Associated motion in Tungusic languages: a case of mixed argument structure

Résumé En

The languages of South America and Australia are known for their morphologically and semantically elaborate systems of Associated Motion (AM). In contrast, the five Tungusic languages discussed here, which belong to the Northern and the Southern branch of the family, have only a single suffix pertaining to this category. This morpheme expresses a motion event that precedes the verb event. It is deictically neutral, i.e. can refer to both translocative and cislocative motion, although translocative readings predominate. The cross-linguistically most striking feature of AM in the Tungusic languages is the fact that not only base verb arguments can be expressed, but so can arguments typical of motion verbs, called 'spatial arguments' in the paper. We explore the argument structure of verbs marked with the AM-suffix in detail and find that both formal considerations (a preference for only one overt argument) and pragmatic considerations (the choice to foreground the spatial argument over the verb argument) play a role in which argument(s) get expressed.