Motion verbs and future constructions: the case of Hebrew omed le-V ‘standing (up) to-V’/‘(be) about to-V’

Abstract

This paper focuses on the constructionalization and grammaticalization path of the Hebrew construction omed le-V ‘standing (up) to-V’/‘about to-V’ as denoting ‘near future’. The investigation will be a diachronic and historical one, from biblical to contemporary Hebrew, stage by stage, and will discuss the evolution of the omed le-V ‘standing (up) to-V’ construction from a posture verb within a motion verb construction V1 to V2 into a ‘near future construction’. i.e., We will focus on the affinity of the meaning of the motion verb with the type of future it comes to denote and we will claim that the evolution of the omed le-V construction is based on three main sources: 1. Literal omed ‘standing up’ meaning is the basis of the near future grammaticalization: standing up from a sedentary posture marks the beginning of involvement in a certain upcoming action, thus perfect as the source conceptual schema for immediacy marking. 2. The shift from spatial to temporal motion maps spatial image schemas onto timelines that correlate with temporal domains. 3. The intrinsic future-orientation of a goal action gave rise to a pragmatic (metonymic) inference from purpose to futurity, later conventionalizing as futurity. Thus, the construction omed le-V ‘standing (up) to-V/about to-V’ shifted from the literal ‘standing up in order to perform an action’ to the near future ‘about to-V’ meaning via the conditioned or interdependent temporal relation of the standing (up) action and its consecutive goal action in real-world scenarios. Lastly, a comparison to two other Hebrew motion verb-based future constructions will be conducted: the constructions holex le-V ‘walking/going to-V’ and ba le-V ‘coming to-V’. The former will be claimed to denote an ‘undefined’ future (either near or distant) and the latter: an ‘unfulfilled future’ (an action that was about to be conducted but wasn't conducted or wasn't conducted on time). This will shed additional light on the evolution of posture and motion verb constructions into future marking constructions. Our conclusions will also be supported by the results of a questionnaire examining the future realization (either ‘near’, ‘undefined’ or ‘unfulfilled’) of the three constructions among native speakers of Hebrew.