Moving places. The syntax of goal of motion constructions revisited

Abstract

‘Goal of motion’ constructions have been used in the literature (Talmy 1985, Klipple 1997, Higginbotham 1999, Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2001, Ramchand and Folli 2001, etc.) as the basis for setting a parameter which distinguishes English (a satellite-framed language) from Romance languages (verb-framed languages) in terms of mapping conceptual categories such as ‘manner’ and ‘path’ onto syntactic ones (VPs and PPs). Starting from Folli and Ramchand’s analysis of ‘goal of motion’ constructions, we will show that some ‘goal of motion’ constructions in Italian and Romanian appear to force a reconsideration of the above-mentioned parameter.

Keywords

• goal of motion
• manner
• path
• verb-frame languages
• satellite-framed languages