Checklist for the description of motion events

Author : Bernhard Wälchli

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Goals

It is a checklist that can be used by the linguist while working on the description of motion events to ensure that all the relevant data, from different domains and categories, are taken into account.

Protocol summary

The checklist can be divided in two different parts :

- An inventory of all the elements used for the encoding of motion events (page 1)
- The actual checklist also divided in fourteen sections :

1. Adnominal marking
2. Animacy
3. Deixis and other issues related to go/come verbs
4. Displacement in verbs and related issues
5 Manner verbs and related issues
6. Transport
7. Transitive verbs
8. Adverbial markers
9. Frames of reference
10. Light verb constructions and incorporation
11. Multi-verb constructions
12. Derivational categories
13. Intermediate categories
14. Word order

"[They] deal with particular complexes of questions. They can, however, be treated in any order in the description. (The checklist is slightly redundant at some places, because many questions are related to different complexes). Preferably, all questions should be explicitly answered somewhere in the description, especially also if a certain feature is not present. These may be uninteresting from the perspective of particular languages, but are most essential for typology.'' (Wälchli, from the questionnaire, page 2)

Development context

 

''I classify all elements used for the encoding of motion events into verbal, adnominal, and adverbal. Verbal is any verb stem that can function as a verbal predicate. Adnominal are all elements associated with the ground NP, notably case and adpositions. Verbs in adnominal position are counted as verbal as far as they can be associated with any verb. Adverbal are adverbs, verbal affixes, and particles. Thus, in the English sentence The can ran out to the garden all three elements are represented: verbal ran, adnominal to, and adverbal out." (Wälchli, from the questionnaire, page 1)