This paper develops a micro-parametric approach to language variation on the basis of patterns of directed manner of motion and resultative constructions across a variety of languages. Data drawn from languages such as Indonesian, Javanese, Hebrew, Malayalam, Korean and Japanese show that the previous macro-parametric approaches fail to account for the degree of variation found. A micro-parametric analysis is developed which is based on a universal underlying syntactico-semantic structure with language-specific possibilities for lexicalization by vocabulary items.