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Into adpositions: New formal perspectives on the structure of the PP and its variation
Edited by Víctor Acedo-Matellán, Theresa Biberauer, Jaume Mateu and Anna Pineda
[Linguistic Variation 21:1] 2021
► pp. 247–279

Pazar Laz as a weak verb-framed language

| Boğaziçi University
| University of Chicago
Pazar Laz (pl) has a rich set of spatial prefixes, which encode path information as separate morphemes. However, unlike satellite-framed languages, pl spatial prefixes are incompatible with manner of motion verbs, which do not inherently encode path information, but they can only be used with directed motion verbs where the path information is available in the lexical semantics of the verb. Given this pattern, complementing Acedo-Matellán (2016)’s classification of weak vs. strong satellite-framed languages, we argue that verb-framed languages are also of two types. While languages like Romance are strong verb-framed languages encoding Path directly in the verb root, pl constitutes an example of a weak verb-framed language, where Path is affixal and forms a single word with the verb. We argue that spatial prefixes spell out the underassociated Path projection of the verb à la Ramchand (2008b).
Keywords: spatial prefixes, verb-framed languages, satellite-framed languages, motion verbs
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Internal structure of the spatial prefixes: Decomposition of P
  • 3.Co-occurrence restrictions between spatial prefixes and motion verbs
  • 4.Towards an analysis
  • 5.Revisiting Talmy’s typology
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 September 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00038.ozt
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