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The encoding of motion events in the language of the Rigveda: A preliminary study

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Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica

Corso di Laurea Specialistica in Linguistica

Tesi di Laurea

THE ENCODING OF MOTION EVENTS

IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE RIGVEDA

(A PRELIMINARY STUDY)

Relatore:

Ch.mo prof. Franco Fanciullo

Correlatori:

Ch.mo prof. Saverio Sani

Ch.ma prof.ssa Giovanna Marotta

Candidato:

Saverio Dalpedri

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Index

Abbreviations ... 3

Symbols ... 6

1 Introduction ... 7

1.1 Structure of the thesis ... 7

1.2 Conventions and editions ... 7

2 Typology of motion events ... 9

2.1 Talmy’s approach ... 9

2.2 Criticism to Talmy’s typology ... 16

2.2.1 Shortcomings of the notion of satellite ... 16

2.2.2 Talmyan typology as an epiphenomenon? ... 18

2.2.3 Lack of congruence between syntactic framing and verbal conflation .. 18

2.2.4 Variationist approaches ... 19

2.2.5 Validity restricted to event types ... 20

2.3 Comparative stylistics in narratives and the lexicon ... 20

3 Typology of verb semantics ... 22

3.1 Aktionsart ... 22

3.2 Split intransitivity – or the Unaccusative Hypothesis ... 25

3.2.1 Semantic correlates of Unaccusativity ... 26

3.2.2 Verbs of motion and Unaccusativity ... 28

3.2.3 Manner of motion and Unaccusativity ... 30

3.2.4 The causative/inchoative alternation ... 32

4 Unaccusativity in Vedic... 38

4.1 -tá- verbal adjectives ... 38

4.1.1 -ná- verbal adjectives... 39

4.1.2 A reassessment ... 41

4.1.3 Syntactic configurations of verbal adjectives in Early Vedic... 45

4.1.4 Resultative participle of motion verbs ... 47

4.2 Resultative constructions ... 55

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4.4 Cognate-object constructions ... 67

4.5 Agent nouns ... 74

4.5.1 dʰánutar(a)-, dʰánutrī- and related ... 79

4.6 The causative/inchoative alternation in Vedic... 88

4.7 Motion events and valency alternations ... 95

4.7.1 Disentangling éti :: áyate :: inóvati/ı́nvati :: ī́yate ... 98

5 Conclusions ... 107

5.1 The status of the Local Particles ... 107

5.2 Patterns of motion encoding ... 108

5.3 The encoding of change-of-state events ... 112

References ... 117

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Abbreviations

1,2,3 1st, 2nd, 3rd person A agent ABL ablative ACC accusative ACT active AOR aorist AP adpositional phrase

Arm. Classical Armenian

AUX auxiliary

AV(Ś) Atharvaveda (Śaunakīya)

AVP Atharvaveda Paippalāda

Av. Avestan

Br. Brāhman ̣a(s) (i.e. Vedic prose)

CAUS causative

COMP comparative

CVB converb (gerund, ‘absolutive’)

DAT dative

DB Darius Bīsutūn

DZ Darius Suez

DEF definite (article)

DEM demonstrative DU dual Eng. English EWAia s. Mayrhofer (1992, 1996) F feminine Ge s. Geldner (1951) Ger. German GEN genitive Gr. Ancient Greek Hitt. Hittite IMP imperative IMPERF imperfect IND indicative

INDF indefinite (article/pronoun)

INF ‘infinitive’

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INS instrumental

INT intensive

It. Italian

JB s. Jamison & Brereton (2014)

Lat. Latin

LIV2 s. Rix & Kümmel (2001)

LOC locative

LP local particle(s)

M masculine

MID middle, i.e. non-active voice

MS Maitrāyaṇī-Saṃhitā

Myc. Mycenaean Greek

N neuter

NOM nominative

NP noun phrase

O direct object

OInd. Old Indian (Old Indo-Aryan)

OPers. Old Persian

OPT optative P patient PIE Proto-Indo-European PIIr. Proto-Indo-Iranian PF perfect PFV perfective (aspect) PL plural PN proper noun POSS possessive PP prepositional phrase PPF pluperfect

PPP ‘past passive participle’, i.e. -tá-/-ná- verbal adjective

PRS present

PST past (tense)

PTCP participle

PW s. Böhtlingk & Roth (1855-1875)

Q question particle

REFL reflexive

REL relative pronoun

RV R̥gveda/R̥gvedic

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5 ŚB Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa SBJV subjunctive SG singular Skr. Classical Sanskrit STAT stative SUPL superlative TS Taittirīya-Saṃhitā VOC vocative

WG s. Witzel & Gotō (2007) WGS s. Witzel et al. (2013)

YS(p) Yajurveda-Saṃhitā (prose sections)

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Symbols

°xyz “linguistic material omitted before °”

*xyz reconstructed form

**xyz agrammatical or non-attested form

?xyz grammaticality disputed

+ “and in later texts” (e.g. RV+ = “form attested since the RV”)

+xyz xyz is a corrected form

< “from”

> “becomes”

∧ logical connective AND

| daṇḍa (i.e. semi-verse boundary)

ˈ pāda boundary not marked by a daṇḍa

x_ y sandhi resolution

→ “remodelled into”

← “remodelled from”

= “equal to”; clitic boundary

≈ “similar to”

:: “correlated with”

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1 Introduction

The aim of this study is to provide a starting point for a synchronic description of motion verbs, i.e. verbs expressing translational motion of an entity in space, and motion event constructions, that is strategies expressing motion events, in the language of the R̥gveda (RV), the most ancient text written in an Indo-Aryan (and even Indo-Iranian) language1.

The motivation behind this survey is twofold: firstly, the language of the RV, with its antiquity and intricacies, still offers abundant material for investigation, even after two centuries of intense Western philological work. We carry on this approach, enriched by the insights gained from the contemporary linguistic theory. Secondly, the encoding of motion events – and, more generally, lexicalisation patterns – are still a debated problem and a fruitful field of investigation in the aforementioned theories.

Our research will not be confined to the study of motion verbs, but will touch upon collateral points and more general issues, such as the problem of the -tá-/-ná- ‘past passive participles’, local particles, resultative clauses and the syntactic typology of the language of the RV.

1.1 Structure of the thesis

We begin this work by sketching out the theoretical framework generally applied in the study of motion events (ch. 2); a section devoted to aspects of verbal semantics and phenomena at the interface syntax-semantics (Unaccusativity Hypothesis) follows in ch. 3. In ch. 4 the syntactic manifestations of Unaccusativity in the language of the RV are investigated, along with the discussion of a number of case-studies from the group of motion verbs. While ch. Errore. L'origine riferimento non è stata trovata. attempts to summarise salient properties of the local particles, in the conclusive chapter a typological characterisation of the Early Vedic will be gained keeping the verbs of motion in the foreground.

1.2 Conventions and editions

Since the label “Vedic Sanskrit”, though quite widespread, is a contradiction in terms – Sanskrit being the linguistic form of Old Indo-Aryan in use since about 500 BCE – we shall refrain from its use. In its turn, the term “Vedic” is not satisfactory either, for the Vedic language does not build a unitary whole: according to Witzel (1989:121), it is

1 This is not the place to speculate on the exact chronology of the composition of the text: for an

orientation, one is not far from the truth in assuming a time span encompassing 1400–1000 BCE. For this matter and some general information, we have at our disposal some valid, recent surveys. I would at least recall the introductions in Sani (2000:13–60), Witzel & Gotō (2007:427–83), Jamison & Brereton (2014:1– 83) and the treatment in Gonda (1975:7–265).

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possible to recognise at least five chronological stages in the corpus of Vedic literature. So, when referring to the language of the RV, we will call it “Early Vedic” as a synonym of “R̥gvedic language”. This, in turn, does not imply that we assume that the language of the RV is chronologically unitary: as is well known, many hymns in the first and tenth book are held to be composed in a later period, perhaps Early Middle Vedic.

Along with the metrically restored text by van Nooten & Holland (1994), we will rely on the edition by Gippert (2000): for this reason, the aspiration of stops and postalveolar affricates is noted in apex rather than being adscript – then, e.g. ph bh instead of ph bh, indicating respectively [ph] and [bɦ]. This choice reflects the monophonemic character of the sounds at issue. The transcription is discordant from the IAST standard in another regard: syllabic liquidae are written with a ring below the letter instead of a dot – so, r̥ and l̥ in place of ṛ and l ̣ (in our transcription, l ̣ represents unambiguously the retroflex lateral approximant which stands in allophonic variation with intervocalic retroflex ḍ; the same applies, mutatis mutandis, for l ̣h). Both divergences are justified by conventions in Indo-European linguistics, rather than by current use in most recent works on (R̥g)vedic. The translations given here are taken, where not otherwise stated, from Jamison & Brereton (2014); at times, the readings by Geldner (1951), Sani (2000), Witzel & Gotō (2007), Witzel et al. (2013) were taken into account as well.

Old Indian verbal roots are given in their full-grade and in italics, in accordance with Mayrhofer (1992, 1996) and in contrast with the traditional Indian use: thus, BHAVI in lieu of bhū. The meaning of these will be at times given in German, for in German are the lexica (PW, EWAia, Graßmann 1996, Krisch 2006, 2012) which we consulted.

In treating Early Vedic material, we relied upon Alexander Lubotsky’s concordances (1997), which were of greatest help. It must be taken into consideration that the lack of an open annotated corpus did not make our research easy to carry on, and its results are hardly to be taken as conclusive.

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2 Typology of motion events

2.1 Talmy’s approach

The theoretical framework used here is based on Talmy’s work (1985)2, which singled out the relevant components of motion events in a number of cognitive domains and the way in which they are lexicalised across languages. On the basis of the observed regularities, Talmy proposed a typological classification which has proven to be still valid.

Before delving into fine-grained theoretical speculation, some background information will be provided. According to Talmy, it is possible to identify four internal components in motion events3 (Talmy 1985:61):

(1) a. FIGURE: the entity that is moving

b. GROUND: the entity which acts as a spatial reference point for the motion of the figure

c. MOTION: the presence per se of motion in the event4

d. PATH: the path or trajectory followed by the figure with respect to the Ground

In addition to the aforementioned basic semantic components, a further one may be added, that is, MANNER, which stands for the manner of motion whereby the figure moves along the path (e.g. by swimming, flying or walking): this is not an internal component, and can be associated to the motion event as external co-event. An additional component is CAUSE, which, unlike manner, is not inherent to the motion event. These semantic elements need not to be taken as features pertaining to the semantic level of representation of the individual languages, but rather as universal components of the event, intuitively cognized by the speakers.

It seems reasonable to restrict our scope to non-agentive and self-agentive motion, that is, to motion events where an entity (a figure in Talmyan terms) involuntarily or voluntarily moves, without a discernible outer source. Caused motion will be taken into

2 A revised and expanded version of Talmy’s original contribution can be found as the chapter 1 of

Talmy (2000); in few cases, reference to this second version will be made, if containing up-to-date or fitting description of the framework in use.

3 In a subsequent refinement of his theory, Talmy extends his classification to events as a whole, and

particularly to event constructions with a resultant state: see further on and especially the chapter 3 in Talmy (2000).

4 In the present study, motion will always be intended as translational motion, with a change in the

location of the figure over time – whereas Talmy considers self-contained motion (oscillation, rotation, dilation) as well, in particular as a subtype of the manner component, cf. Talmy (2000:35–36). For this reason, predicates like tremble, shake et sim. will be excluded.

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consideration only when it is relevant for its non-caused side, like in morpho-syntactic alternations involving morphological causatives or the middle voice of verbs of caused motion.

In his original, 1985 typological classification, Talmy classified motion events according to the type of semantic component that can be conflated (that is, incorporated, expressed) into the verb root: these can be manner-incorporating, path-incorporating or figure-incorporating. This model also allows for a classification of the world’s languages, since:

a language uses only one of these types for the verb in its most characteristic expression of motion. Here, ‘characteristic’ means that: (i) it is colloquial in style, rather than literary, stilted, etc.; (ii) it is frequent in occurrence in speech, rather than only occasional; (iii) it is pervasive, rather than limited, that is, a wide range of semantic notions are expressed in this type. (Talmy 1985:62)

The manner-incorporating type conflates manner in the main verb:

(2) a. The rock rolled down the hill. b. The bottle floated out of the cave.

Thus, (2a) can be decomposed by representing manner as a separate subordinate clause representing the co-event (Talmy 2000:30):

(2) a'. [the rock MOVED down the hill] WITH-THE-MANNER-OF [the rock rolled] According to Talmy, manner-incorporating languages or language families include Indo-European (with the exception of Romance language, although cf. 2.2.4), Finno-Ugric, Chinese.

The path-incorporating type expresses path instead of manner in the main verb, along with the motion component. If a co-event of manner is expressed in the same sentence, it is usually coded as an independent constituent, either an adverbial or a gerund; in many languages such a constituent can sound stylistically awkward, such that manner is often omitted since it is irrelevant5 (Talmy 1985:68–69):

(3) La botella entró (flotando) a la cueva. (Spanish) the bottle enter:3SG.PST (floating) to the cave

‘The bottle floated into the cave.’

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Among path-incorporating languages or language families, we may find Romance, Semitic, Japanese, Korean, Tamil, Turkish, Polynesian, most Bantu, most Mayan. English possesses a spare group of path-inflating verbs, like enter, exit, ascend, descend, cross, pass, circle, advance, proceed, approach, arrive, depart, return, join, recede, rise, leave, near, follow: one can easily notice how the vast majority of them are so-called Latinate verbs, e.g. borrowings from Latin or Romance. Nonetheless, English shows in this case a genuine, Spanish-type pattern, expressing manner non-obligatorily in a separate constituent – with the usual awkwardness: cf. the rock passed our tent in sliding (Talmy 1985:72).

The last type, figure-incorporating, seems to be typologically quite rare: only Amerindian languages such as Atsugewi and Navajo are mentioned as belonging to this group. Here, salient properties of the figure are incorporated in the main verb (Talmy 1985:74):

(4) ’-w > uh- st’aq’ -ik: < -a (Atsugewi)

<3SG.SBJ.FACT> by.gravity lie.runny.icky.material on.ground ‘Runny icky material (like guts) is lying on the ground’.

Although being typologically rare, this pattern of lexicalization is attested in a couple of English verbs as well, such as the non-agentive verb rain (rain being the figure) and the agentive spit (causing spit to move) (Talmy 1985:72–73).

In addition to these “pure” types, Talmy identifies two other systems of conflation: the split and the parallel. In a split (also called complementary) system, a language employs one type of conflation for certain motion events, and another type for other types of motion events. For instance, in Spanish

motion events whose paths are conceptualized as crossing a boundary – as would be typical for ‘into’ and ‘out of’ – are the ones that are represented with the path conflation pattern. But motion events with a path conceptualized as not crossing a boundary – as would be typical for ‘from’, ‘to’, and ‘toward’ – are characteristically represented with the co-event [manner, SD] conflation pattern, just like in English, as in corrí de mi casa a la escuela, ‘I ran from my house to the school’. (Talmy 2000:65)

In the parallel system of conflation, a language can use different conflation types in the expression of the same type of motion event. Modern Greek exemplifies this kind of conflation when expressing autonomous or self-agentive motion by using both types of conflation indiscriminately (Talmy 2000:66):

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(5) a. etreksa mesa (s-to spiti) (Modern Greek)

I.ran in (to-the house.ACC) ‘I ran in (-to the house)’

In (5a) manner is conflated into the main verb and in (5b) path is, with manner optionally expressed in a gerund.

At this point of the discussion, the notion of SATELLITE needs to be introduced, since it will prove to be crucial to the method and the aims of the present research. This is defined as

the grammatical category of any constituent other than a noun-phrase or prepositional-phrase6 complement that is in a sister relation [i.e., as a modifier relates

to its head – SD] to the verb root. It relates to the verb root as a dependent to a head. The satellite, which can be either a bound affix or a free word, is thus intended to encompass all of the following grammatical forms, which traditionally have been largely treated independently of each other: English verb particles, German separable and inseparable verb prefixes, Latin or Russian verb prefixes, Chinese verb complements […], and Atsugewi polysynthetic affixes around the verb root. (Talmy 2000:102)

This definition is however debatable, as it will be discussed below (cf. 2.2.1).

Subsequently, Talmy introduced a complementary typology for motion events (Talmy 1991, 2000:chapter 3), holding constant a particular semantic component – the path – and observing in which morphosyntactic constituents this was characteristically encoded. Languages were found to fall into two main categories: the path was characteristically expressed either by the main verb, in VERB-FRAMED languages (V-languages), or by a satellite and/or a preposition, in SATELLITE-FRAMED languages (S-languages). Since motion events are defined as change of location in time, it seems natural to give path a special prominence: the core information in the expressions of motion is the direction, the course, the trajectory of the moving figure.

6 As it will be discussed in 2.2.1, adpositional phrases can be, and by some authors are, taken as satellites.

Even Talmy recognizes in later works the validity of collapsing satellites (directional particles or preverbs) and adpositional phrases into a super-category.

(5) b. bika (trekhondas) (s-to spiti) I.entered (running) (to-the house.ACC) ‘I entered (the house) (running)’

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Both typologies address the same set of typological relationships, but adopt two different perspectives. The original three-way classification holds the verb – that is, a particular morphosyntactic component – constant, and it looks at which semantic component is characteristically conflated into it. The latter perspective, the bipartite typology, reverses the original perspective in keeping constant the path component, which is argued to function as the core of what structurally frames the entire event at the semantic level. To keep them distinct, the former classification was later called the MOTION-ACTUATING TYPOLOGY, since it is the verb that activates or energizes the sentence’s proposition, whereas the latter was called the MOTION-FRAMING TYPOLOGY, since path can be considered to frame or structure the whole motion event (Ibarretxe Antuñano 2005:325–27). “Framing” in this context refers to the process of mapping the path onto elements in the motion expression, either verbs or satellites.

These typologies are not mutually exclusive, but they are complementary and can be both used to describe how motion events are encoded in a language. For instance, English is characteristically manner-incorporating, conflating the co-event in the verb root, and satellite-framed, since path is expressed in the satellite and/or a preposition. Generalising, path-incorporating languages are verb-framed, whereas both manner- and figure-incorporating languages are satellite-framed, since path is expressed in a satellite and/or a preposition.

From these generalisations, some consequences follow. As discussed earlier, satellite-framed languages, mapping the path onto the satellite, leave room for the incorporation of other semantic components into the main verb, such as manner. For this reason, it is expectable that S-languages possess a wider lexicon of manner-of-motion verbs – in contrast to the small set of such verbs in V-languages. Moreover, S-languages allow for the expression of complex paths in a single verb phrase, since they can accumulate multiple occurrences of satellites – quite the reverse, verb-framed languages can only express one path in one verb phrase. These generalisations will be tested against the Vedic material.

It is interesting to notice that Talmy’s typology has a strong predictive force on how languages encode other semantic components. Where a language characteristically places the path component of a motion event, there it typically also places the corresponding component of other types of non-motion events, e.g. the resultant state in an event of state change, and the aspect7 in an event of temporal contouring (Ibarretxe Antuñano

2005:327). Within this generalisation, the path component was subsumed under the label of CORE SCHEMA, i.e. a broad semantic category comprising result, aspect and argument

7 Where “aspect” is not to be intended strictly as “grammatical/verbal/viewpoint aspect” (like by the

opposition “perfective” vs. “imperfective” aspect, “progressive”…) – or, at least, not only, as seen in (9b) and (10b). It is rather a concoction of distributional patterns of action, degree of completion, manner, intention and phases.

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structure properties in addition to path, and the event as a whole was called the MACRO -EVENT.

That is particularly remarkable in the case of resultative constructions with derived states, e.g.:

(6) a. Sam painted the wall white b. She shot her husband dead c. John hammered the metal flat

(7) a. Mario imbiancò la parete (Italian)

M. whitewashed the wall ‘M. painted the wall white’

(7) b. Marta uccise suo marito (sparando-gli) M. murdered POSS husband (shooting-he:DAT) ‘M. shot her husband dead’

(7) c. Giovanni ha appiattito la lamina (a martellate) G. AUX flattened the foil (by hammer.blows) ‘G. hammered the metal foil flat’

English typically expresses the resultant state in the satellite, as it does with path, whereas Italian lexicalises in the main verb the change of state as an activity. Such a syntactic behaviour correlates in the sense that, if a language encodes path (or, broadly speaking, the core schema) in the satellite, it is expected to show the resultant state of a resultative construction8 in the same position, and vice versa. This behaviour is pervasive

8 Here, we take the label “resultative constructions” in a narrow sense, treating them as complex

predicates made up of a main (matrix) verb and a resultant state, in which an argument acts as simultaneously the subject of the resultative predicate and the direct object of the main verb. A resultative predicate – which is, crucially, a non-verbal predicate – denotes a property which its subject has at the end of the event expressed by the main verb. It corresponds roughly to a sub-class of Nedjalkov’s classification of resultatives, that is, to object-oriented resultatives. Notice that a subject-oriented construction like the lake froze solid is an only apparent exception, since the grammatical subject is, according to multi-level approaches to syntax in the framework of the Unaccusative Hypothesis (for which, s. 3.2), an object in the deep structure, because the verb is unaccusative.

Nedjalkov defines resultatives as verbs that express a state implying a previous event (action or process) it has resulted from, s. Nedjalkov & Jaxontov (1988). According to such a definition, (8) is a resultative, with the implication that the state of being closed derives from a previous event of closing (chiudere):

(8) La finestra è chiusa (Italian) the window is close.PTCP

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in (some) satellite-framed languages, so that one can encounter “quirky” sentences like (9):

(9) Kauf dich glücklich! (German)

shop:IMP.2SG REFL.2SG happy

‘Shop yourself happy! / Shop till you get happy’

As for the case of the expression of temporal contouring, one can compare (10) with (11):

(10) a. Er hat das Buch fertig-gelesen (German)

he AUX the book to.completion-read.PTCP ‘He finished reading the book’

(10) b. Er liest gerade ein Buch he reads right.now a book ‘He’s reading a book’

(11) a. Ha finito di leggere il libro (Italian)

AUX.PRS.3SG finished of read:INF the book ‘He finished reading the book’

(11) b. Sta legge-ndo un libro stays read-ing a book ‘He’s reading a book’

In (10a), German employs a separable verb particle (satellite) to express a degree of completion, whereas Italian (11a) uses a different construction, namely a phasic aspectual verb as main verb with an infinitive clause.

(10b) and (11b) encode the progressive aspect: German does so by employing the adverb (satellite) gerade for non-past events. On the other side, Italian uses a periphrastic construction (verb form stare + gerund of the main verb), with the aspect component encoded verbally, although not so straightforwardly as in the main verb form, i.e. in a gerund. One can passingly notice that the commonly held view of German as a language lacking aspect is to be rejected: it does indeed express grammatical aspect, but it does not lexicalise it in the verb.

In satellite-framed languages, satellites are a possible locus of encoding other grammatical categories, such as valency. Compare the following German sentences:

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(12) a. Hans hat sein-er Freundin ein-Ø (German)

H. AUX.PRS.3SG POSS-DAT girlfriend INDF-ACC neu-es Auto ge-schenk-t.

new-ACC car PTCP-give-PTCP ‘Hans gave his girlfriend a new car as a present’

As it is evident from the comparison of (12b) with (12a), the German prefix (satellite) be- signals a shift in the valency structure of the verb. German seems to employ such a device quite extensively, expressing more types of focus-shifting on the participants: compare kaufen ‘to buy’ ~ kaufen ‘to sell’, leihen/borgen ‘to borrow’ ~ ver-leihen/ver-borgen ‘to lend’, werfen ‘to throw’ ~ be-werfen ‘to pelt’. It will be shown that such a behaviour could – at least partly – be ascribed to the Vedic language as well.

2.2 Criticism to Talmy’s typology

Since Talmy’s seminal work (1985, 1991), many scholars working on how world’s languages encode motion events have challenged the intrinsic rigidity of the Talmyan classification. They adjusted it to better encompass the variability encountered by working on a fine-grained perspective, on one side, and modified some theoretical issues, on the other side. The most important studies in this sense are Aske (1989), Slobin & Hoiting (1994), Slobin (1996, 2004), Beavers et al. (2010), Croft et al. (2010) – their findings will be briefly summarized and discussed hereafter.

2.2.1 Shortcomings of the notion of satellite

Even though the set of forms that can function in a language as satellites often overlaps with the set of forms of another grammatical category in that language (in the case of English, that of prepositions), the grammatical category of satellite was introduced to account for an observable commonality, both syntactic and semantic, across all these forms: that is, its common function in satellite-framed languages as the characteristic site for the expression, among other components or grammatical categories, of path (Talmy 2000:102). However, such a justification seems quite weak, if not even tautological.

(12) b. Hans hat sein-e Freundin mit ein-em H. AUX.PRS.3SG POSS-ACC girlfriend with INDF-DAT neu-en Auto be-schenk-t

new-DAT car SAT-give-PTCP

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Although not strictly compelling, it seems useful to recall how Talmy stressed categorically that satellites and adpositions should be kept apart, providing some diagnostic tools. In the case of English, one can mention the lack of identical membership (there are forms which only function as satellites and never act as prepositions – like apart – and vice versa), the lack of semantic identity (different senses according to the class they belong), differences in syntactic properties (government/rection of a nominal in the case of prepositions vs. modification of the verb in the case of satellites), differences in positional properties and in stress.

This notwithstanding, since satellite-framed languages like English normally have prepositional phrases expressing path too9, thus serving the same functions as Talmyan satellites, and given the lack of a cross-linguistically valid definition, this very distinction ceases to be useful (cf. among others Croft et al. 2010:206). One can thus subsume both Talmyan satellites (essentially, adverbial particles and affixes like preverbs) and adpositions under a macro-category that we will refer to in our study as Local Particles10 (in short, LPs). Given the fluid distinction among the syntactic functions of the LPs in Vedic (for which, cf. ch. Errore. L'origine riferimento non è stata trovata.) – and, to some extent, in other ancient Indo-European languages – it is advisable to adopt a broader approach on the issue.

Furthermore, Beavers et al. (2010:338) object that satellites are not proper constituents, but that adpositional phrases are: this is, for instance, shown by the it-clefting test:

(13) a. It was out of the house that I went, not into the house. b. *It was out that I went of the house, not in.

9 More exactly, the nominal being the ground and the preposition expressing the path. In the sentence

John ran to the park, the path is encoded neither in the verb nor in the satellite, this being absent in accordance with Talmy’s definition of satellite, so that we cannot even talk about satellite-framing. It is nonetheless obvious that a path is present and is encoded in the adposition(al phrase). Bare nominals can encode path as well (+ ground, s. John ran home), especially in languages with a rich locative morphology like Vedic – in this case, path (or goal or source) marking is expressed through determinant phrases, that is, spatial cases (accusative, locative, ablative and, to a lesser degree, instrumental).

10 Of course, that is not to say that all satellites are Local Particles. In Talmy’s typology, as discussed

above, satellites are the possible loci of encoding semantic material other than spatial relationships (path), like resultant state, manner (although typologically rare, Nez Perce being maybe the only language with a fully developed system of manner preverbs), aspectual contouring, cause, valency. It should be stressed that Romance gerunds expressing manner of motion are not to be considered as satellites: since they ultimately are inflected (though non-finite) verb forms, they belong to an open class category, whereas satellites are always closed-class items. Vedic gerunds, also called absolutives, are as well non-finite verbal forms expressing adverbial subordination, thus falling under the category of converbs, that is “verbal adverbs” in the terms of Haspelmath (1995:3). For an in-depth, synchronic and diachronic analysis of Sanskrit absolutive forms, s. Tikkanen (1987). It can be noted that, although overseen by the traditional scholarship on Vedic grammar, the so-called “infinitives” of the older parts of the Veda need to be considered converbs as well, since they are in all cases analysable as non-obligatory adjuncts – s. Zehnder (2011b).

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The satellite out alone cannot stay in a sister relation to the verb, but the entire prepositional phrase out of the house does indeed, for it, only, is a constituent. This diagnostic invalidates Talmy’s definition (for whom satellites are constituents), and nullifies the distinction between satellites and prepositions (satellites are intransitive prepositions).

2.2.2 Talmyan typology as an epiphenomenon?

From the brief survey sketched above (2.1), one can reverse his viewpoint and wonder if the preferred strategies of encoding motion events in one language are not rather the reflex of more general patterns of encoding morpho-syntactic and semantic characteristics of that language, i.e. properties not specific to motion events. Beavers et al. (2010) argue that the presence of, among others, resultative constructions of the type in (6) and (9) relates with the presence of satellites, in that encoding path in the satellite in S-languages would follow from general grammatical properties that constrain the description of other events. In other words, the different types of motion event encoding may just be a rather peripheral epiphenomenon of other properties of the language. It has been suggested that Talmyan typologies may be a by-product of the interaction of more basic typological parameters with factors affecting how the relevant resources are used.

2.2.3 Lack of congruence between syntactic framing and verbal conflation

If equating verb-framing and path conflation into the verb is an obvious consequence of their definitions, doing so with satellite-framing and manner conflation is not. This leads to an asymmetry among the two pairs. In the case of S-languages, speakers may choose to conflate manner into the verb, but they do not have to – and they often do not, choosing generic or deictic motion verbs like go and come, with the option of encoding manner in a separate constituent in the same way it happens in V-framed languages. One can compare these sentences from Beavers et al. (2010:367):

(14) a. John moved stealthily out of the bedroom. b. John stole out of the bedroom.

c. John left/exited the bedroom stealthily.

They all express the same semantic content, but (14a) encodes manner in an adverb and path in the adposition, with a neutral motion verb; (14b) encodes manner in the verb and path in the adposition; in (14c) it is the path to be expressed in the verb, and the manner in an adverb. The only difference lies in the degree of spontaneousness or naturalness of the clauses, salience playing a major role. That is to say that the sole presence of neutral or deictic motion verbs along with the expression of manner in external constituents is

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not a reason to describe a variety as verb-framed – indeed, it seems that all languages have path verbs (and, accordingly, V-framed encoding options, cf. Beavers et al. 2010:345). It will be shown that this is the case for the Vedic language. In other words, not only is the choice of a preferred framing pattern a statistical tendency rather than a categorical distinction, but there is also considerable variation within and across satellite-framed languages with respect to what is encoded in the verb.

2.2.4 Variationist approaches

We have seen how English, classified as a satellite-framed language, possesses a small group of verbs (mostly Latinates, but not all: cf. leave, rise, fall, sink and the deictic couple come vs. go) which encode path. The same can be said, mutatis mutandis, about a tacitly assumed verb-framed language as Italian. It is well known that northern Italian dialects exhibit a wide range of so-called verb-particle constructions, that is of predicates formed by a verbal base and a post-verbal locative particle, in all similar to their English equivalents: cf. Bresciano ègner zó ‘to come down’, andà zó ‘to go down’ vs. Italian scendere ‘to go/come down’. Lesser known is that Standard Italian itself allows for a rather ample usage of satellite-framed constructions, either purely compositional (15a) or lexicalised (15b) – for which cf. Iacobini & Masini (2007):

(15) a. Vai fuori! (Italian)

go:IMP out

(15) a'. Esci! exit:IMP ‘Go out!’

(15) b. È stato messo sotto da un’auto. AUX:3SG been put:PTCP under by a car

(15) b'. È stato investito da un’auto. AUX:3SG been run.over:PTCP by a car ‘He was run over by a car’.

It can be additionally noticed that the satellite-framed constructions in (15a) and (15b) do indeed have an expected verb-framed counterpart in (15a') and (15b') with a path verb – one can easily refer to table 2 in Iacobini & Masini (2007:163) for synthetic (verb-framed) vs. analytic (satellite-framed) forms. Italian, thus, displays at times a hybrid, and somehow redundant, system of motion verbs: the choice of the type of framing seems to lie in a higher degree of colloquialness in the case of the verb-particle constructions. Moreover, it seems noteworthy that some prefixes (satellites in Talmyan

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terms) are still productive11 in Italian, like “aspectual” (cf. fn. 6) iterative ri- ‘re-, again’ in ri-fare ‘do again’, ri-dire ‘say again’. This challenges a rigid typological classification of languages as a whole, for it seems that for almost every single language more encoding options are at the same time at its disposal: this point is made particularly clear by Slobin (1996), who nonetheless argues that only some of these options are actually preferred, since they are viewed as relatively simple or colloquial. 2.2.5 Validity restricted to event types

One of the main arguments of Croft et al. (2010) is that Talmy’s classification should not be taken as a classification of languages as a whole, since, as we have seen, single languages display a wider array of motion event encoding options than expected from the type they are assumed to belong to. Talmy’s typology better applies, on the contrary, to individual complex event constructions within a language. This point will reveal itself important and insightful for our study as well.

2.3 Comparative stylistics in narratives and the lexicon

Narratives containing motion event descriptions were compared by Slobin (2004) to gain a broader understanding of the organisation of discourse structures than the Talmyan V-language/S-language dichotomy allows. Comparing different narratives in a variety of languages stemming from the reading of Mercer Mayer’s 1969 wordless book Frog, where are you?, Slobin can measure how languages differ systematically in rhetorical style, that is, the ways in which motion events are analysed and described in discourse. He argues that Talmy’s typology is only part of a more complex system of factors, including pragmatic and psycholinguistic factors other than morpho-syntactic one, the influence of cultural practices and of online-processing.

Slobin studies in detail how path, manner and ground are expressed in S-framed and V-framed languages, drawing special attention to the loci of codification, and he comes to a finer-grained characterisation of the typology of such narratives. The concept, already identified in the translation stylistics literature, known by the technical French term chassé-croisé – roughly ‘coming and going’ or ‘crisscross’ – receives new light. The same scene in the illustrated book is namely related by Italian and English speakers in a way that reverses the semantic content expressed inside and outside the verb:

(16) a. An owl pops out of the hole in the tree

11 This is not the case with the other preverbs inherited from Latin, who are most of the times not

analysable anymore, since non-trasparent: s. a-scendere ‘rise, ascend’, di-scendere ‘go down, descend’, de-portare ‘deport’, es-de-portare ‘export’.

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(16) b. Un gufo esce da quest’ albero an owl exits from this tree

Regarding manner verbs, Slobin (1997:459) pointed out that languages seem to have a “two-tiered” lexicon of manner-of-motion verbs: a general one represented by everyday verbs such as walk, run, jump, fly and a more specific and expressive level consisting of different ways of walking, such as stroll, wander, or shuffle, or different ways of running such as sprint or jog. English possesses a very extensive and elaborated second level, but what counts for classifying a language as S-framed is not (only) the presence of a second tier, but the compatibility of manner verbs with goal phrases, as we will point out in 3.2.3.

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3 Typology of verb semantics

3.1 Aktionsart

A universally valid typology of verb semantics developed from the insights of the Hungarian philosopher Zeno Vendler, first sketched in Vendler (1957). He proposed a classification of verbs based on their internal – that is, lexical(ised) – actional value12 into four types: STATES, ACTIVITIES, ACHIEVEMENTS and ACCOMPLISHMENTS. This classification is based on the individuation of four actional features concurring to the making up of each type: [± static], [± dynamic], [± telic], and [± punctual]. A short list will exemplify the types:

(17) a. States: know, have, feel cold, be sick, be tall b. Activities: run, walk, think, write, sing

c. Achievements: explode, fall, pop out, reach [the top] d. Accomplishments: learn, melt, freeze, draw [a circle]

States normally express properties, qualities and habits of the subject. They describe static events which do not inherently tend to a telos (an inherent fulfilment or completion, a goal or aim), being temporally unbounded. Achievements and accomplishments both denote changes of state, and they are temporally bounded (telic): the only difference is that accomplishments are durative, i.e. non-punctual, whereas achievements are punctual. Activities describe dynamic, atelic and durative processes.

To these categories subsequent research added the SEMELFACTIVES: punctual events not leading to a change of state (and in this differing from achievements) like sneeze, flash, glimpse. Bertinetto & Squartini (1995) isolated the class of GRADUAL-COMPLETION VERBS or INCREMENTATIVES (like age, fatten, shrink): they express the gradual approach to a more or less specific goal, entail a change of state (they are thus telic), are dynamic and durative. They differ from the accomplishments in that they respond differently to some syntactic tests and they do not necessarily entail the fulfilment of the conclusive goal (in perfective tenses).

Here follows a schematic representation into features of the categories just discussed:

12 One encounters in the linguistic literature a rather varied terminology to refer to these phenomena:

actionality, Aktionsart (German for ‘kind of action’ – but notice that this term is used in the Indo-European studies in another sense too, meaning the derivational classes of “presential” stems, like the causative, the iterative, the intensive, the desiderative), lexical aspect, intrinsic aspect.

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(17) a. States: [+ static] [− dynamic] [− telic] [− punctual]

(17) b. Activities: [− static] [+ dynamic] [− telic] [− punctual]

(17) c. Achievements: [− static] [− dynamic] [+ telic] [+ punctual]

(17) d. Accomplishments: [− static] [± dynamic] [+ telic] [− punctual]

(17) e. Semelfactives: [− static] [± dynamic] [− telic] [+ punctual]

(17) f. Incrementatives: [− static] [+ dynamic] [± telic] [− punctual] Table 1. Adapted from Van Valin (2006:156)

Relevant for the scope of our study is a property typical for many verbs, called aspectual shift (or “actional hybridism” in Bertinetto 1986:302-ff.): from an interplay of context (animacy of the subject, presence of an object, definiteness of the object, type of spatial relationship) and aspectual properties (perfective vs. imperfective aspect), the actional value of a verb can change, turning basic activities into accomplishments or basic states into achievements13. This behaviour points to an intrinsic polysemy of the verbs: it is thus important to take into account all the relevant aspects in context, and not to hasten to formulate generalisations14. This is particularly true of manner-of-motion verbs:

(18) a. Tim run/jogged/walked in the park a'. Tim run/jogged/walked to the park

(18a) are clearly activities, which turn into accomplishments (18a', also called in the literature active accomplishments) by virtue of the goal specification. This makes the whole sentence telic, since the reaching of an endpoint (a change of location) equals to a change of state: the motion event is completed only when the subject arrives at the specified location. Such a particular behaviour can be better accounted for recurring to the Unaccusative Hypothesis, for which cf. 3.2 and 3.2.3.

It is essential to notice that the aspectual shift deriving accomplishments from manner-of-motion activities does not possess universal validity and that, more generally, there is

13 One can compare Maria is singing (activity) with Maria sang a song (accomplishment: the object is

definite, making the event telic) and Maria sings well (state: the habitual aspect selects a stative reading). If one turns his attention to Italian, the phenomenon looks even more pervasive: conosco Maria da due anni ‘I have known Maria for two years’ (state), ieri ho conosciuto Maria ‘yesterday I met Maria (for the first time)’ (achievement), mi ci sono voluti tre anni per conoscere Maria a fondo ‘it took me three years to know Maria in depth’ (accomplishment), ogni giorno che passa conosco Maria sempre meglio ‘I get to know Maria every day better’ (incrementative). To limit us to the role of aspect, s. Maria calzava i suoi stivali rossi ‘Maria was wearing her red boots’ (state: imperfective aspect with past reference time) vs. Maria calzò i suoi stivali rossi ‘Maria put on her red boots’ (achievement: perfective aspect with past reference time).

14 It is nonetheless true that verbs have a basic lexical meaning, which recurs for instance in isolation,

from which the particular meaning in context is derived. Generally speaking, there are sets of diagnostics, namely syntactic and semantic tests, to determine which class a verb belongs to. Since some of them do not have cross-linguistic validity, one has to adapt them to the features of each language under consideration.

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variation in the alternations verbs may enter into. This point was already made by Talmy, who showed that manner-of-motion verbs in V-languages cannot enter into the activity ~ accomplishment alternation. One compare the following Italian sentences, with different motion verbs but with (formally) the same path specification:

(19) a. Mario va in Germania. M. goes to/in Germany ‘Mario goes/travels to Germany.’

(19) b. Mario corre in Germania. M. runs to/in Germany ‘Mario runs in Germany.’

If the verb expresses directed or deictic motion (that is, it is path-encoding, like 19a), a PP with in or a receives a dynamic, directed reading. On the other hand, with manner-of-motion verbs (19b) the same PP tends to receive a static interpretation. Stemming from this, it follows that in V-languages like Italian, Spanish or French, one cannot normally use a verb like fly or swim as an active accomplishment, e.g. swim to the island or fly to the tree; rather, it is necessary to use a directed-motion verb (viz. an accomplishment) like go as the main verb, and use the manner-of-motion verb as a modifier, i.e. go to the island [by] swimming. In sum, English, Spanish, and Italian all possess motion activity and motion active accomplishment verbs, but only in English manner-of-motion verbs can be used in a telic reading as accomplishments.

It is nonetheless important to notice that, as already pointed out by Aske (1989) and Slobin & Hoiting (1994), in some V-languages motion events whose path is conceptualised as not crossing a boundary are perfectly acceptable in the manner-conflating pattern, even if the endpoint is specified: It. Marco ha nuotato fino alla sponda opposta ‘Marco swam till/to the opposite river bank’ is grammatical, but, unlike its English almost-equivalent, cannot be understood as an accomplishment. It is namely, and remains as such in spite of the goal PP, an activity15, because the have-auxiliary clearly points to an unergative predicate – for which cf. 3.2. For a slightly different account on the related problem of until-markers, cf. Beavers et al. (2010:345–47).

It has been shown that manner-of-motion verbs do have a different lexical structure from path-incorporating verbs, as they are only open to a static and non-dynamic (or,

15 It is doubtful if this event is actually atelic – and, as such, a canonical activity. According to some

speakers, the reaching of the opposite river bank is entailed, although the focus is on the manner subevent, and not on the change of location. One could even speak of quasi-telicity, because until-markers only denote close approaching to the edge/rim/boundary of the nominal, without entailing its trespassing. In any case, the unergative auxiliary selection points to an activity.

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rather, non-directed) reading. In this sense, PP can be a diagnostic to distinguish path-verbs from manner-path-verbs on the basis of the static vs. directed interpretation.

3.2 Split intransitivity – or the Unaccusative Hypothesis

In many languages, the class of intransitive verbs is not internally homogenous, but it is split into two subclasses showing different syntactic behaviour: it is known that, for instance, the subjects of a subset of intransitive verbs share some properties with the objects of transitive verbs. The first proponent of the Unaccusative Hypothesis, the theory trying to account for this split behaviour, was Perlmutter (1978) in the context of Relational Grammar. This theory was later taken over by Burzio (1986) within the Government and Binding framework, and claims that the two subclasses of intransitive verbs, called UNERGATIVES and UNACCUSATIVES, are associated with particular underlying syntactic structures. It posits that unaccusatives take a deep-structure direct object (or direct internal argument) and no subject (in this being equivalent to passives), while unergatives take a deep-structure subject (or external argument) but no direct object at deep-structure. In contrast to this purely syntactic approach, some scholars developed a semantic approach whose tenets are that the two classes of intransitive verbs are differentiated exclusively on semantic grounds, denying the syntactic encoding of unaccusativity. For instance, unaccusatives tend to express a telic and dynamic change of state or location and to have a subject with low agentivity or patientive features, while unergatives tend to express Vendlerian activities not leading to a change of state nor involving directed motion (Van Valin 1990, Dowty 1991). A third position, recalling Perlmutter’s, is supported by Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995), who claim that unaccusativity is both semantically predictable or determined and syntactically encoded or represented.

Phenomena by which intransitive verbs show their split nature are called UNACCUSATIVITY DIAGNOSTICS, and they vary from language to language – for an illustrative list of unaccusative diagnostics across languages, one can consult Zaenen (2006). Thus, for instance, unaccusatives select in Italian the auxiliary verb essere ‘to be’, whereas unergatives take avere ‘to have’; in Dutch, the impersonal passive construction (er wordt door de kinderen op het ijs geschaatst ‘it is skated by the children on the ice’, example from Perlmutter 1978:157) is possible only with unergatives (and of course with transitives); in most Indo-European languages, a NP can be made up by a nominal and the perfect participle in attributive function (also called reduced relative clause), but only with transitive and unaccusative verbs (It. la mela caduta, Ger. der gefallene Apfel, Eng. the fallen apple like It. la mela morsicata, Ger. der gebissene Apfel, Eng. Apple’s half bitten apple), unlike with unergatives (It. *i ragazzi risi, Ger. *die gelachten Jungs, Eng.

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*the laughed boys); unergatives can take cognate objects (to live a serene life); the intransitive variant of verbs which participate in the causative alternation is unaccusative (the window broke vs. John broke the window: the two forms are semantically related in that the subject of the intransitive variant and the object of the transitive bear the same semantic role, cf. 3.2.4); unergatives can build agent nouns (runner vs. *arriver).

Among the unaccusativity tests, a particular importance, stressed by Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995) as the main diagnostic for the English language, seems to lie in resultative constructions (cf. fn. 8): the predication of the properties of a nominal acquired as a result of the process expressed by the verb is only possible with the transitive object and the unaccusative subject (she cut [her hair]i shorti, [the river]i froze solidi). In English

and other languages, though, it is possible to build resultative clauses out of unergatives in specific ways, e.g. by use of fake16 reflexives (she shouted herself hoarse, Ger. er lachte sich tot ‘he laughed himself dead’). As we have seen in 2.1, resultative constructions are a typical feature of languages which allow satellite framing, for the result of the action is expressed in a constituent outside the main verb and in a sister relation to it. We will see (3.3) that this diagnostic was proposed to be valid for the Vedic language as well (Keydana in press).

It must be stressed that synonym predicates from one language to another do not necessarily respond to the same diagnostics in the same way and must be differently classified (UNACCUSATIVITY MISMATCHES), so that it is not enough to operate on translations of semantically equivalent material: one has to find at best language-specific diagnostics, otherwise the analysis is at risk of being flawed. Unaccusativity mismatches are phenomena found for different verbs with similar meanings within the same language (among Engl. manner of motion verbs, jump shows unaccusative behaviour, while swim unergative17) and for the same verbs showing different syntactic behaviour, e.g. with dual

auxiliary verbs (for which, cf. 3.2.3), as well. 3.2.1 Semantic correlates of Unaccusativity

Although unaccusativity diagnostics have been pinpointed for the Vedic language (cf. 3.3), given the impossibility to test them against the knowledge of native speakers and the restricted variety of topics and themes – and, then, of constructions – in an otherwise vast corpus, a (partly) semantic approach does not seem to be out of place.

16 That it is not a genuine reflexive pronoun is shown by sentences such as *she shouted herself, which

are ungrammatical. And the sentence without the fake reflexive is as well ungrammatical: *she shouted hoarse. This means that the result phrase and the reflexive are both obligatory and conjure up a construction of its own. Fake reflexives seem only to fulfil the syntactic need for the resultative phrase to be predicated of an object.

17 They namely respond differently to the resultative test: jump clear of the car! vs. she swam herself

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The lexical aspect (Aktionsart) properties of a verb were employed by the semantic approaches to establish the membership of said verb to either class of intransitives. Agentivity, telicity and stativity are the three aspectual notions which were taken in many studies as determining split intransitivity: generally speaking, it has been pointed out that the prototypical unergative verbs are Vendlerian activities, whereas verbs classified as unaccusative are typically telic or stative. According to some scholars, non-agentive verbs are typically unaccusative, although this does not account for the behaviour of directed motion verbs: in this case, telicity seems to prevail over agentivity.

The most explicit attempt to predict the class membership of verbs on the basis of actional properties was proposed by Van Valin (1990): working within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), he proposed an analysis of verbs based on Dowty’s (1979) predicate decomposition, according to which each verb class is given a formal representation called logical structure. He observes on the base of the usual diagnostics that, in Italian, intransitive activities are unergative, while states, accomplishments and achievements are unaccusative: he claims to track down a generalisation in the fact that the last three Aktionsarten all contain a state predicate in their logical structure, whereas unergatives do not. In some languages (Dutch), telicity seems to be responsible for certain unaccusative phenomena such as auxiliary selection (that is, achievements and accomplishments are regularly unaccusative), in others (Acehnese and Tsova-Tush) agentivity seems to be relevant for the classification.

In addition to this, the lexical properties of the arguments taken by verbs, i.e. their thematic roles, were refined and organised on a scalar, non-rigid hierarchy: Van Valin (1990) introduces two macroroles, namely ACTOR and UNDERGOER, around which a number of thematic relations are organised and subsumed. The prototypical actor is an agent, and the prototypical undergoer is a patient, and the midway roles (effector, experiencer, locative, theme) can be differently oriented.

Similarly, Dowty (1991) postulates only two thematic roles relevant to argument expression, equally non-discrete and cluster concepts, called PROTO-AGENT and PROTO -PATIENT. The membership of a verb to either class of intransitives is determined by the count of how many semantic features of a predicate characterise it in the direction of a Proto-Agent or, rather, towards a Proto-Patient. In other words, if predicates are highly agentive and have a low grade of telicity, the verb is unergative; highly telic and slightly agentive verbs are unaccusative.

Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1992, 1995) emphasise the notion of causation (cf. 3.2.2 for the notion of direct external cause), which now subsumes the notion of agentivity (i.e., causation has a broader scope than agentivity): they claim that arguments which are immediate cause of the event are expressed as external arguments – and verbs taking them

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are unergatives (Immediate Cause Linking Rule18, cf. Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995:135-ff.). Thus, not only agentive verbs (laugh, argue, joke, telephone), but internally caused verbs (cough, shiver, sleep, snore, shine and other verbs of emission) too are taken to be unergative – notice that these do not build a lexical causative (which has significance for our treatment, cf. 3.2.4). On the other side, verbs denoting externally caused eventualities (among which, the intransitive/inchoative use of roll verbs are noteworthy for our study, cf. 3.2.2) are held to be unaccusative. Moreover, there is a strong relationship between external causation and change of state, although there are some internally caused verbs of change (like blush: not by chance it shows a varied behaviour, crosslinguistically: It. arrossire is unaccusative, Dutch bloezen and Eng. blush unergative).

3.2.2 Verbs of motion and Unaccusativity

From the introductory section on Talmy’s classification, it is evident that verbs of motion do not build up a coherent class. In other words, a natural category “verbs of motion”, although conceivable on semantic grounds, does not seem to be reflected in syntax and, thus, its postulation to be justified: they do not constitute a linguistically significant natural class. In fact, some verbs of motion show properties of unaccusative verbs, others display properties of unergative verbs and still others of both of them, depending on their complement structure (cf. 3.2.3).

Since the argument of motion verbs undergoes a change in location, one can argue that it is a theme, and that it can be then analysed in terms of internal object (cf. 3.2.1), which would lead to a classification of all motion verbs as unaccusative. That is of course not the case, for some manner-of-motion verbs like swim and run consistently display unergative behaviour across languages. As Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1992:251) point out, this behaviour cannot be reduced to the agentivity of their arguments, for verbs like descend and come are also agentive, but show unaccusative behaviour in many languages. The two scholars isolate three subclasses of motion verbs with respect to a variety of unaccusativity diagnostics and single out three components of meaning characterising each class: it must be stressed that they found their classification on a syntactic analysis, since the sole unaccusative diagnostics are responsible for the building up of the various classes19. The semantic characterisation they gain out of the syntactic analysis draws from

the lexical-aspectual properties lexicalised in the verbs themselves; in this scenario, the

18 In their attempt to characterise unaccusativity as syntactically encoded and at the same time as a

semantically determined phenomenon, they postulate a set of linking rules, mapping the lexical semantic properties of verbs onto their argument structure. In this way, they can explain the quirky behaviour of some verbs which are at times unaccusatives or unergatives (variable behaviour verbs, s. 3.2.3) tracing it back to regularities.

19 We are not going to discuss them in any detail, but suffice it to say that these are the usual ones:

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thematic roles of the arguments associated with the verbs do not play any role. Table 2 summarises the subclasses and their features:

members direction/manner DEC UH-class arrive

class

arrive, come, go, depart,

fall direction n.r. UNACCUSATIVE

run class run, swim, walk, drive,

jump manner – UNERGATIVE

roll class roll, spin, slide, rotate,

swing manner + UNACCUSATIVE

Table 2. Adapted from Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1992:252–53).

The members of the arrive class coincide with the Talmyan path-verbs, or verbs of inherently directed motion: they all include a specification of the direction of motion, and this semantic component is in complementary distribution with manner of motion. The class of manner-of-motion verbs has been split into two, and this is the only substantial novelty compared to the Talmyan classification. What differentiates the run class from the roll class is the notion of direct external cause (DEC), represented as a binary feature, which does not appear to be relevant (n.r.) for the arrive verbs. This feature specifies whether the event denoted by the verb occurs spontaneously (or involving any degree of protagonist control), as in the case for the run verbs, or whether it is directly caused by an external agent or force, as in the case for the roll verbs.

Not only can roll verbs build resultative constructions20 in the canonical pattern (the

door rolled open vs. he ran himself exhausted), but they all participate in the

20 Quite interestingly, arrive verbs are incompatible with resultative phrases: in the sentence Pat arrived

to the station tired, tired can only be understood as a depictive, not as the resultant state of Pat’s arriving to the station. That means that being unaccusative is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a verb to predicate a resultative phrase of its subject. This receives a fitting explanation if one takes into account the notion of “delimiters of events”: it seems that a clause can only be delimited once. Resultative phrases act as delimiters of events and specify a resultant state, while goal phrases a resultant location. Since arrive verbs already lexically specify a resultant location, they are incompatible with a second delimiter describing a change of state, i.e. with a resultative phrase. For the same reason, one is not surprised that manner-of-motion verbs, both run and roll verbs, are incompatible with resultative phrases if they appear with a goal phrase (s. 3.2.3), because they already are delimited: *they ran themselves to the store tired, *the door slid out of its slide open. On this point, see the discussion in Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1992:257–58). Notice that, in Vendlerian terms, resultative phrases are active accomplishments (s. 3.1), i.e. they are derived from basic activities via delimitation through the resultant state: Pat painted the wall (activity) ~ Pat painted the wall red (active accomplishment). Since the delimitation can be only expressed once, we can’t build resultative constructions out of accomplishments: *Sam run into the crowd dead.

There seems to be a connection between direction and resultant state, and telicity. What we noticed about motion verbs holds true for other types of verbs and seems to be a pervasive characteristic of the lexicon of each language (or, at least, of many of them). Rappaport Hovav & Levin (2010) posit a constraint on the semantic content that can be lexicalised in verbs, and hold that manner and result are in complementary distribution. In this sense, they argue that non-stative verbs fall into two classes: manner verbs (cry, hit, pound, run, shout, shovel, smear, sweep wipe) specify a manner of carrying out an action and are atelic in their default configuration, i.e. without a delimiter such as a resultative phrase. They show specific syntactic properties which oppose them to result verbs (arrive, clean, come, cover, die, empty, fill, put, remove),

(31)

30

causative/inchoative alternation, a peculiar construction which has important links with unaccusativity, without necessarily being a diagnostic of it. See section 3.2.4 for a treatment of this issue.

3.2.3 Manner of motion and Unaccusativity

The class of agentive manner of motion verbs posits an interesting problem with respect to the Unaccusativity Hypothesis. This class of verbs exhibits properties of both unaccusative and unergative verbs (“variable behaviour verbs” in the terminology of Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995:10): in 3.1, discussing the phenomenon of aspectual shift, we have observed that, in English and other languages, manner of motion activity verbs turn into active accomplishments when accompanied by a goal phrase which adds to the VP telicity. We can now take it from another perspective and state that unergative manner of motion verbs turn to unaccusatives when they appear with directional phrases, and they express both direction and manner of motion. Such a behaviour is, though, not universal, as we have already noticed: V-framed languages don’t allow for a directed interpretation of manner of motion verbs (with some exceptions: in Italian, correre ‘run’, saltare ‘jump’ and volare ‘fly’ can, under specific conditions that will be discussed now, receive a directed interpretation). Compare the following sentences from Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995:183):

(20) a. The mouse is running under the table

(20) b. La souris court sous la table (French)

the mouse runs under the table ‘The mouse is running under the table’

(20a) is ambiguous: either it receives a static meaning, with the motion event taking place at the location specified by the PP, or the PP is understood as marking the goal towards which the figure is directed (under is underspecified as to location or goal). On the other side, (20b) can only receive a stative (or, better, locative), non-directed interpretation. Notice also that the ambiguity of (20a) is obliterated when the adposition exclusively marks goal (into, onto, towards…).

We can find a similar case of polysemy as in English in Italian. The equivalent of (20), il topo corre sotto il tavolo, is again ambiguous, but only in non-compositional tenses. Compare the following sentences in the “passato prossimo” tense:

which specify the result of an event and are in turn telic. This view is but a revision of Talmy’s postulation of chore schemata subsuming both path (goal) and result (s. 2.1 and 2.2.2).

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