Moving event and moving participant in aspectual conceptions

This study advances an analysis of the event conception of aspectual forms in four East Asian languages: Ainu, Japanese, Korean, and Ryukyuan. As earlier studies point out, event conceptions can be divided into two major types: the moving-event type and the moving-participant type, respectively. All aspectual forms in Ainu and Korean, and most forms in Japanese and Ryukyuan are based on that type of event conception. Moving-participant oriented Ainu and movingevent oriented Japanese occupy two extremes, between which Korean and Ryukyuan stand. Notwithstanding the geographical relationships among the four languages, Ryukyuan is closer to Ainu than to Korean, whereas Korean is closer to Ainu than to Japanese.