[Lingtyp] Motion verbs and actionality classes

[Sergey Loesov]

Dear colleagues,

In Modern Western Aramaic, an endangered language spoken in Syrian Qalamoun
mountains, verbs of telic intransitive motion (those for ‘enter’, ‘go out
of/leave’, ‘go up/ascend’, ‘go down/descend’, ‘go past’ [German
‘vorbeigehen]’) use their denominal Resultative/Perfective form to encode
the respective events *in progress* at the reference time, quite like
static verbs of perception (‘see’, ‘hear’) or body posture (‘lie’, ‘stand’,
‘sit’). Various other dynamic intransitives (e.g., the verbs for ‘fall’ or
‘pounce’, and also ‘die’) use, quite expectedly, the denominal Imperfective
for progressive situations at the reference time, while their Perfective
encodes Resultative, Perfect, (past time) Evidential, etc.


I observe a similar picture in Levantine Arabic dialects, in particular the
Damascene. I wonder what is so special about basic verbs of intransitive
telic motion that they behave like statives?  Have you ever seen something
similar?

Thank you very much,

Sergey
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20240902/e7fc87ce/attachment.htm>