[Lingtyp] motion verbs

[Christian Lehmann]

Dear Sergey and Jürgen,

it seems that most of us have used the term 'motion verb' to mean 'verb 
of translocation/translational motion' and, moreover, as a prototypical 
concept. It has a focal instance, viz. 'go', which we assume has a 
counterpart in most languages. And while there is wide agreement on the 
focal instance, the expansion of the core notion in different directions 
and its delimitation against neighboring notions is a matter of 
epistemic interest. One path of expansion would be: "'go' and other 
verbs which share a similar distribution or are in the same paradigm as 
'go'. But such expansions are a matter of definition. It is, for 
instance, a matter of definition whether your descriptive or typological 
study of motion verbs covers verbs like 'dance' and 'turn'.

Cheers, Christian