The Semantics of Serial Verb Constructions in two Eastern Tukanoan languages: Kotiria (Wanano) and Waikhana (Piratapuyo) (original) (raw)

Serial Verb Constructions in Sikkanese

Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2018

Serial verb construction (hereafter abbreviated as SVC) is a construction consisting of more than one verbs without any overt markers of coordinator or subordinator. SVC is a common phenomenon in isolating languages which lack morphological markers for syntactic processes. Sikka language (Sikkanese belongs to isolating language with SVO type and it does not have diathesis. This research attempts to analyse the typological characteristics of Sikkanese SVCs which cover: prosodic/phonological, morpho-syntactic, and semantic features of SVCs in Sikkanese. The theory adopted in this research is typological theory which is applied by Van Stedent and Ger Reesink (2008) in analysing SVCs in East-Nusantara languages. The prosodic characteristic shows that Sikkanese SVCs fell under one intonation contour, similar to the intonation of a single clause and without being separated by a pause; morphosyntactically SVCs in Sikkanese could be categorised into independent and some belong to co-dependent type without any morphological markers; and symantically they could be analysed into: (1) motion; (2) direction, (3) manner; (4) instrument; (5) purpose; (6) progressive; (7) modality

The Syntactic Behaviour of the Second Verb (V2) in Balinese Serial Verbs

Linguistik Indonesia

The title of this study is the syntactic behavior of the second verb (V2) in the Balinese serial verbs and it aims at investigating the types of verbs composing the Balinese serial verbs and analyzing the syntactic behavior of the V2. The theory applied in identifying the Balinese serial verbs is the theory of typology by Van Staden and Ger Reesink (Senft, ed., 2008), and the theory of complement and adjunct by Kroeger (2005) is used in analyzing the syntactic behavior of the V2. This research is classified as a descriptive-qualitative study. The data supporting the analysis was collected from written Balinese texts in the Balinese short stories. The result of the analysis showed that the Balinese serial verbs were formed by V1 stative-V2 intransitive, V1 intransitive -V2 stative, V1 intransitive -V2 transitive active, V1 active transitive -V2 active-transitive, or stative or intransitive, passive-active-transitive, active transitive-passive, passive-passive. Syntactically the V2 co...

The serial verb construction: Comparative concept and cross-linguistic generalizations

Since the 1970s, serial verb constructions (SVCs) have been discussed widely in African, Oceanic and many other languages in different parts of the world. This paper gives an overview of the most important generalizations about serial verb constructions that have been proposed and that do seem to hold if a sufficiently restrictive definition of the concept is adopted. The main problem of the earlier comparative literature is that the notion of a SVC has not been delimited clearly, and/or has been formulated in much too wide terms. This can be seen as a result of the confusion between comparative concepts and natural kinds: Serial verb constructions have (most often implicitly) been regarded as natural kinds (universal categories), so that phenomena in additional languages were regarded as SVCs even when they had somewhat different properties. This procedure inevitably leads to a fuzzy and very broad understanding of the concept, with a prototype structure that does not allow falsifiable claims. Here I propose a narrow definition of SVC and formulate ten universals that are apparently true of all serial verb constructions in this narrow sense.

Serial Verb Construction in Balinese (Syntactic and Semantic Analysis)

e-Journal of Linguistics, 2012

Serial verb construction (SVC) is a construction where more than one verbs occur in a clause without any overt markers of subordinator or coordinator. SVC is a common fenomenon in isolative languages which lack morphological markers for sintactic processes. However, in the use of Balinese, which is rich in morphological markers, SVC are common fenomena. This research attempts to analyse the typological characteristics of SVC in Balinese, to describe the types of SVC in Balinese viewed from the structure of events which forms the SVC, to analyse the constituent merging strategies in clauses containing SVC. This research applies decriptive-qualitative approach, by combining analitic and introspective methods. The data source of this research was 50 short story texts taken from Sastra slot in “Bali Orti”, weekly newspaper of Bali Post, completed with spoken texts, obtained by applying direct observation technique. The data was descriptively and analitically analysed by using the de...

Serial Verb Constructions in Sasak Language of Meno-Mene Dialect: A Typology and LFG Approach

2018

This paper aims to analyze the semantic types, the characteristics, and the constituent structure and functional structure of Sasak serial verb constructions. The theory of Typology and Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) were used to analyze the data. The data in this research were taken from the uttarances of speakers of meno-mene dialect of Sasak. This study is designed as descriptive qualitative research. The data were collected through observation, interview, and reflective-introspective methods with recording and elicitation techniques. The results show that Sasak serial verb constructions have ten semantic types, which are motion, direction, instrument, comitative, manner, aspect and mood, benefactive, causative, cause-effect, and synonym. Based on the phonological, morphological and syntactical characteristics, Sasak serial verb constructions have the following characteristics: (1) They fall under one intonation contour, 2) They form mono-clause as a single predicate, 3) They h...

"Serial Verb Constructions" In Tshiluba

Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, 2023

Serial verb constructions (SVCs), that is sequences of several consecutive verbs sharing certain features, form a well-established concept in descriptive and comparative syntax. However, there is no consensus concerning a systematic and universal definition of these constructions, leading authors like Bisang (2009) and Haspelmath (2016) to propose explicit criteria for their identification. Although Bantu languages are rarely described as containing SVCs, Tshiluba exhibits constructions that look suspiciously similar to them. This work therefore addresses two questions: (a) are these constructions SVCs in either Bisang's (2009) or Haspelmath's (2016) sense?; and (b) what are their key properties? Using various elicitation methods, I collected data indicating that these Tshiluba constructions conform to those definitions, and exhibit many properties which are usually associated with SVCs. Despite this evidence, further complications mean that these constructions remain ambiguous between serialization and asyndetic coordination, suggesting that we may be dealing with an ongoing shift between the two (Andrason 2018), although further empirical confirmation is needed.

Auxiliaries in serialising languages: on COME and GO verbs in Sranan and Ewe

Lingua, 2004

While there is a concensus that auxiliary verbs differ in one way or the other from main verbs, linguists do not always agree on what determines the difference. This is especially so in serialising languages where two or more independent verbs can occur in a clause. It is not always clear whether the ability of a verbal form to express a temporal, aspectual or modal notion in such languages is enough for them to be analysed as auxiliary verbs or whether the nature of the form is equally important. This paper argues that a reduction in material integrity of a verbal form is a very important criterion for distinguishing verbs in serialising languages. #

Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro

In this dissertation a methodology for identifying and analyzing serial verb constructions (SVCs) is developed, and its application is exemplified through an analysis of SVCs in Koro, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. SVCs involve two main verbs that form a single predicate and share at least one of their arguments. In addition, they have shared values for tense, aspect, and mood, and they denote a single event. The unique syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs present a number of theoretical challenges, and thus they have invited great interest from syntacticians and typologists alike. But characterizing the nature of SVCs and making generalizations about the typology of serializing languages has proven difficult. There is still debate about both the surface properties of SVCs and their underlying syntactic structure. The current work addresses some of these issues by approaching serialization from two angles: the typological and the language-specific. On the typological front, it refines the definition of `SVC' and develops a principled set of cross-linguistically applicable diagnostics. From the existing set of surface properties, four core characteristics are distilled: main verbhood, monoclausality, single eventhood, and argument sharing. A construction must have all of these properties in order to qualify as an SVC. Once these underlying semantic and syntactic properties of SVCs are identified, a detailed and explicit set of criteria is developed that allows these underlying properties to be tested in any language. The latter part of the dissertation offers a case study in the use of these diagnostic criteria by applying them to multi-verb constructions in Koro. Testing these constructions against the definition of SVCs developed in the dissertation reveals that although there are numerous multi-verb constructions in Koro that appear to fulfill the surface criteria for SVCs, only one of these can be considered a true SVC. This construction has a VP-shell structure, in which V1 is a path or locative verb that takes V2 as its complement. The shared argument is the subject of V2, providing a counter-example to Baker's (1989) claim that SVCs obligatorily share an internal argument. Constructions that instead involve adjunction of V2 to V1 are shown through detailed semantic investigation to be disqualified as SVCs, because they do not exhibit the expected entailments. This is surprising because they superficially resemble proto-typical SVCs. The syntactic and semantic analysis of these constructions leads to the hypothesis that true SVCs must have a relation of complementation between the verbs, while adjoined or coordinated constructions cannot be considered SVCs.