A Semantic Analysis of Universal and Idiosyncratic Features of Induced Motion Verbs: From the Perspective of Language Typology (original) (raw)
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In this talk I will focus on a particular behavior displayed by verbs of inherently directed motion, the availability of a causative transitive alternate, and how this phenomenon interacts with the presence of the clitic se in the intransitive variant. Data from Catalan, Aragonese and Italian varieties, none of which have received much attention in the literature, will prove crucial for my proposal. In particular, I adopt an inter-Romance perspective and a nanosyntactic approach to lexicalization in order to refine the correlation that has been found for Spanish, where motion verbs are claimed to be more easily causativized (entrar el coche ‘go in the car’) in varieties where the use of se in the intransitive forms is also more frequent (Juan se entró ‘Juan SE went in’). Adopting a broader cross-linguistic perspective, I deal with causativized verbs in several Romance languages and varieties, and crucially bring into discussion an element that has, until now, gone generally unnoticed (aside from descriptive works): the ablative locative clitic that appears, together with se, in Catalan, Italian and Aragonese varieties (e.g. Cat. tornar-se’n, dial. Cat. entrar-se’n, eixir-se’n, pujar-se’n, and so on). The data from different Romance languages and dialects will allow to refine the settings of the connection between pronominal verbs of motion and the existence of a source component. In particular, I will posit the existence of a locative head (that may be analysed as an applicative head), which can be spelled out by an ablative locative clitic. I will also argue that verbs of inherently directed motion can be conceived by Romance speakers as simple, punctual events denoting the achievement of a particular position, but also as denoting a complex event that consists of a causing subevent and a resultant state (which is connected to achieving a new position and remaining there for some time, after having left behind the original location). In the latter case (that subsequently paves the way for causativization), the verbs of motion can surface in their pronominal form, even if it does not happen always. As will be shown in the talk, there is cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal variation regarding the availability of pronominal forms for these verbs, due to different lexicalization patterns.
Pineda (2018) Causativization of verbs of directed motion in Romance languages
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14. Selected papers from the 46th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Stony Brook, NY., 2018
The purpose of this paper is to shed light on a particular behavior displayed by verbs of inherently directed motion, the availability of a causative transitive alternate, and how this phenomenon interacts with the presence of clitic se in the intransitive variant. Data from Catalan, Aragonese and Italian varieties, none of which have received much attention in the literature, will prove crucial for our proposal. We adopt an inter-Romance perspective and a nanosyntactic approach to lexicalization in order to refine the correlation Jiménez-Fernández and Tubino (2014, 2017) find for Spanish, where inherently directional motion verbs are claimed to be more easily causativized (entrar el coche ‘go in the car’) in varieties where the use of se in the intransitive forms is also more frequent (Juan se entró ‘Juan se went in’).
The semantics of the English and the Spanish motion verb lexicons, RCL, 2010
seminal work has engendered a great deal of research and debate in the literature on motion event descriptions over the last decades. Despite the vast amount of research on the linguistic expression of motion events, the fact that motion verb roots might encode information apart from Path and Manner of motion is often overlooked. The present paper addresses the semantics of 376 English and 257 Spanish motion verbs by exploring the general conflations which are conveyed by these verbs. In this regard, both crosslinguistic similarities and differences will be pointed out. My research concludes that path-conflating and manner-conflating verbs amount to the largest part of their lexicons but that other minor patterns such as ground conflations, in contradiction to Talmy's speculations on the lack of ground-conflating verbs, are present as well. Taken as a whole, this paper provides a rich and detailed account on the semantic nature of the English and the Spanish motion verb lexicons, and emerges as a helpful reference for researchers in this field.
This paper analyses the semantic components and the grammatical behaviour of a specific type of verbs of induced motion: those that contain the semantic feature [+active]. Besides, the locational expressions they take are investigated, and a direct relationship is established between these and the verbs in question. In fact, a close examination of locative arguments clearly shows that they play an essential role in the logical structure of verbs. This contradicts the fact that in Role and Reference Grammar (Jolly 1991, 1993, Van Valin and LaPolla 1997), whose framework has been employed here, they are given a marginal, rescindable status.
1 Introduction: associated motion as a grammatical category in linguistic typology
Associated Motion
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.
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.
2018
In the chapter we analyse two verbs of inherently directed motion such as ir 'go' and vir 'come' in two different modality languages-EP (European Portuguese) and LGP (Portuguese Sign Language), in order to discuss their main properties. We show that Romance languages, and Portuguese in particular, are not only verb-framed in the way they express motion and manner of motion and we show the importance of Prepositional Phrases in the construction of argument structure of verbs. As for Sign languages, and specifically LGP, we show, starting from a brief corpus, that this language, being closer to an "equipollently-framed language", has some properties that indicate that verbs are not the only way to express movement. We conclude that more important than a typological classification it is crucial to analyse morphological, lexical and syntactic resources that languages have in order to express manner and path of motion.