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?

Why not compound verbs?   I don't understand why one of the two types has to
be a prefix.   For that matter, I'm unclear about the difference between
your scheme and compounding, other than the invarient "manner + trajectory"
order, and possible morphological changes in the "prefix" that I don't know
about.

You could vary the order of the roots for stylistic purposes.

sneak + enter = sneak in                 enter + sneak = enter
surreptitiously
chug + exit = chug out                      exit + chug = exit with the
sound of active machinery

BTW, I found And's comments to be educational.

Jim

>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.