Andative and venitive

Andative and venitive

In linguistics, andative and venitive are a type of verbal deixis, verb forms which indicate 'going' or 'coming' motion in reference to a particular location or person. Other terms sometimes seen are itive and ventive, or translocative and cislocative. They generally derive historically from the verbs "go" and "come" being reduced to auxiliary verbs or verbal affixes, and may in turn grammaticalized to aspectual morphemes. Many languages of California, West Africa (such as Akan), the Caucasus-Mideast-North Africa (Akkadian, Sumerian), and Oceania have such verb forms.

A language with andative and venitive forms may use them with a verb "to carry," for example, to create the meanings of "bring" (venitive) and "take" (andative). In the Turkic Tofa language, the verb "kılaşta-" means "to go on foot." "Kılaştap bar" means to go on foot, and "kılaştap kel" to come on foot.

Polynesian

Proto-Polynesian is reconstructed as having four directional particles used for verbs, venitive *mai, andative *atu, upwards (uphill, inland) *hake, and downwards (downhill, seawards) *hifo.

In the Tokelau language, the Polynesian venitive and andative particles "mai" and "atu" have evidential uses, and are used in aspectual constructions, "mai" for continuative aspect ("going on") and "atu" for inceptive aspect ("coming to be").

The Vanuatu language Lénakel has not only a venitive suffix, but also a suffix that indicates that the action is directed towards the person addressed, as well as a neutral suffix that indicates that the action is directed neither towards the speaker nor towards the person addressed.

::"The king went (away)"

(*) The prefix ì- has no grammatical or lexical meaning. It is used, because each finite verb form must have at least one prefix.

The venitive prefix is also frequently used with verbs that do not express a movement:

::"The king built the temple (here)"

References

*Robin Hooper. 2002. "Deixis and aspect: The Tokelauan directional particles "mai" and "atu." "Studies in language" 26.2:283–313.
*Edzard, Dietz-Otto: A Sumerian Grammar, Brill Academic Publishers, 2003, ISBN 90-04-12608-2.
*Lynch, John: A Grammar of Lenakel. (Pacific Linguistics Series B No. 55) The Australian National University, Canberra 1978.


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