraints.