Re: Syntactic differences within parts of speech

>I'm picturing verb classifiers as generalized (or so-called 'light')
>verbs that convey notions like 'motion', 'change of state', 'reflexive
>action', 'transitive action', 'direct causation', 'accidental action',
>'repetitive process/action', etc. Am I in the ballpark, or did you have
>something different in mind?
>
>
>
This is indeed the basis of most verb classifier systems (see Australian
langs). The verbs used in this way have been called auxilliaries (and
indeed they may be, depending on your definition), but they do not
usually mark TAM (unlike auxilliaries in more familiar languages), but
rather classify the action in terms of its general type (causation,
telicity, how the abs argument is affected, general type of action
(motion etc)). Here is a list of my verb classifier meanings, only some
of which have forms associated with them (I'm in the process of filling
in the list... this is a recent project):

http://www.chrisdb.me.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=48

A book you may want to take a look at is "Verb Classification in
Australian Languages" by McGregor... much of the book is waffle or
supposition that I found vaguely uninteresting, but several systems that
fall under the label of "Verb Classification" (as defined by McGregor)
are described.