[tlhIngan Hol] Is {Sal} a verb of movement ?

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Mon Feb 11 13:46:09 PST 2019


On 2/11/2019 4:36 PM, Will Martin wrote:
> I think the real issue here is that most verbs take some kind of 
> object, and on a case-by-case basis, in order to fully understand each 
> verb, you have to understand what kind of object it takes. While I 
> like the idea of the term “locative verb”, I think that it might tempt 
> people to oversimplify the relationship between verbs and objects by 
> classifying one type of verb that uses a location for an object as 
> different from all other verbs that use something other than a 
> location as an object.

I'm not going to pretend that I have carefully read your entire email. 
Instead, I'll respond to this first bit. I'm not declaring a new world 
order in which all worship the locative/non-locative divide. I'm just 
saying that /locative verb/ is more accurate than /verb of motion./

We started saying /verb of motion/ when your interview with Okrand was 
published and we were dazzled by the implications. The thing is, we 
didn't notice that this concept had been with us all along, in that 
passage of TKD that I quoted before. The interview focused on verbs that 
had to do with motion, and indeed these will probably be the majority of 
such verbs, and we started calling them /verbs of motion./ Okrand didn't 
use the phrase, we did. Okrand didn't link this type of verb to motion, 
we did.

Then we start confusing ourselves, trying to figure out which verbs 
involve motion, when what's really going on is that we need to look for 
verbs that involve /location./ That's what TKD tells us. It doesn't use 
the term /locative verb/ any more than Okrand used the term /verb of 
motion,/ but it's a nicely descriptive term.

That's all. You're speaking in absolutes; I'm just acknowledging a 
useful term.


> So, I think “locative verb” is a good idea to open one’s mind to the 
> sometimes complex and arbitrary relationship between a verb and its 
> objects, but I’m not sure it classifies enough verbs into one group to 
> fully function as a useful classifier. I also think that it might 
> group together verbs that don’t really work exactly the same way, and 
> we might become tempted to think that they do when they don’t.

That's exactly what I think /verb of motion/ does.


-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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