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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. 235–275

Source-Goal asymmetries in Ese Ejja

ORCID logo | University of Zürich

Ese Ejja (Takanan) is an endangered language spoken in the Bolivian and Peruvian lowlands. The paper examines the expression of Source and Goal in this Amazonian language and focuses on three types of Source-Goal asymmetries. The first asymmetry concerns the higher number of Goal adnominals than of Source adnominals. Linked to this morphological asymmetry, the second asymmetry is semantic: Goal adnominals display a [± human] distinction absent from Source markers. In addition, the two Goal adnominals are dedicated while the only adnominal that encodes Source may also encode Median. In fact, the unambiguous (and most frequent expression) of Source requires a biclausal strategy, which accounts for the third type of asymmetry, at the syntactic level. The discussion is based on firsthand data including both spontaneous and elicited data, mostly obtained with Trajectoire, a visual methodological tool designed to collect Path expression.

Keywords: Ese Ejja, Takanan, Source-Goal asymmetry, Goal-bias, biclausal Source constructions, perlative
Article outline
  • 1.Source-Goal asymmetries in the literature: An overview
  • 2.The Ese Ejja language and the data
    • 2.1The speakers and their language
    • 2.2Methodology
    • 2.3Essentials of Ese Ejja grammar
      • 2.3.1General overview
      • 2.3.2Spatial resources in Ese Ejja
        • 2.3.2.1Spatial adnominals
        • 2.3.2.2Posture verbs in the Ese Ejja grammar
        • 2.3.2.3Path & deictic verbs
      • 2.3.3Overview of the expression of Source and Goal
  • 3.The adnominal encoding of the Ground
    • 3.1Path portion
      • 3.1.1Specific Path portion: Goal only
      • 3.1.2Several Path portions: Median or Source
      • 3.1.3Several Path portions: Goal or Median
    • 3.2Ground types and topological relation
      • 3.2.1[± human] Grounds
      • 3.2.2Topological relation
    • 3.3Dynamic vs. static motion events
    • 3.4Summary of the asymmetries among adnominals
  • 4.Asymmetries in the biclausal encoding of the Ground
    • 4.1The prototypical expression of Source
      • 4.1.1Non-finiteness of the PV
      • 4.1.2Adnominal marking and absence of the core argument associated with the Source
    • 4.2Topological specification
    • 4.3Role(s) of the Posture Verbs
    • 4.4Role of the verb type
    • 4.5Source vs. non-Source spatial dependent clauses
    • 4.6Summary of the asymmetries in the biclausal Ground expressions
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 22 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.18027.vui
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