[Lingtyp] Motion verbs and actionality classes

[Mark Donohue]

Hi,

Back in 1973 Andy Pawley noted the odd behaviour of directed motion verbs
in Oceanic, observing that they can simultaneously be viewed as agentive
(the moving person initiates the action) and patientive (the moving person
undergoes a change of location). For this reason, they can be interpreted
differently by different languages, including their behaviour with respect
to aspectual classes, or what have you.

-Mark

On Tue, 3 Sept 2024 at 06:13, Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> 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
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