Re: motion verbs in Tokana

Matt:
> Recently I did a revamping of motion verbs in Tokana, and I
> thought I'd share what I came up with.  Originally motion verbs
> were of two types, which I might call "trajectory verbs" and
> "manner verbs".  Trajectory verbs specify the direction/goal/
> source/etc. of a moving entity, while manner verbs focus on
> the means of locomotion which the entity is moving:
[...]
> I've now added a third category of motion verbs which
> conflate both manner and trajectory.  These verbs are
> formed by prefixing one of the trajectory verbs with a
> "manner prefix", where the manner prefixes are
> derived in quasi-regular fashion from the manner verbs:
[...]
> What do people think?
As Basileus said, it seems odd that it is the manner that is prefixed
rather than the trajectory, since one would expect a finite number
of prefixes and a nonfinite number of bases and one would expect a
finite number of trajectories and a nonfinite number of manners.

> Has anyone else played around with motion verbs in interesting ways?
Well, Livagian does not "play around with things". It takes a very stern,
severe, rigorous, furrowed-browed analytical apparatus to them. And in
this instance it goes down the English/manner-conflation route more
than the Romance/path-conflation route. More exactly, the predicate
lexicalizes the manner of motion and has two arguments, one for the
theme/mover and one for the path. There are also predicates for
different sorts of paths, and these have an argument for the theme/mover
traversing them, but not for the manner. This means that there is no
need for a generic predicate "go" or "move" that is to be used when no
manner is specified.

Note that the above holds only for manners that entail motion, such as
crawling. Livagian has no counterpart of English's "The train chugged into
the station". In Liv you'd render this more like "the train entered the
station while chugging".

In Lojban you could do it in any of these ways, but to make maximum use
of the prefabricated machinery you'd use the form where the manner is
lexicalized and then specify the path with adverbial-like elements.

--And.