Conceptual metaphors as a tool for the efficient teaching of Dutch and German posture verbs

The article deals with the typological differences between the Romance language French and the Germanic languages German and Dutch for the linguistic expressions of posture and location. It describes how these typological differences can be problematic for French-speaking learners of German and Dutch. The main difference between both types of languages is that posture and location tend to be encoded by posture verbs in Germanic languages and by very general verbs in Romance languages (Talmy 2000). After a detailed description of the semantic networks of the German and Dutch posture verbs, the... Mehr ...