LINGUIST List 13.661

Mon Mar 11 2002

Qs: Quechua/ "with", Motion Verbs & Manner

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Masha Vassilieva, 'with' in QUECHUA
2. Stathis Selimis, Motion Verbs + Manner

Dear colleagues,

I came across the following construction in Cuzco
Quechua (Andean): (Diacritics omitted)

noka-wan kam-wan wasi-yki-man risu-ntsix
I.-with you.SG-with house-your-to go-1stPl FUt
"You and I will go to your house"

(from Stassen 2000:3)

Does anybody know

(1) Whether this language has another connector, the
analogue of 'and' , in addition to WAN 'with' ? 

(2) If it does, can NPs and /or pronouns be
coordinated by 'and'? Is 'and repeated after each
conjunct, the way 'with' is? 

(3) Where else is 'wan' used? For instance, can one
say 
 I went to the store WAN-with Peter 
 I opened the door WAN-with a key

(4) Is there a Plural Pronominal construction in this
language (similar to Russian 
 my s nim pojdom domoj
 we with him go.1st Pl Fut home
 "He and I will go home."

(5) What are the plural markers in this language? What
I am after is: can WAN be a plural marker with either
pronouns or nouns? 

(6) Are there morphological case markers? In other
words, if WAN is a preposition, does it mark the
(pro)noun for case? 

Thank you very much!

Masha Vassilieva
State University of New York at Stony Brook

I am working on the coding of motion events in Greek (including child
language). I would appreciate exchanging ideas on the following
(methodological and theoretical) problems. I will post a summary of
responses.



1). Looking carefully at particular studies concerning motion verbs,
it is clear that researchers do not agree -and are sometimes
inconsistent even within their own published work- on what a motion
verb is. Does, for instance, the body as a whole need to move or can
more limited body motion also be included (e.g. slight facial
movements on the one end and more visible movement like taking and
putting things with one's hands on the other end)? More specifically,
in published work "bring" and "take" are taken to be a motion verb but
"put" often is not. What sorts of criteria should we use for deciding
what a motion verb is?



2). How can Manner be defined, so as we might have clear criteria on
whether verbs code Manner or Path? In fact, researchers treat verbs
like fall as lexicalizing Manner in some studies and Path in other
studies.

Stathis Selimis