Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Detail #301: Lexicalized Paths becoming Verbalized

Most readers probably are aware of satellite-framed and verb-framed languages. This idea takes verb-framing to eleven – by introducing way more lexemes.

Let's consider a culture where a variety of terms for different types of paths exist. A significant number of specific, real-world roads, paths, sea lanes, and waterways in general have specific proper nouns.
So, basically, verbs of movement often derive from proper nouns. These have affixes expressing
  • movement towards major location along the path 
  • movement towards personally significant location along the path (home, ritually important place, hunting grounds, etc)
  • movement away from a major location along the path
  • movement close to that path, possibly zig-zagging over it
  • movement up- or downstream with rivers, or uphill/downhill with very steep paths
Whenever movement along such a path is expressed, it is grammatically mandatory to use the path-specific verb. If no path is known, or the utterance refers to movement along paths in general, the verb is derived either from the four cardinal directions or more generic path-types.

The language doesn't let you walk, it lets you be moving along a named path, and maybe with an optional adverb that expresses 'walkingly'.


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