Syntactic Manifestation of Location and Motion+Path Verbs in Wichí/Weenhayek (Mataguaya)

Abstract

The verbs expressing motion+path and locative verbs in Wichi/Weenhayek (Mataguayan language family) contain two arguments in their lexical meaning: the entity acting as the Figure and the Ground with respect to which the location, path, or orientation of the Figure is conceived. However, they differ in the way this semantic structure is syntactically expressed. The entity acting as Ground is mandatorily explicit in locative verbs, whereas it is never expressed in predicates with motion+path verbs. This paper discusses these syntactic differences between the two groups of verbs. Likewise, since the syntactic expression of the entity acting as Ground is formally similar to that of the object of transitive objects, we also analyze syntactic tests for the recognition of these two types of complements.