[Lingtyp] orientation

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Dear Christian – The most common term for the class of verbs you are referring to is ‘path’ verbs. A more technical term is ‘change-of-location’ verbs. See Bohnemeyer (2010)<http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/Ch6_Malt_WordsWorld_112209_JB.pdf> for evidence that change-of-location verbs aren’t always path verbs. – Best – Juergen

Bohnemeyer, J. (2010). The language-specificity of Conceptual Structure: Path, Fictive Motion, and time relations. In B. Malt & P. Wolff (Eds.), Words and the mind: How words capture human experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 111-137.

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
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University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2025 at 10:29
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] orientation
Dear colleagues,

allow me to bother you again with a terminological question. (I have a hope that one or another of these little problems that pop up in my work may be of interest to others, and the terminological solutions may then be adopted).

In Cabecar grammaticography, I have overused the term family 'orient - oriented - orientation'. I am looking for substitutes. One context in which I hope for an equivalent or even better term is motion verbs. Consider this Spanish example:
1.      entrar 'move in', salir 'move out', subir move up', bajar 'move down', etc.
2.      saltar 'jump', nadar 'swim', ambular 'wander' etc.
The semantic and syntactic difference between these two sets has been well-known at least since the work by Leonard Talmy. I have followed other authors in naming them 'oriented motion' vs. 'manner of motion'.. Now I want to get rid of the word oriented here. What else have verbs such as those of series 1 been called?

Thank you very much for your help,
Christian

PS: Should anybody be interested, I am, of course, ready to reveal the other uses of the above term family.
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Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
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