You can't remake Skyward Sword without Motion-Controls. That's like remaking a Mario Kart game without karts.
Graphics at least. But definitely not controls.

Basically everything.

Besides enemy design and AI (what you said/assumed about the combat is true; you must read the movements of the enemies and h.slash, v.slash, d.slash, thrust or shield-bash accordingly), there's a plethora of puzzles that use motion based gestures, items that are motion based in different ways like the remote controlled beetle, aiming of ranged weapons, the use of the sword for searching for secrets by motion control (dowsing) or 'drawing patterns on magic walls' and mini-games, and various other movements like flying, balancing on ropes and swimming.

Some movements could be fairly easily swapped for stick control like the swimming (flying would already be harder since there's various moves), but for everything else I guess they basically would need to rebuild the entire engine.

Which would result in an entirely different game; Skyward Sword is Skyward Sword because the motion controls are so integrated into every aspect of the game.

I like motion control but this game needed an option to use regular control.

I could never finish this game beacuse the controls wore me out.

When I play big action/adventure games that take 30+ hours to beat I want to relax playing games on the couch with pillows and blankets for a few hours at the time wich I never could with Zelda SS.

The resolution would definitely have to be changed.

This is why I fear SS will fade into obscurity. You can't remake SS w/o motion controls, but I have a hunch that Nintendo will abandon motion controls moving forward. Just don't know how an HD remake would work.

Yes, aiming things could also be stick based, from the top of my head, it would be like usual. The drawing is simply pointing the Wiimote towards your tv, so if there's a good alternative in Okami for that it probably works here too.

I guess if they really wanted to, ways could be found for almost everything to be controlled by analogue sticks and buttons, but I'm not sure how satisfactory that would be. Could complicate things even further. Combat for example, I guess the only way would be to use the right stick to simulate hand movement, and somehow quickly flicking it slashes the sword the way you want to. It would sacrifice the use of the stick for free-camera movement (though SS didn't have that anyway), but the use of buttons wouldn't really be an option.

So yeah, everything's possible if they really wanted to, but it would need some work I'd say. Besides there simply being a lot to change, the combat remains the biggest obstacle. Could be that Nintendo's smarter than me, I'm thinking too complicated and they have easy solutions for everything however of course.

So they will have to either not make a HD version at all, or rebind the buttons with maybe directional inputs for attacks.. or keep the motion controls in :p

Personally, I don't like the motion controls, but it wouldn't be the same without it

I'm OK with Skyward Sword's motion controls, but I wouldn't be sad if a remake wouldn't have them!

I loved motion controls on this game, they were the best ever but they should add an option to play it on a traditional control scheme.

They should also entirely remove the part where you have to collect notes cause that felt like a cheap filler. Make enemies smarter. Visually they should remove the jaggies completely, make it 1080p with locked 30fps, remake character models and improve general textures (geometry is fine in this game). A new lightning system would do wonders as well.

I think that's it.

The game could be remade without motion controls