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Article published In:
Source-Goal (a)symmetries across languages
Edited by Anetta Kopecka and Marine Vuillermet
[Studies in Language 45:1] 2021
► pp. 172–202

Exploring source/goal asymmetries in spontaneous and caused motion expression in Yuhup

| Universidad Nacional de Colombia
| Universidad Nacional de Colombia

The aim of this paper is to explore the asymmetry in the expression of Goal and Source in spontaneous and caused motion events in Yuhup (Makú/Naduhup family). We examine the asymmetries at the semantic, morphological and syntactic levels. As this language does not have a specialized system of nominal morphology that distinguishes the ground constituents representing the Source or the Goal of a movement, an asymmetrical treatment of Source and Goal is not evident. However, verbal semantics make more distinctions for Goal than for Source, ground constituents are more frequent in the expression of motion to(wards) the Goal than the one (away) from the Source, and structural variety and complexity differentiate between Source and Goal expression. Also, the Goal bias is stronger in the descriptions of caused motion than in the ones of spontaneous motion. The data were collected using tools designed for elicitation of spontaneous and caused motion events.

Keywords: source/goal asymmetries, path, spontaneous motion, caused motion, Yuhup, Makú/Naduhup family, semantics, motion morphology, motion syntax
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Yuhup: The people and the language
    • 2.1The Yuhup people
    • 2.2Grammatical traits of the Yuhup language
  • 3.Morphosyntactic resources for motion expression
    • 3.1Basic motion clauses
    • 3.2Morphological marking
    • 3.3Verb stems in SM and CM: Structure and semantic distribution of roots
  • 4.Source/Goal asymmetries
    • 4.1Lexical semantic asymmetries
      • 4.1.1The verbal roots inventory
      • 4.1.2General vs. specific meanings in most frequently used roots
    • 4.2Morphological asymmetries: Marking of ground constituents in SM
    • 4.3Syntactic asymmetries: Multiclausal constructions in CM
    • 4.4Asymmetries in frequency of expression of ground constituents
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 12 January 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.00015.osp
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