Endocentric and Exocentric Verb Typology: Talmy Revisited – On Good Grounds

This paper presents the so-called Endo- and Exocentric Verb Typology advanced by the Danish research group TYPOlex. The typology is partly based on Talmy’s lexicalization patterns for motion verbs with some elaboration and refinement of the manner–path distinction, and it is generalized to comprise Germanic and Romance verbs (and nouns) as a whole. The Danish findings point to a relatively high lexical precision and concreteness in Germanic verbs (and Romance nouns) and a relatively high lexical abstractness and genericity in Romance verbs (and Germanic nouns). Furthermore, the paper investigates Talmy’s two semantic components ground and figure and argues that they are far more generalized in Romance (secondary) lexicalization patterns – parasynthetic derivation – than normally assumed.z½