Direction and associated motion in Barpak Ghale

Abstract This paper describes systems of direction and associated motion in Barpak Ghale, a Tamangic language spoken in Nepal. The language has two sets of suffixes to encode these grammatical categories. The first set, -pʌ and -rʌ, encodes direction and prior associated motion, while the second set, -kɰi and -ri, encodes direction and subsequent or concurrent associated motion. The co-expression of direction and associated motion raises the question of how one reading is selected over the other. Examining data from the present author’s fieldwork, this study argues that the interpretation of these suffixes depends on the semantic class of the verb root. The data generally follow the hierarchy of verb classes as proposed in typological studies. In addition, this study demonstrates that causative-motion verbs exhibit distinct behaviors depending on their subtypes. It argues that the nature of causation and the accompaniment of the causer in causative-motion verbs play a crucial role in the interpretation of suffixes.