Motion-to and Motion-from (Feature 79)

From Apics

Feature Annotation

Here we ask about the marking of the two orientations, ‘motion-to’ and ‘motion-from’, in intransitive motion verbs. Please consider the following examples with verbs of going to and returning/coming from a place such as ‘market’. Other goals/sources might be differently marked, but for the purpose of comparison we just take this special kind of goal/source (‘market’) into account (cf. Features 80 and 81 “Going to/Coming from Named Places” in which we look at goals/sources which are named places):

Maria went to the market.
Maria returned/came back from the market.

The question is whether the two orientations (motion-to and motion-from) are marked identically (which could also mean that they are both not marked and the interpretation has to be inferred from the semantics of the verb, see Value 1), or whether they are differently marked (again, one orientation could be not marked at all, see Value 2). If there are several construction types/markers to express the two orientations, there may be some kind of overlapping marking (Value 3).

Additional remarks

....

Values

Value		Value Annotation
1	Identical marking	Seychelles Creole Mon ti al dan bazar. [I pst go in market] ‘I went to the market’ vs. Mon ti sorti dan bazar. [I pst leave in market] ‘I left from the market’
2	Different marking	Principense N we fya. [1sg go market] ‘I went to the market.’ N vika fo fya. [1sg come come.from the market] ‘I came from the market.’
3	Overlap of marking	i.e. partially identical/partially different Nigerian Pidgin À go fòr fam. [1sg go loc farm] ‘I went to the farm.’ À kom fòr fam. [1sg come loc farm] ‘I came from the farm.’ But ‘motion-from’ is more often expressed by the preposition/serialized verb fròm: À kom fròm fam. [1sg come from farm] ‘I came from the farm.’
4	Other	(Please give details in the “General comments” field.)

WALS No.

(None)