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Caused Accompanied Motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective
Edited by Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg and Birgit Hellwig
[Typological Studies in Language 134] 2022
► pp. 243–271

Caused accompanied motion constructions in Vera’a

| Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg | University of Zurich

The expression of bring and take events (so-called ‘caused accompanied motion (CAM)’ events) in the Oceanic language Vera’a (North Vanuatu) is analysed in terms of lexical and constructional compositionality. The two lexical verbs centrally involved in CAM expressions have fairly general semantic content not specific to CAM events, meaning ‘move sth.’ and ‘accompany’. These are used in constructional frames with dative and locative prepositions, serialization with verbs of motion, and directional adverbs and particles. Such constructions can then yield a CAM reading. However, they can also receive a non-CAM reading, so that the verbalisation of CAM events is ultimately a matter of pragmatic inference in Vera’a and never unambiguously encoded. Different verbs are used to specify manner of handling themes, and manner of motion as well as direction can be incorporated in motion verbs in initial position of verb serialization (satellite-framed).

Keywords: caused accompanied motion, geocentric and deictic orientation, event segmentation, lexical and constructional semantics, contextual inference, Oceanic languages
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Basic clause structure and expressions of motion
    • 2.1Vera’a basic clause structure
    • 2.2Data on directed CAM expressions in Vera’a
  • 3.Lexical and constructional elements in the expression of CAM events
    • 3.1The verb ‘ō’ ‘be with’ and its prepositional equivalent
    • 3.2The verb le ‘move’
    • 3.3Locative and dative PPs
    • 3.4Directional adverbs, verbs and particles
  • 4.Caused accompanied motion constructions and their variants
    • 4.1Accompany
      • 4.1.1Motion + accompany + trajectory / goal constructions with CAM reading
      • 4.1.2Motion + accompany + trajectory / goal constructions with variable reading
      • 4.1.3Accompany + trajectory and/or location
    • 4.2Move
  • 5.Manner-specific CAM verbs
    • 5.1Carry verbs
    • 5.2Push and pull verbs
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 25 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.134.09sch
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