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