Goal–source asymmetry and crosslinguistic grammaticalization patterns: a cognitive-typological approach

In this paper, the patterns of semantic extensions of allative markers are compared with those of ablative markers from a cognitive-typological perspective. Despite the symmetry the two notions appear to exhibit semantically, goal and source exhibit asymmetry and the prevalence of the former over the latter can be seen in a wide range of linguistic and cognitive phenomena. Previous studies indicate that speakers tend to produce goal-oriented events much more frequently than source-oriented events. Goal markers are often associated with an extensive array of functions and usages as well. Building on these findings, the present study investigates how such a prevalence of goal-markers over source-markers may or may not be reflected in their grammaticalization patterns. Do allative markers exhibit more robust patterns of semantic extension across domains compared to ablative counterparts? What are the patterns of semantic extension of the allatives and the ablatives, and how do they differ from each other? The synchronic usage patterns of the allative and ablative markers from 24 languages including English, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, Polish, and Tamil are examined. The results indicate that goal-markers have generally undergone a more extensive semantic development than source-markers, thus providing more evidence for goal-bias in human cognition.