1 Introduction: associated motion as a grammatical category in linguistic typology (original) (raw)
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Introduction: Associated Motion as a grammatical category in linguistic typology
De Gruyter, 2021
This volume is the first book-length presentation of the relatively newly established grammatical category of Associated Motion. It provides a framework for understanding a grammatical phenomenon which, though present in many languages, has gone unrecognised until recently. Previously known mainly from languages of Australia and South America, grammatical AM marking has now been identified in languages from most parts of the world (except Europe) and is becoming an important topic of linguistic typology. The 22 chapters provide a thorough introduction to the subject, discussion of the relation between AM and related grammatical concepts, detailed descriptions of AM in a wide range of the world’s languages, and surveys of AM in particular language families and areas. All of the studies are richly illustrated by means of approximately 2000) example sentences.
Associated motion constructions in African languages
2016
The aim of this paper is to highlight the frequent occurrence of associated motion and compare the construction in 20 languages from the four main linguistic phyla of Africa. Associated motion is a strategy typical of Australian and South American languages whereby a motion event is subordinated to a verb’s event but is encoded by an affix from the semantic category of ‘associated motion’ (Koch, 1984) rather than by another verb or satellite clause. In this paper I show that associated motion is quite widespread in Africa, although overall little discussed. In the languages surveyed the structure exhibits the following particularities: (i) it is marked by satellites, which systematically also mark deictic path, (ii) it relates to the main verb in different ways depending on the event the latter encodes and the context, and (iii) it occurs with different lexical verb classes depending on the language. This study adds to the growing literature on the topic and seeks to highlight stron...
Journal of Universal Language
This is a semantic study of causative movement verbs that have been organized into two main groups consisting of similar and contrasting features. This analysis contradicts Van Valin & LaPolla (1997) and other authors working within the Role and Reference Grammar theoretical framework such as Jolly (1991, 1993), who defends the view that causative movement verbs only respond to one Aktionsart type (that is, to one type of mode of action): causative accomplishment verbs. I demonstrate that there are also * This paper was funded through the research project ANGI2005/14 (CAR). I would like to acknowledge the merits of my colleague and friend Rubén Fernández Caro, "a man from the Middle Ages". He gave me the passion for medieval literature and languages and helped me discover the fascinating world found in Tolkien's stories and languages, and especially in Quenya. This paper could have never been written without such underlying motivation.
Serial verb constructions and motion semantics
Associated Motion, 2021
Uncorrected proofs, Oct 2020. To appear in DeGruyter Mouton series Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Typology collection from the ALT 2017 workshop on Associated Motion This chapter investigates the expression of associated motion and directional motion in the form of serial verb constructions (SVCs). In a sample of 124 languages with SVCs, 80% have motion SVCs. The most common types are directional SVCs, in which a path-of-motion verb combines with another motion verb, and prior associated motion SVCs expressing motion prior to the activity or state predicated by the other verb in the construction. Concurrent motion and subsequent motion are much less common. In a prior motion SVC, the motion verb nearly always precedes the other verb, and the figure on the path of motion is the subject. In a directional SVC, the path-of-motion verb nearly always follows the other verb, and the grammatical function of the figure on the path of motion can vary according to the semantics of the main verb in the construction.
Morphological evidence for a movement analysis of adverbial clauses
Chicago Linguistic Society, 2011
"Beginning with Geis (1970), several authors have provided syntactic, semantic, and etymological arguments for a derivation of adverbial (subordinate) clauses that involves movement of an (often null) operator (see Haegeman 2010a for a review). This paper provides morphological evidence for this view while arguing for separate extraction sites for the moved elements in temporal and conditional clauses. The Bantu language Akɔɔse (Hedinger 2008) exhibits wh-agreement (see Reintges, LeSourd, & Chung 2006 for a typology); that is, it marks its verbs with respect to whether an element has been extracted to the left periphery. This extraction marking occurs not only in canonical wh-movement contexts (Chomsky 1977), such as constituent questions, relative clauses, cleft questions, and topicalization, but also in temporal and conditional adverbial clauses. Crucially, Akɔɔse wh-agreement encodes whether the extracted element originated above or below v. The distribution of wh-agreement morphology shows that the operator in central conditional clauses is extracted from a position above v (supporting Haegeman's (2010b) claim), the moved element in central temporal clauses originates below v (supporting Larson's (1987, 1990) position), and there is no extraction in peripheral adverbial clauses (as argued in Haegeman 2007). Wh-agreement provides compelling evidence for a movement analysis for both temporal and conditional central adverbial clauses. Due to its sensitivity to height of extraction, Akɔɔse lends insight into the question of where the moved elements originate, unlike languages like Irish (McCloskey 2001) where wh-agreement only registers the presence of movement."
Constructions, 2012
The present article introduces Embodied Construction Grammar, a cognitive approach to the study of language which at present is not fully developed and established, but whose adoption has repeatedly proved adequate to provide explicit analyses of several grammatical phenomena observed in English and also some phenomena of other languages, especially German, Hebrew, and Mandarin Chinese. In this paper, after a brief introduction to cognitive approaches to grammar and a brief summary of the main properties of Embodied Construction Grammar (with a special focus on those which distinguish this model from other cognitive approaches), I will provide the reader with an illustration of this model at work. Since at present Romance languages (with the partial exception of Spanish) have been somewhat neglected by scholars who developed this approach, I will proceed to carefully analyze a circumscribed phenomenon of the Italian language, namely caused-motion constructions. The results of this case-study are remarkable for two reasons. First of all, they allow me to assert that Embodied Construction Grammar proves able to supply a detailed explanation of this phenomenon, thus being apt to be adopted in the analysis of Italian data. Second, and perhaps more interesting, the adoption of this particular model to carry out my investigation enables me to argue that Italian caused-motion constructions can be divided into two different categories, and to explain this distinction using the cognitive semantic notion of force-dynamics.