Manner of motion saliency: an inquiry into Italian

What is it about?

This study has shown that (a) the Italian vocabulary of manner of motion verbs is significantly smaller than that of English; (b) Italian speakers retrieve such verbs from memory with much less ease than English speakers; (c) Italian speakers use such verbs significantly less frequently than English speakers when narrating events of motion. The investigation has therefore demonstrated that Italian is a "low-manner-salient" language, at least when compared with a typical "high-manner-salient" language such as English.

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