recipientdirectional

Recipientdirectional is a proposed morphosyntactic feature in linguistics and constructed languages. It designates a single verbal or clausal marker that encodes both the recipient of an action and the directional orientation of that action, such as motion toward or away from a reference point. The concept is theoretical and used mainly in typology discussions and conlang design, rather than as a widely attested phenomenon in natural languages.

The term blends recipient and directional, and was introduced in the 2020s in discussions about how many grammatical roles can be bundled into a single morphological marker. It remains largely experimental, appearing in descriptive sketches, speculative grammars, and design notes rather than in large-scale fieldwork.

In typology, recipientdirectional systems would interact with voice, case marking, and word order. A verb could bear a marker encoding both the recipient and a path toward or away from the reference point, potentially reducing or restructuring the use of separate recipient phrases and directional adverbs. Realizations could be affixes, clitics, or integrated parts of the verb stem, and may co-exist with other marking strategies depending on language type and alignment.

Example (schematic): In a hypothetical language that uses recipientdirectional marking on the verb, the sentence "I give the book to Maria toward the north" could be rendered as VREC-DIR book Maria-NORTH, with the verb carrying both recipient and direction. The gloss would read: I give the book to Maria toward the north.

See also: ditransitive constructions, directional verbs, applicatives, grammatical voice, language typology.