Talk:Verb framing

“All of the Romance languages, including Spanish, are verb-framed languages.”
Perhaps that's not 100% true. In Italian, you say vengo su (“I'm coming up”), or vado via (“I'm going away”). David Olivier (talk) 10:37, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Slavic?
How do Slavic languages classify then? Russian motion verbs, for example, express both the manner and path of motion, the former expressed by the root of the verb and the latter mostly by prefixes. For example, вбежать (run into) = в- (into- prefix) + бежать (run), оббежать (run around) = об- (around- prefix) + бежать (run), облететь (fly around) = об- (around- prefix) + лететь (fly). Does this make Russian both verb- and satellite-framing? Or a third category? --X-Man (talk) 11:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't speak Russian. But your examples don't indicate a third category but match perfectly with a satellite-framed language: the kind of motion is expressed in the verb and the direction is expressed by a satellite. It is of no importance whether verb and satellite are written in two words (like in English) or one word (like in German, and seemingly Russian). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.70.31.110 (talk) 19:46, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * fr:Cadrage verbal ou satellitaire IMHO gives better examples to illustrate the concept than the English article. Actually, the use of prefixes on verbs does not show much difference between German and Russian. But the standard Russian does not have constructions like "come in", which are very common in German. Russian is certainly verb-framed, not so expressed as Spanish, but apparently even more verb-framed than French. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The German prefixes can separate and float around in the sentence and also can be used in fresh situations by themselves (with new verbs). If they were entirely "frozen" into the verbs, and the meanings fully lexicalized, it would not count as satellite-framing.


 * As I recall, Russian verbs have many prefixes that illustrate manner (and direction too, but here I am simply going along with the OP), and it leads to a very complex and rich verb structure where there are various degrees of "attachment", and the prefixes get entangled with conjugation as well. What it means for the distinction in the article I don't know, but it's certainly a challenging case for it. 178.38.87.163 (talk) 08:55, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Russian verbs express manner. идти (go on foot, walk), ехать (go in a vehicle), бегать (run), нести (carry something on foot), вести (carry something in a vehicle; i.e., drive something or somebody), пететь (fly), плыть (float, go in a boat). In English "go" normally means "walk" but you can use it for any manner, but in Russian Иду в Лондон means "I go to London (on foot)". There is no separate word for "come", so идти means either go or come.

However, it implies going in a single direction (without specifying the direction). Russian has a dozen "verbs of motion" that come in unidirectional/multidirectional pairs: идти/ходить, ехать/ездить, бегать/бежить, нести/носить, вести/возить, лететь/летать. плыть/плавать. The second verb means making a round trip, doing multiple trips (implying you came back each time), going in general, or wandering aimlessly. Note that "unidirectional" doesn't mean you can't turn; it just means you can't reverse direction and go back the way you came. So "Time flies" is Время летит because time goes in one direction.  Время летает sounds illogical because it suggests time flies around in a circle; it doesn't have the urgency of "Time is slipping away". (It could perhaps be used when discussing the Hindu philosophy of time going in an endless circle.) Both verbs in the pair are imperfective.

Prepositional prefixes specify the direction. Войти means "go into" or "come into", and is the closest equivalent to "enter". When the verbs are prefixed they lose their unidirectional/multidirectional sense and become perfective/imperfective. Войти (go in, perfective); входить (go in, imperfective). "Perfective" views the event from the outside: a single indivisible unit. "Imperfective" views it from the inside: an ongoing activity.

Positional verbs also express manner strongly. In English we say something "is" somewhere and we "put" it there, regardless of its position. In Russian you're more likely to say it "stands" there (if it's vertical), "lies" there (if it's horizontal), or "sits" there (if it's a person or animal or doll in a sitting position). Likewise with their movement counterparts: I "stand" something there (vertically), or "lay" it (horizontally), or "set" it (in a sitting position). You don't just "put" things somewhere without saying what position you're leaving them in. German shares this trait.

So with both motion verbs and position verbs, the manner is explicit. This contrasts with Spanish which prefers verbs that express the direction but not the manner: entrar and salir. Russian and German have no equivalent words: you have to say "go in", "drive in", "go out", "drive out", etc. The critical issue is the stem of the verb, not the prefixes that can be added. Sluggoster (talk) 10:15, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

"verb framing" vs "verb-framed"
Do I guess correctly that verb framing may me either "verb-framed" or "satellite-framed"? The lede section is ignorant about the sense of the title itself. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Why is this a third class of languages?
The third language group "conflates Path with Motion and expresses Manner separately".[2] This type of verb morphology is common among Native American languages.

What is this supposed to mean? Either it is synonymous with the second group, namely "verb-framed", or it is so poorly expressed that we can't tell what it is.

Incidentally, the use of capitalization for important concept nouns has a nineteenth-century air to it; is that really the way the quote goes in Zheng & Goldin-Meadow (2002)?

178.38.87.163 (talk) 08:43, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I too was confused by the description of the third group and so tracked down the cited paper. It appears that whoever added that to the article made a mistake: Zheng & Goldwin-Meadow do indeed use "conflat[ing] Path with Motion and express[ing] Manner separately" to describe verb-framing. The full quote reads "The second language group (verb-framed languages) conflates Path with Motion and expresses Manner separately; Spanish, French, and Turkish are examples (e.g. “sale volando” exits exits flying, where sale conveys path and motion and volando conveys manner). The third language group conflates Figure with Motion; many American Indian languages display this typology (e.g. in Atsugewi, the verb root “–qput-” = loose dry dirt moves, where the motion is particular to a class of figures, thus conflating figure with motion; Talmy, 1985, 1991)." I will edit the article to reflect this.


 * And yes, the paper in question does capitalize the various semantic categories.

But what is a satellite exactly?
It would be good (even necessary, I would argue) to define the noun "satellite" as it relates to a satellite-framed language. Equinox (talk) 20:07, 31 March 2016 (UTC)