Re: motion verbs in Tokana

Basilius wrote:

>On Wed, 23 Feb 2000 15:39:03 -0600, Matt Pearson
><jmpearson@...> wrote:
>
>>Tokana used to have these constructions too, forms like "up-climb",
>>"out-go", "away-run", "back-come".  But after I purged Tokana of
>>prepositions, having prepositionally-derived directional prefixes
>>began to seem anomalous.  With the introduction of manner prefixes,
>>trajectory is now encoded solely by verb roots, and the directional
>>prefixes can be eliminated.  So instead of "niokpenta" (= "back-run")
>>for "run back", Tokana now has "paniokta" (= "running-return", i.e.
>>"return by running").  This new way of doing things seems to me
>>to fit the 'spirit' of Tokana better.
>
>It is not so unusual that Tokana uses the 'return running' type instead
>of 'run back'.
Right.  I borrowed the idea from Romance languages, which, according
to the linguist Talmy Givon, typically express trajectory by means
of verbs, and manner by means of participles or other adjuncts--as
opposed to English, which typically expresses manner by means of
verbs and trajectory by means of prepositions or preposition-like
particles.  So where in Spanish one would say "The bottle returned
to the shore (by) floating", in English one would say "The bottle
floated back to the shore":

                English Spanish
Manner          float   (by) floating
Trajectory      back    return

>I find it much more intriguing that it combines a limited set of
>manner modifiers (prefixes) with (structurally) unlimited number of
>trajectory verbs. (I believe that 'limited' is implied by the
>'quasi-regular fashion' of derivation mentioned in your previous post.)
>I immediately recall quite a few natlangs that do it the other way round:
>unlimited number of 'manner verbs' combined with a limited set of
>'spatial' modifiers (no matter which component is syntactically
>governing). E. g.:
>
>Adverbial modifiers (becoming preverbs) in most I-E langs
>Same, repeated, in all Germanic langs ('separable prefixes' and the like)
>Japanese (compound verbs incorporating the stem of a 'direction verb')
>Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmer, and a lot of other SE Asian langs ('direction
> verbs' used as modifiers)
>At least some Polynesian langs (special syntactic constructions with
> 'direction verbs' conveying concepts like 'run back').
>
>Is there any special reason for this?
I'm not sure what you're asking here:  Whether there's any special reason
why Tokana is the way it is, or if you're talking about the natlang
strategies that you list above.

>At any rate, the Tokana system appears truly original. All this looks
>worth exploring in depth. I am really interested to hear more about it,
>especially if you come to any generalizations.
I'll let you know...

Matt.