A Typology of the Path of Deictic Motion Verbs as Path-Conflating Verbs: The Entailment of Arrival and the Deictic Center

Abstract

This paper analyzes deictic motion verbs in various languages using Talmy's framework, and isolates the Path of motion expressed by these verbs. It is argued that the different interpretations of the Path so discovered are attributable to the lexical meaning of deictic motion verbs as well as locative phrases. Furthermore, deictic motion verbs are claimed to be lexically specified for the entailment of arrival only if they express the Path eventually directed to the deictic center. The arrival-time and departure-time interpretations of cooccurring point-of-time expressions are shown to coincide with the entailment of arrival, or the lack thereof, which is inherent to the semantics of deictic motion verbs.