Andative and ventive in the languages of Siberia: towards a typology of verbal orientation

Abstract

The paper discusses verbal markers meaning ‘go in order to P’ and ‘come in order to P’ in languages of Siberia and the Russian Far East. Special attention is paid to Forest Nenets and some Tungusic languages. Andative vs. ventive opposition (expressing, respectively, motion from and to the deictic center) is identifi ed in Forest Nenets for the fi rst time. In Forest Nenets, these markers are non-implicative, i. e., in order to use them, the goal situation P does not need to have taken place in the actual world (even where they mark fi nite verbs in indicative sentences with past reference), only the motion situation. Though most Tungusic languages also have more than one directional-purposive marker, these usually show a different type of an opposition, namely that between ‘go in order to P’ and ‘go in order to P and come back’. The former markers are not deictically oriented, while the latter differ from typical andative markers in that their meaning has a reditive component (‘returning to the initial point’). As a typological background, the paper also briefl y considers data of some languages spoken in other areals. Morphemes with similar, but often not entirely identical meanings, attested cross-linguistically, are usually described as markers of associated motion or motion-cum-purpose categories. The latter term suits the discussed Siberian-language markers best, because, in contrast to the former term, it highlights both the syntactic role of the motion situation participant (where s/he is coreferent with the S/A-participant of the goal situation) and the temporal sequence of the situations. The article also proposes some observations on the possible grammaticalization paths of motion-cum-purpose markers and provides a tentative list of typological parameters which can be relevant for