Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

I've noticed that when I say /ir/ to myself I say [ɪ(ː)ʁ], but very frequently when actually speaking to other people I say [iː.ʁ̩(ː)], and likewise I have noticed that many people here say [iː.ʁ̩(ː)] for such. (One notable exception is mirror, which is always [mɪ(ː)ʁ].) Anyone else notice anything similar?

[Arzena]

I thought this would be the most appropriate thread to post this link to a database of Turkic lexical items: https://turkic.elegantlexicon.com/

[Kuchigakatai]

It’s been two days so far, and no-one has answered this yet. Is there really no-one here who can answer this?

Activity in this forum keeps going down~~ I keep coming here because I seriously don't look forward to contributing to a centralized discussion website (or app) managed by a big company with utterly unrecognizable, non-responding moderators (e.g. Reddit). At the very least, on the ZBB I've known nicknames of the mods that have come and gone, and even know something of their personalities. You can try arguing and reasoning with them. On places like Reddit, the mods have their own secret spaces to discuss users and what to do with them, and there's no way to complain about anything, or receive an explanation over anything. No nicknames, no PMs, no inboxes to send them questions or arguments, or any way to get a response.

Open web forums like this one have the disadvantage of enabling OSINT a bit too much though. At another phpBB forum I'm in, someone recently tried to shame me for some posts I wrote in 2017 about my failures trying to learn certain natlangs. People. :') Some people just have nothing better to do.


Anyway, regarding your question, the way you've worded it, it doesn't sound like an aspect is involved? I interpret 'all over the place' as primarily an adverbial of place.

Maybe you meant something like 'repetitively many many times', implying it may have been in many places but not necessarily so? That could be an iterative of sorts. Maybe a super-iterative. ("Periterative" maybe? If we must insist on using not-so-bad Latin-derived terms...)

When things get called "distributive", it usually has to do with the notion of "each". Latin has "distributive numbers" like bīnī 'two each time; giving two to each person; each person handling two; two being on each side' (aside from other uses where they replace cardinal numbers). A distributive aspect would mean marking an action as happening to each object, or being done by each subject, etc. This page gives the following examples in Carrier (an Athabaskan language): plain ghahuges 'they're skinning [one animal, together]' vs. distributive ghanuhuguz 'they're skinning [an animal] each, i.e. each of them is skinning [an animal of their own]'.

Oh, and while I’m writing, another (unrelated) question: Are there any languages with transitive light verb constructions? e.g. In English we can only say ‘I’m doing research on linguistics’, with an intransitive light verb; I’m interested to know if there are any languages which allow transitive expressions like ‘I’m doing research linguistics’. (Note: I’m not particularly interested in languages like Jingulu, where the light verb contructions seem to be more like a verb+converb; I’m more interested in languages like English which allow verb+noun light verbs.)

Yes. Japanese (with する suru) and Persian would be examples of that.

من فارسی صحبت می‌کنم
mæn fɑrˈsi sohˈbæt ˈmikonæm
1SG Persian conversation do.PRES.1SG
من فارسی حرف می‌زنم
mæn fɑrˈsi hærf ˈmizænæm
1SG Persian speech hit.PRES.1SG
'I speak Persian.'

Persian has 15 or so light verbs, among which are كردن kærˈdæn 'do', زدن zæˈdæn 'hit', دیدن diˈdæn 'see', داشتن dɑʃˈtæn 'have', خوردن xorˈdæn 'eat; run into sth, bump against sth'.

[bradrn]

Activity in this forum keeps going down~~

I hope the trend doesn’t continue! Personally I see it as more cyclic than anything else — there are times when no-one posts anything for days on end, and then there are times when there is a huge amount of activity. Not sure why that happens, but it does.

I keep coming here because I seriously don't look forward to contributing to a centralized discussion website (or app) managed by a big company with utterly unrecognizable, non-responding moderators (e.g. Reddit). At the very least, on the ZBB I've known nicknames of the mods that have come and gone, and even know something of their personalities. You can try arguing and reasoning with them. On places like Reddit, the mods have their own secret spaces to discuss users and what to do with them, and there's no way to complain about anything, or receive an explanation over anything. No nicknames, no PMs, no inboxes to send them questions or arguments, or any way to get a response.

Open web forums like this one have the disadvantage of enabling OSINT a bit too much though. At another phpBB forum I'm in, someone recently tried to shame me for some posts I wrote in 2017 about my failures trying to learn certain natlangs. People. :') Some people just have nothing better to do.

Personally, I keep coming here because I enjoy conlanging, and because the community here is so incredibly welcoming; I tend not to worry about all that other stuff.

Anyway, regarding your question, the way you've worded it, it doesn't sound like an aspect is involved? I interpret 'all over the place' as primarily an adverbial of place.

Possibly? It just seemed like the sort of thing one might find in a particularly elaborate aspectual system.

Maybe you meant something like 'repetitively many many times', implying it may have been in many places but not necessarily so? That could be an iterative of sorts. Maybe a super-iterative. ("Periterative" maybe? If we must insist on using not-so-bad Latin-derived terms...)

Well, sort of; I did mean to imply that the action took place over many places (hence my suggestion of ‘distributive’), but I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ‘but not necessarily so’. Other examples: ‘he looked around’, ‘the water spilled all over’.

When things get called "distributive", it usually has to do with the notion of "each". Latin has "distributive numbers" like bīnī 'two each time; giving two to each person; each person handling two; two being on each side' (aside from other uses where they replace cardinal numbers). A distributive aspect would mean marking an action as happening to each object, or being done by each subject, etc. This page gives the following examples in Carrier (an Athabaskan language): plain ghahuges 'they're skinning [one animal, together]' vs. distributive ghanuhuguz 'they're skinning [an animal] each, i.e. each of them is skinning [an animal of their own]'.

Thanks for clarifying! Follow-up question: what’s the difference between distributive, iterative and frequentative? Or is this just another instance of the same thing getting lots of different names?

Oh, and while I’m writing, another (unrelated) question: Are there any languages with transitive light verb constructions? e.g. In English we can only say ‘I’m doing research on linguistics’, with an intransitive light verb; I’m interested to know if there are any languages which allow transitive expressions like ‘I’m doing research linguistics’. (Note: I’m not particularly interested in languages like Jingulu, where the light verb contructions seem to be more like a verb+converb; I’m more interested in languages like English which allow verb+noun light verbs.)

Yes. Japanese (with する suru) and Persian would be examples of that.

من فارسی صحبت می‌کنم
mæn fɑrˈsi sohˈbæt ˈmikonæm
1SG Persian conversation do.PRES.1SG
من فارسی حرف می‌زنم
mæn fɑrˈsi hærf ˈmizænæm
1SG Persian speech hit.PRES.1SG
'I speak Persian.'

Persian has 15 or so light verbs, among which are كردن kærˈdæn 'do', زدن zæˈdæn 'hit', دیدن diˈdæn 'see', داشتن dɑʃˈtæn 'have', خوردن xorˈdæn 'eat; run into sth, bump against sth'.

Thanks, that’s exactly what I was looking for!

Actually, if you know about Persian, perhaps you could clarify something I’ve heard about it: is it true that Persian has a closed class of verbs? (I already know that Japanese, Kalam, Komnzo, Jingulu, Bardi etc. all have closed verb classes; I’m just particularly interested in whether that’s true of Persian as well.)

[Moose-tache]

This paper says that Farsi speakers online create new verbs all the time, often by attaching native word-formation to English or other foreign roots ("chatidan" for "to chat" is given on the first page). Also, since light verbs are highly productive, there are plenty of combinations of English noun + light verb. This seems to be less encouraged in formal written Farsi.

EDIT: about the lack of board activity, I saw your previous question and ignored it because I didn't care (no offense). How quickly you get a response to a question just depends on who's reading at any given time and what their interests are. Sometimes you ask a question about numbers and Janko's on the toilet. It happens. Especially if, as in your case, your question quickly moves to the not-most-recent page.

[Kuchigakatai]

How quickly you get a response to a question just depends on who's reading at any given time and what their interests are. Sometimes you ask a question about numbers and Janko's on the toilet. It happens.

I accuse you of spreading false rumours here. The man has surely long trascended such material necessities.

[bradrn]

This paper says that Farsi speakers online create new verbs all the time, often by attaching native word-formation to English or other foreign roots ("chatidan" for "to chat" is given on the first page).

Ah, interesting. So it would appear that the Farsi verb class is open, or at least starting to open. (I hear that Japanese, which has a closed verb class, is also starting to evolve a verbaliser 〜る -ru, which would be another case of a closed class starting to open.)

Also, since light verbs are highly productive, there are plenty of combinations of English noun + light verb.

Yes, but that happens even in languages with closed verb classes. In fact I believe that that’s generally a very common way of adding new verbal meanings when the verb class is closed (it’s attested in Komnzo as well).

EDIT: about the lack of board activity, I saw your previous question and ignored it because I didn't care (no offense).

Nah, that’s fine! I do the same thing myself when I can’t answer a question. (Or, more often, when I don’t understand the question at all!)

Especially if, as in your case, your question quickly moves to the not-most-recent page.

Oh, was that what happened? I hate it when that makes me miss posts!

[Richard W]

It’s been two days so far, and no-one has answered this yet. Is there really no-one here who can answer this?

Well, the question of the semantic perfectivity of shedding blood all over the place is not easy, if not impossible. I don't think it's an objective consequence of what the activity was. It depends on how it's viewed, for which one would need the enclosing paragraph, and is still likely to be coloured by how individual languages treat select the marking.

I also suffered from a paranoid browser security-related inability to post last night. It could be a server issue, or it could conceivably be something on my end that wasn't instantly solved by rebooting and restarting.

Oh, and while I’m writing, another (unrelated) question: Are there any languages with transitive light verb constructions? e.g. In English we can only say ‘I’m doing research on linguistics’, with an intransitive light verb; I’m interested to know if there are any languages which allow transitive expressions like ‘I’m doing research linguistics’. (Note: I’m not particularly interested in languages like Jingulu, where the light verb contructions seem to be more like a verb+converb; I’m more interested in languages like English which allow verb+noun light verbs.)

Saying "‘I’m doing research on linguistics’, with an intransitive light verb" is confusing, as the light verb (to do) is transitive. Is the combination verb+noun really a 'light verb'?

To Ser's list you can add Pali, though it seems not to be the preferred way of adding an extra object. To be precise both the noun of the verb+noun combination and the patient of the activity indicated go in the accusative when the agent is in the nominative.

kinti naṃ karosîti A II.112 “what do you do (to) him?"
Sakuludāyiṃ paribbājakaṃ antarāyaṃ akāsi M II.39 “they did harm to (opposed) the wandering ascetic Sakuludāyi”.

They're not the cleanest of examples. The last word in each case is the verb 'to do'. The activity words are kinti and antarāyaṃ. The first suffixed 'ti' seems distort the case system, so kinti for 'what' is not as clear cut as plain kiṃ would have been. The verb in the second sentence has a singular form, but failures to inflect for person and number are not unknown. The source I checked against had a different but odd spelling for 'paribbājakaṃ'. It might not be a mere typo.

[Qwynegold]

Are geminate clicks possible? Is it attested?

Possible? Yes, I can say them easily. Attested? I don’t believe so, though I’m not completely sure. (Wikipedia says of Dahalo that ‘It is likely that the glottals and clicks do not occur as geminates’ — but given that geminate glottal stops are attested, and Dahalo geminates are only possible intervocalically while Dahalo clicks are rare intervocalically, I’m hesitant to take this evidence as being too significant.)

Yeah, that Dahalo thing was the only thing I too could find, and it doesn't answer the question at all. But okay, I guess in a geminate click the tongue would just be held in place longer before releasing.

[Qwynegold]

Quick terminological question: what aspect would you call something like ‘he bled all over the place’? (If it even has an established name, that is.) I’m guessing it’s an instance of the distributive, but I’m not too sure about that given that I’m pretty uncertain as to what the distributive aspect even is.

This is probably not helpful, but in Finnish the frequentative can mean either that the action is spread out over time or over space.

[bradrn]

It’s been two days so far, and no-one has answered this yet. Is there really no-one here who can answer this?

Well, the question of the semantic perfectivity of shedding blood all over the place is not easy, if not impossible. I don't think it's an objective consequence of what the activity was. It depends on how it's viewed, for which one would need the enclosing paragraph, and is still likely to be coloured by how individual languages treat select the marking.

That is true, I suppose… maybe this is just one of those questions which doesn’t have a sensible answer.

I also suffered from a paranoid browser security-related inability to post last night. It could be a server issue, or it could conceivably be something on my end that wasn't instantly solved by rebooting and restarting.

Quick question: how exactly am I supposed to parse ‘paranoid browser security-related inability to post’? I’m having particular trouble figuring out exactly what ‘paranoid’ is supposed to be modifying here.

Oh, and while I’m writing, another (unrelated) question: Are there any languages with transitive light verb constructions? e.g. In English we can only say ‘I’m doing research on linguistics’, with an intransitive light verb; I’m interested to know if there are any languages which allow transitive expressions like ‘I’m doing research linguistics’. (Note: I’m not particularly interested in languages like Jingulu, where the light verb contructions seem to be more like a verb+converb; I’m more interested in languages like English which allow verb+noun light verbs.)

Saying "‘I’m doing research on linguistics’, with an intransitive light verb" is confusing, as the light verb (to do) is transitive. Is the combination verb+noun really a 'light verb'?

Yes, it definitely is a light verb: ‘do’ imparts next to no semantic information, and really is only present to make the noun ‘research’ act as a verb. (One might quibble that ‘research’ can act as a verb anyway, but there are plenty other examples which aren’t as ambiguous.)

To Ser's list you can add Pali, though it seems not to be the preferred way of adding an extra object. To be precise both the noun of the verb+noun combination and the patient of the activity indicated go in the accusative when the agent is in the nominative.

kinti naṃ karosîti A II.112 “what do you do (to) him?"
Sakuludāyiṃ paribbājakaṃ antarāyaṃ akāsi M II.39 “they did harm to (opposed) the wandering ascetic Sakuludāyi”.

They're not the cleanest of examples. The last word in each case is the verb 'to do'. The activity words are kinti and antarāyaṃ. The first suffixed 'ti' seems distort the case system, so kinti for 'what' is not as clear cut as plain kiṃ would have been. The verb in the second sentence has a singular form, but failures to inflect for person and number are not unknown. The source I checked against had a different but odd spelling for 'paribbājakaṃ'. It might not be a mere typo.

Thanks!

Quick terminological question: what aspect would you call something like ‘he bled all over the place’? (If it even has an established name, that is.) I’m guessing it’s an instance of the distributive, but I’m not too sure about that given that I’m pretty uncertain as to what the distributive aspect even is.

This is probably not helpful, but in Finnish the frequentative can mean either that the action is spread out over time or over space.

That is helpful, thank you! I haven’t looked into the frequentative yet… maybe I should.

[Richard W]

I also suffered from a paranoid browser security-related inability to post last night. It could be a server issue, or it could conceivably be something on my end that wasn't instantly solved by rebooting and restarting.

Quick question: how exactly am I supposed to parse ‘paranoid browser security-related inability to post’? I’m having particular trouble figuring out exactly what ‘paranoid’ is supposed to be modifying here.

It's the browser that is exhibiting paranoia.

Saying "‘I’m doing research on linguistics’, with an intransitive light verb" is confusing, as the light verb (to do) is transitive. Is the combination verb+noun really a 'light verb'?

Yes, it definitely is a light verb: ‘do’ imparts next to no semantic information, and really is only present to make the noun ‘research’ act as a verb. (One might quibble that ‘research’ can act as a verb anyway, but there are plenty other examples which aren’t as ambiguous.)

How does 'to do' being a light verb make 'to do research' a *light* verb?

[Travis B.]

"To do research" is not a light verb at all by any reasonable standard; something that incorporates a light verb is almost certainly not a light verb itself.

[Kuchigakatai]

Personally, I keep coming here because I enjoy conlanging, and because the community here is so incredibly welcoming; I tend not to worry about all that other stuff.

It may be useful to point out I joined the ZBB in early 2008, back when it was a lot less friendly and welcoming to people who hadn't caught up with the average knowledge of linguistics here. People positively spoke of its tendency towards elitism even, and besides there was also plenty of drama between members here. I thought it was alright. I remember when this began to change, and people who gave sarcastic or underhanded replies to unexperienced conlangers began being told "Don't bite the newbies"... I find the new ZBB is now a lot more welcoming to people who're less experienced with linguistics and conlanging, but also less tolerant of rowdy behaviour and political what-if's, and quite a bit less politically diverse too (it is significantly more "leftist", as defined in the current American model of politics). And I think it is alright, except quite slow compared to before (but this is true of all phpBB forums these days).

Well, the question of the semantic perfectivity of shedding blood all over the place is not easy, if not impossible. I don't think it's an objective consequence of what the activity was. It depends on how it's viewed, for which one would need the enclosing paragraph, and is still likely to be coloured by how individual languages treat select the marking.

That is true, I suppose… maybe this is just one of those questions which doesn’t have a sensible answer.

The way I read Richard's post, certainly the way I think about it, is that you can go either way, depending on how the action is viewed in a particular context. The choice of perfective vs. imperfective aspect is, IMO, independent of the use of the periterative.

This means you could have a periterative perfective and a periterative imperfective. Or maybe you could have a periterative that's ambiguous for perfectivity. Or maybe the periterative only appears with perfective aspect, so if the action is viewed as imperfective then you need an adverbial to express the notion of periterativity. Many such things happen in languages.

Saying "‘I’m doing research on linguistics’, with an intransitive light verb" is confusing, as the light verb (to do) is transitive. Is the combination verb+noun really a 'light verb'?

Yes, it definitely is a light verb: ‘do’ imparts next to no semantic information, and really is only present to make the noun ‘research’ act as a verb. (One might quibble that ‘research’ can act as a verb anyway, but there are plenty other examples which aren’t as ambiguous.)

Richard is trying to correct your use of terminology here, using some Socratic dialectical kind of thing. I'll be straightforward: "light verb" only refers to the single verb that semantically doesn't carry much meaning ('do', 'hit', 'give', and such).

I don't think there's any standard term for the noun that expresses the action (or state), or for the construction with the pair light verb + action/state noun. They're just called "the [action/state/event] noun used with the light verb", and the pair can be called with general terms like "predicate" (in the linguistics sense, not the traditional grammar sense), "verb", "verb complex", "VP head", etc.

For what it's worth, in the study of Persian grammar carried out in English, such pairs at least are called "compound verbs". I don't think there's any particular term in Japanese grammar for the action noun + suru construction.

[Richard W]

Richard is trying to correct your use of terminology here, using some Socratic dialectical kind of thing. I'll be straightforward: "light verb" only refers to the single verb that semantically doesn't carry much meaning ('do', 'hit', 'give', and such).

I'd never come across the term 'light verb' before, so it was conceivable that it had been assigned to the whole of what I naturally thought of as a 'compound verb'. I probably met the term when I was lightly studying Persian, but I don't have any clear recollection of the term from that study. I rather like the term 'stretched verb'.

One may wish to distinguish the case of transitive stretched verbs from the more general case of deverbal nouns taking the accusative rather than an objective genitive. In Pali, agent nouns and verbal nouns take the accusative of the object rather than a genitive, and the Pali word order doesn't help distinguish the object of the verbal noun from the object of a stretched verb. Object and past participle or agent noun often coalesce as a tatpurusha, traditionally identified as having the first element in the accusative relationship. Occcasional tatpurushas preserve the accusative ending.

[bradrn]

How does 'to do' being a light verb make 'to do research' a *light* verb?

"To do research" is not a light verb at all by any reasonable standard; something that incorporates a light verb is almost certainly not a light verb itself.

Richard is trying to correct your use of terminology here, using some Socratic dialectical kind of thing. I'll be straightforward: "light verb" only refers to the single verb that semantically doesn't carry much meaning ('do', 'hit', 'give', and such).

Oops, sorry, I see what you’re all saying now: I was confusing ‘light verb’ and ‘light verb construction’. Thanks for the correction!

Personally, I keep coming here because I enjoy conlanging, and because the community here is so incredibly welcoming; I tend not to worry about all that other stuff.

It may be useful to point out I joined the ZBB in early 2008, back when it was a lot less friendly and welcoming to people who hadn't caught up with the average knowledge of linguistics here. People positively spoke of its tendency towards elitism even, and besides there was also plenty of drama between members here. I thought it was alright. I remember when this began to change, and people who gave sarcastic or underhanded replies to unexperienced conlangers began being told "Don't bite the newbies"... I find the new ZBB is now a lot more welcoming to people who're less experienced with linguistics and conlanging, but also less tolerant of rowdy behaviour and political what-if's, and quite a bit less politically diverse too (it is significantly more "leftist", as defined in the current American model of politics). And I think it is alright, except quite slow compared to before (but this is true of all phpBB forums these days).

Wow — I’ve heard that things used to be different here, but I didn’t realise they’ve changed that much. I only heard of the ZBB around 2014, and only joined a good couple of years later (and then only to promote my SCA) — and even then I never really looked at Ephemera, which is where most of the drama is — so I wouldn’t know about any of this stuff.

Well, the question of the semantic perfectivity of shedding blood all over the place is not easy, if not impossible. I don't think it's an objective consequence of what the activity was. It depends on how it's viewed, for which one would need the enclosing paragraph, and is still likely to be coloured by how individual languages treat select the marking.

That is true, I suppose… maybe this is just one of those questions which doesn’t have a sensible answer.

The way I read Richard's post, certainly the way I think about it, is that you can go either way, depending on how the action is viewed in a particular context. The choice of perfective vs. imperfective aspect is, IMO, independent of the use of the periterative.

This means you could have a periterative perfective and a periterative imperfective. Or maybe you could have a periterative that's ambiguous for perfectivity. Or maybe the periterative only appears with perfective aspect, so if the action is viewed as imperfective then you need an adverbial to express the notion of periterativity. Many such things happen in languages.

Yes, that’s how I understood it as well.

Perhaps a bit of context might help here. My current conlang has a fairly elaborate aspectual system, where aspects are expressed as suffixes attached to either the ‘perfective’ or ‘imperfective’ form of the verb (similar to Dogon or Komnzo). I was thinking of adding a periterative (as you’re calling it), but I couldn’t decide whether to add it as a ‘perfective’ or ‘imperfective’ stem. But now based on what you said I’m leaning towards not adding a periterative at all, so the question isn’t as important now.

I don't think there's any standard term for the noun that expresses the action (or state), or for the construction with the pair light verb + action/state noun. They're just called "the [action/state/event] noun used with the light verb", and the pair can be called with general terms like "predicate" (in the linguistics sense, not the traditional grammar sense), "verb", "verb complex", "VP head", etc.

For what it's worth, in the study of Persian grammar carried out in English, such pairs at least are called "compound verbs". I don't think there's any particular term in Japanese grammar for the action noun + suru construction.

I’ve seen ‘compound predicate’ and ‘stretched verb’ (though have only seen the first with any regularity).

[Ephraim]

Follow-up question: what’s the difference between distributive, iterative and frequentative? Or is this just another instance of the same thing getting lots of different names?

I think it’s both an instance of the same thing getting different names, and different things getting the same name. You may also find forms with similar meaning labelled repetitive, seriative and multiplicative. There may also be a lot of overlap with terms such as habitual, usitative or customary.

It’s not that the terms necessarily all mean the same thing, because there’s actually a lot of potential distinctions to make here. It’s just that you shouldn’t expect the terms to be used in a consistent manner.

Similarly, I’m not sure that there is universal agreement that these should be called aspects. Some authors may use the term aspect more narrowly, possibly contrasting with terms such as aspectuality, Aktionsart and/or actionality. Others may use the term more broadly, possibly distinguishing, for example, grammatical vs lexical aspect, or viewpoint vs situation aspect. Iteratives (etc.) may or may not be thought of as marking one of these categories.

It may be better to think of iteratives etc. as primarily marking pluractionality (sometimes called verbal number) rather than aspect. Pluractionality is essentially (the marking of) plurality of events or states.

The plurality of events may be distributed over a single occasion or multiple occasion, over a single location or multiple locations, over a single participant or multiple participants, over a single type of partipant or a variety of participants etc. The way in which the plurality of events relate to the quantity of some other thing (or the overt marking of this relationship) may be called distributivity. Distributivity is important not just in relation to pluractionality, but in relation quantification in general (i.e. it is also relevant in the context of nominal number, numerals etc.).

Iteratives and related formations may be thought of as marking pluractionality distributed in time. There are a lot of potential potential distinctions to make here, so there is actually a use for multiple terms. The pluractionality may be event-internal (repetition of phases in the event) or event-external (repetition of the event itself). There may be an uninterrupted sequence of action, or a lack of connection in space and time. You could have repetition over regular intervals or irregular. An event could be repeated frequently or seldom. It may be characterised as a habit, or it may involve a generalization. Etc. Also, the distribution may not be limited to time, but could also involve distribution in space, over participants, over types etc. Furthermore, pluractionality may be associated with other shades of meaning, such as an increase or decrease in intensity or size of the action, aimlessness etc.

Repeating events in time might affect the actionality (i.e. Aktionsart or situation aspect) of the total scenario (or predicate). ”He won” (one event) is telic and punctual, but the totality of ”he won again and again” (an unbounded plurality of events) is durative, and probably atelic. So for this reason, there is obviously a close, but complicated, relationship between pluractionality and aspect.

There is quite a bit of literature on the subject of pluractionality and distributivity, so if you want to do some reading, I would suggest searching for those terms. These may serve as an introduction:
https://www.rhenderson.net/resources/pa ... tivity.pdf
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4bf2/8 ... 38ac94.pdf

If you can find it, I can also recommend:
Cusic, David Dowell (1981) Verbal Plurality and Aspect (Dissertation)

Well, sort of; I did mean to imply that the action took place over many places (hence my suggestion of ‘distributive’), but I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ‘but not necessarily so’. Other examples: ‘he looked around’, ‘the water spilled all over’.

It does makes sense to use the term distributive here, and maybe locative distributive or goal distributive if you want to be more specific. I would not call it distributive aspect, but that might just be a preference.

Maybe related: I’ve seen the term perambulative used for forms marking unbounded, non-directed motion, motion without purpose or motion ”here and there”. I think the term is mostly used in Athabaskan (or Tlingit) linguistics, and there it seems to be restricted to verbs of motion. Whether or not you should call it the perambulative aspect is another question, but it is typically (I think) called an aspect in descriptions of these languages.

And a follow-up question: would such an aspect be more readily grouped as being perfective or imperfective, semantically? I’d guess imperfective (or at least non-perfective), given the absence of a clear end-state, the fact that the internal structure of the event is being considered, and the fact that such an event is decidedly non-punctual — but again, I’m not entirely sure.

I’m not sure I fully understand the question. What do you mean by it being grouped as being perfective or imperfective, semantically?

[bradrn]

Follow-up question: what’s the difference between distributive, iterative and frequentative? Or is this just another instance of the same thing getting lots of different names?

[elided for brevity]

Thank you for the detailed explanation! For some reason I never quite made the connection between distributives and verbal number, although that’s obvious in hindsight. And those links look really useful as well; I was trying to look for information on the subject, but I didn’t find those.

One clarification: is a frequentative just another aspect along the same lines? Your explanation mentions distributives and iteratives, but not frequentatives, and those PDFs you linked also don’t seem to mention frequentatives, all of which makes me suspect that frequentatives may have somewhat different semantics.

Well, sort of; I did mean to imply that the action took place over many places (hence my suggestion of ‘distributive’), but I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ‘but not necessarily so’. Other examples: ‘he looked around’, ‘the water spilled all over’.

It does makes sense to use the term distributive here, and maybe locative distributive or goal distributive if you want to be more specific. I would not call it distributive aspect, but that might just be a preference.

Well, if I add it to my conlang it’s going to be part of the aspectual system, so in that context it would make sense to call it an aspect.

Maybe related: I’ve seen the term perambulative used for forms marking unbounded, non-directed motion, motion without purpose or motion ”here and there”. I think the term is mostly used in Athabaskan (or Tlingit) linguistics, and there it seems to be restricted to verbs of motion. Whether or not you should call it the perambulative aspect is another question, but it is typically (I think) called an aspect in descriptions of these languages.

Yes, I’ve seen the term ‘perambulative’ used for Navajo, but that’s slightly different to what I was asking (e.g. going back to my original question, you don’t actually need to be moving around if you ‘bleed all over the place’).

And a follow-up question: would such an aspect be more readily grouped as being perfective or imperfective, semantically? I’d guess imperfective (or at least non-perfective), given the absence of a clear end-state, the fact that the internal structure of the event is being considered, and the fact that such an event is decidedly non-punctual — but again, I’m not entirely sure.

I’m not sure I fully understand the question. What do you mean by it being grouped as being perfective or imperfective, semantically?

Well, of course the exact definition of perfectivity depends on the language, but for this question I was mostly thinking about it in terms of Dahl’s summary of a typical perfective event:

A [perfective] verb will typically denote a single event, seen as an unanalysed whole, with a well-defined result or end-state, located in the past. More often than not, the event will be punctual, or at least, it will be seen as a single transition from one state to its opposite, the duration of which can be disregarded.

[bradrn]

Going back to light verbs and objects for a moment, I managed to find another particularly good example, from Komnzo:

zane

DEM:PROX

emoth

girl

fam

thought

w\rä/r…

2|3SG:SBJ>3SG.FEM:OBJ:NPST:IPFV/do

He thinks (lit. ‘does thought’) of that girl…

The interesting thing about this example is that the light verb here indexes the object zane emoth ‘that girl’ rather than the noun fam ‘thought’, making this a particularly clear example of a light verb construction with an object.

[fusijui]

I thought this would be the most appropriate thread to post this link to a database of Turkic lexical items: https://turkic.elegantlexicon.com/

We used to have an entire thread for these sorts of things, on the previous incarnation of the forum -- I think it was just called the "Language Resources Thread". Does anyone know why that didn't get re-started over here? I thought it was both useful and interesting in itself.