Manner of motion and directional verbs in spoken adult and child Romanian

Abstract

This paper presents the patterns of use for manner of motion and directional verbs in a corpus of oral adult-to-adult Romanian, and a longitudinal corpus of child Romanian comprising both adult-to-child and child data. In adult-to-adult speech, as well as adult-to-child speech, manner of motion verbs were much less frequently used than directional verbs. This trend was also found in child speech. In the adult input and child speech, manner of motion verbs were mainly used intransitively, without reference to a Goal of Motion. By contrast, inherently directed motion verbs were used in bare verb constructions, or in association with Goal of Motion prepositional and adverbial phrases.