# “Lexical affixes” of associated motion and associated posture in Tacana and beyond

Antoine Guillaume

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Antoine Guillaume. “Lexical affixes” of associated motion and associated posture in Tacana and beyond. 57th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Aug 2024, Helsinki, Finland. hal-04913928

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Submitted on 27 Jan 2025

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# “Lexical affixes” of associated motion and associated posture
in Tacana and beyond

Antoine Guillaume

(Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage; CNRS; Université Lumière Lyon 2)

Keywords: motion, posture, imperfective aspect, grammaticalization theory, Amazonian languages

In this presentation, my goal is to discuss the spatial verbal categories of associated motion (AM) and associated posture (AP) from the perspectives of the literature on “lexical affixes” and grammaticalization theory.

AM and AP refer to morphemes that are associated with the verb and that have among their possible functions the coding of translational motion in the case of AM (Guillaume & Koch 2021) and postural meanings in the case of AP (Guillaume 2024). In some languages, AM and AP are expressed through forms that qualify, according to formal criteria, for a very advanced stage of grammaticalization. In Tacana, for instance, they are integral components of an elaborate inflectional paradigm featuring nine imperfective circumfixes, as illustrated in (1a) and (1b).

(1) Tacana (Takanan, Lowlands Bolivia, Guillaume 2024)

## a. Imperfective & AM

<table><tr><td>e-tsiatsia-'u</td><td>'be shouting while going'</td></tr><tr><td>e-tsiatsia-siu</td><td>'be shouting while coming'</td></tr><tr><td>e-tsiatsia-buyu</td><td>'be shouting while going back'</td></tr><tr><td>e-tsiatsia-beyu</td><td>'be shouting while coming back'</td></tr><tr><td>e-tsiatsia-niuneti</td><td>'be shouting while wandering'</td></tr></table>

## b. Imperfective & AP

<table><tr><td>e-tsiatsia-neti</td><td>'be shouting while standing'</td></tr><tr><td>e-tsiatsia-sa</td><td>'be shouting while lying/bending'</td></tr><tr><td>e-tsiatsia-bade</td><td>'be shouting while hanging'</td></tr></table>

## c. Imperfective only

<table><tr><td>e-tsiatsia-(a)ni</td><td>'be shouting'</td></tr></table>

AM and AP expressions, akin to those typically examined under the umbrella of “lexical affixes”, pose an intriguing puzzle for traditional grammaticalization theory. They question the assumption, found in numerous works on grammaticalization, that (1) grammaticalizable concepts belong to a limited range of notional domains; (2) motion and posture are excluded from this range; (3) therefore, motion and posture are necessarily lost ("bleached") in the processes of grammaticalization.

In this talk, I will elaborate on earlier presentations of this puzzle in the case of AM by Nicolle (2002; 2007), Guillaume (2006) and Accattoli & Todaro (2017). And I will extend the discussion to include the category of AP.
## References

Accattoli, Matilde & Giuseppina Todaro. 2017. Verbes de mouvement et grammaticalisation : le cas du sicilien vaffazzu. In Malinka Velinova (ed.), *Normes et grammaticalisation: le cas des langues romanes*, 187–210. Sofia: CU Romanistika.

Guillaume, Antoine. 2006. La catégorie du “mouvement associé” en cavineña : Apport à une typologie de l’encodage du mouvement et de la trajectoire [The category of “associated motion” in Cavineña: Contribution to a typology of motion and path encoding]. *Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris* 101(1). 415–436.

Guillaume, Antoine. 2024. Associated motion, associated posture and imperfective aspect in Tacana (Amazonian Bolivia). *Studies in Language* [advanced online].

Guillaume, Antoine & Harold Koch. 2021. Introduction: Associated motion as a grammatical category in linguistic typology. In Antoine Guillaume & Harold Koch (eds.), *Associated motion* (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 64), 3–30. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Nicolle, Steve. 2002. The Grammaticalisation of Movement Verbs in Digo and English. *Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique* (11). 47–67.

Nicolle, Steve. 2007. The grammaticalization of tense markers : A pragmatic reanalysis. *Cahiers Chronos* 17. 47–65.