Universal 1509: motion > position (location) > shape > formless qualities

Universal 1509: motion > position (location) > shape > formless qualities

Original

Hierarchy of agency and discreteness for one place-predicates, which is manifested in voice displacement and the choice between parts of speech:

motion > position (location) > shape > formless qualities (colors, textures, etc.).

Any stage of this hierarchy may be entered from below, by the relatively more stative verbs, or from above, by active verbs.

Standardized

IF one class of predicates is susceptible to voice-displacement properties, THEN all classes to the right should have this voice-displacements as well:
motion > position (location) > shape > formless qualities (colors, textures, etc.)

IF a split in the choice between parts of speech occurs, it occurs in accord with the agency and discreteness hierarchy.

Keywords

active verb, stative verb, semantics, word class

Domain

syntax

Type

implicational hierarchy

Status

achronic and diachronic

Quality

statistical

Basis

languages in Nichols 1975

Source

Nichols 1975: 348-349

Counterexamples

Georgian has a class of ‘static verbs’, morphologically defective in that they coincide formally with passive of causatives. These verbs are limited to the second class of the hierarchy, the verbs of position and location, but they include a number of psych-verbs as well. This is a stative class, and should include all relatively more stative levels. But it fails to include representatives of the third and fourth levels only because those notions are normally lexicalized as adjectives and thus not susceptible to the voice-displacement properties of verbs. (Nichols 1975: 348)