Abstract

IBANEZ CERDA, Sergio  and  LECUMBERRI SALAZAR, Bertha. Towards a Fine Grained Classification of Motion Verbs. The Case of Spanish Intransitive Verbs. Anu. let. lingüíst. filol. [online]. 2020, vol.8, n.1, pp.69-118.  Epub Nov 29, 2021. ISSN 2448-8224.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.adel.2020.1.0003.

Based on the lexicalization patterns presented in Talmy’s pioneering work (1985), motion verbs classifications for Spanish mainly recognize two groups: verbs of manner and verbs of direction (Lamiroy, 1991; Cifuentes Honrubia, 1988-1989; Crego García, 2000; Morimoto, 2001, among others). This research offers a much more detailed classification, by means of the use of a finer set of features and semantic participants that may be lexicalized by motion verbs in any language of the world, namely: the aspectual features of punctuality and telicity; the participants theme, source, path, goal, point of reference, location-path and trajectory; and the parametric features of displacement, movement, manner, change of place and direction. The result is a classification of eight different verb groups that account for the lexical and syntactic mechanisms present in the encoding of the Spanish motion events.

Keywords : motion verbs; argument structure; lexicalization patterns; Syntax-semantics interface; Spanish verbs.