Abstract
Classification of verbs according to their valency shows a surprising amount of complexity. In this chapter a subset of verbs, defined as “verbs of directional motion”, is analyzed with reference to the way each of them syntactically codes the Goal, the Source, and the Goal and Source in the same sentence. It is shown that the incidence of idiosyncrasy is surprisingly great, although some partial rules can also be devised. The chapter concludes with some considerations about the importance of anomaly in grammatical structure.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
One can say, equivalently, that chegar ‘arrive’ profiles the end point of the motion, whereas viajar ‘travel’ refers merely to some kind of motion.
- 2.
Levin (1993, p. 135) notes that bring and take “have been considered the ‘causative’ counterparts of come and go”.
- 3.
Seventeen of them figure among the 1500 most frequent words of the language, according to Davies and Preto-Bay (2008); the remaining four were included because they illustrate additional idiosyncrasies in preposition selection.
- 4.
Also with Path, not studied here.
- 5.
Some Portuguese prepositions agglutinate with articles and other items: de + o = do, and so on. For a complete list of the agglutinations used in this text, I refer to Appendix B.
- 6.
There are ways to express the Source, but not simply with a complement to the verb; for instance, the meaning of [11] can be expressed as Carla entrou vindo da cozinha ‘C. entered coming from the kitchen’.
- 7.
The use of em in this context is considered incorrect by traditional grammars; here, as elsewhere, people pay no attention to the prohibition.
- 8.
There are a few items, traditionally analyzed as adverbs, that express the Goal without a preposition: lá ‘there’, aqui ‘here’, and a few others. These words can express the Location or the Goal, but not the Source; cf. English I went to Chicago versus I went there.
- 9.
In the classification, I have disregarded the parentheses that indicate uncertain judgments. The table must be perfected with further research, including testing of the sentences with a set of speakers. In the list of subclasses, ‘/’ refers to the boxes in Table 9.2.
- 10.
This is an application of Schlesinger’s (1995, pp. 25–26) Principle of Linguistic Relevance.
- 11.
As said, I have some doubts, in this case in particular about the acceptability of a: a matter for future research.
- 12.
I know of only two verbs that code de Goal with de: aproximar ‘come near’ and the comparatively rare avizinhar ‘id.’
- 13.
In these sentences em denotes Location, not Goal: ‘my father traveled in Siberia’.
- 14.
For a somewhat outdated form of the written language, there is a dictionary of noun and adjective valency (Fernandes 1950) which may be a starting point for research.
- 15.
This figure ignores the possibility of simplification as exemplified in Sect. 8.2.
- 16.
The semantic roles are provisional, and basically follow the Valency Dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese Verbs, in its current version (November, 2020).
- 17.
[34] and [35] represent different diatheses because, although the syntax is the same, the semantic roles differ.
- 18.
Fulgêncio explicitly excludes regional and archaic items. She also calls attention to the high incidence of idioms responsible for expressing grammatical relations and textual coherence.
- 19.
Grammatical relevance of semantic categories occurs in several languages, but it is not always consistently based on cognitive categories. This applies to the class system found in Bantu languages: while it was “semantically based historically […], psychological studies indicate that little of this old semantic system remains productive today” [Demuth 1988, p. 306].
References
Andor, József. 2004. The master and his performance: An interview with Noam Chomsky. Intercultural Pragmatics 1 (1): 93–111.
Davies, Mark, and Ana Maria R. Preto-Bay. 2008. Frequency dictionary of Portuguese. New York: Routledge.
Demuth, Katherine A. 1988. Noun classes and agreement in Sesotho acquisition. In Agreement in natural language, ed. Michael Barlow and Charles A. Ferguson. Stanford: CSLI.
Fernandes, Francisco. 1940. Dicionário de verbos e regimes [A dictionary of verb government]. Rio de Janeiro: Globo.
———. 1950. Dicionário de regimes de substantivos e adjetivos [A dictionary of noun and adjective government]. Rio de Janeiro: Globo.
Fulgêncio, Lúcia. 2008. Expressões fixas e idiomatismos do português brasileiro [Fixed expressions and idioms in Brazilian Portuguese]. Belo Horizonte: Doctoral thesis, PUC-Minas.
Gross, Maurice. 1975. Méthodes en syntaxe [Methods in syntax]. Paris: Hermann.
Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations—A preliminary investigation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
O’Dowd, Elizabeth. 1998. Prepositions and particles in English: A discourse-functional account. Oxford University Press.
Schlesinger, Izchak M. 1995. Cognitive space and linguistic case: Semantic and syntactic categories in English. Cambridge University Press.
Tyler, Andrea, and Vyvyan Evans. 2003. The semantics of English prepositions: Spatial scenes, embodied meaning and cognition. Cambridge University Press.
Zelinsky-Wibbelt, Cornelia, ed. 1993. The semantic of prepositions: From mental processing to natural language. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Perini, M.A. (2021). Constructions of Directional Motion: A Guided Tour of Valential Complexity. In: Function and Class in Linguistic Description. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78173-6_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78173-6_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-78172-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-78173-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)