Universal #1513
Legacy number: 1513
| Number | 1509 |
| 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. |
| Formula | motion > position (location) > shape > formless qualities |
| 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 |
Discussion
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)
Notes
1. Cf. #1512. 2. It is a strict hierarchy in that stages cannot be skipped, either in the synchronic composition of formal classes or in their diachronic expansion.
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2. It is a strict hierarchy in that stages cannot be skipped, either in the synchronic composition of formal classes or in their diachronic expansion.