In Middle English (ME), manner of motion verbs occur in perfect periphrases with both BE and HAVE as auxiliaries (e.g. is/has run, is/has ridden), the BE-variant being the older, the HAVE-variant the more recent form with these verbs. Los (2015) hypothesizes that the choice of auxiliary with manner… read more
In the Middle English period, a number of pure path verbs (e.g. enter, issue, descend, ascend) were borrowed from French and Latin into English. An analysis of the Old and Middle English motion verb inventory reveals that before this, pure path verbs hardly existed; an analysis of c. 1,000 Old and… read more
Based on an analysis of more than 300 Middle English verbs attested in the intransitive motion construction, this chapter shows that among them, different from Present-Day English, there is a surprisingly high proportion of verbs that are primarily verbs of caused motion, such as throuen ‘throw’. I… read more
English motion verbs typically encode the manner of motion (e.g. run, walk, cf. e.g. Talmy 2000: 27, Slobin 2004). This raises the question of how French- and Latin-borrowed motion-verbs such as enter, descend, that express the path of motion and therefore are typologically ‘unsuitable’ for… read more
