Serial Verb Constructions

Author : Carol Lord
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1993-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027229137

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Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions by Carol Lord Pdf

This work examines both historical and comparative evidence in documenting the sweep of diachronic change in the context of serial verb constructions. Using a wide range of data from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in meaning and usage result in syntactic, morphological and lexical change.The process by which verbs lose lexical semantic content and develop case-marking functions is described; it is argued that the change is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to affix, along a grammaticalization continuum. This same grammaticalization process is shown to result in the development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. Strong parallels across languages are found in the meanings of the verbs that become “defective” and in the functions they come to mark. The changes are documented in detail, with examples from a number of languages illustrating the effect of the changes on typology and word order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and aspect, and the relevance of notions such as discourse topic, foreground and transitivity.With respect to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the author has taken a relatively nonpartisan approach, and the discussion is accessible to students of language as well as of interest to theoreticians.

Author : Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd,Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald,R.M.W. Dixon
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 394 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780199279159

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Serial Verb Constructions by Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd,Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald,R.M.W. Dixon Pdf

This volume of new work explores the forms and functions of serial verbs. The introduction sets out the cross-linguistic parameters of variation, and the final chapter draws out a set of conclusions. These frame fourteen explorations of serial verb constructions and similar structures in languages from Asia, Africa, North, Central and South America, and the Pacific. Chapters on well-known languages such as Cantonese and Thai are set alongside the languages of small hunter-gathererand slash-and-burn agriculturalist groups.A serial verb construction (sometimes just called serial verb) is a sequence of verbs which acts together as one. Each describes what can be conceptualized as a single event. They are monoclausal; their intonational properties are those of a monoverbal clause; they generally have just one tense, aspect, mood, and polarity value; and they are an important tool in cognitive packaging of events. Serial verb constructions are a pervasive feature of isolating languages of Asia and West Africa, andare also found in the languages of the Pacific, South, Central and North America, most of them endangered.Serial verbs have been a subject of interest among linguists for some time. This outstanding book is the first to study the phenomenon across languages of different typological and genetic profiles. The authors, all experienced linguistic fieldworkers, follow a unified typological approach and avoid formalisms. The book will interest students, at graduate level and above, of syntax, typology, language universals, information structure, and language contact. in departments of linguistics andanthroplogy.

Author : Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd,Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher : Oxford Studies in Typology and
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780198791263

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Serial Verbs by Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd,Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald Pdf

This book provides an in-depth typological account of the forms, functions, and histories of serial verb constructions, in which several verbs combine to form a single predicate. It uses an inductively-based framework for the analysis and draws on data from languages with different typological profiles and genetic affiliations.

Author : Dany Adone
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2012-06-28
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9780521199650

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The Acquisition of Creole Languages by Dany Adone Pdf

The first study into how children acquire Creoles as their first language in the absence of a conventional language model.

Author : Nerida Jarkey
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2015-06-02
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789004292390

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Serial Verbs in White Hmong by Nerida Jarkey Pdf

In this book, Nerida Jarkey investigates the highly productive strategy of verb serialisation and reveals that its key function in this dynamic Southeast Asian language is to depict a single event in an elaborate and vivid way.

Author : Terry Crowley
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 0198241356

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Serial Verbs in Oceanic by Terry Crowley Pdf

Terry Crowley introduces the idea of serial verbs which are clauses that include multiple verbs or verb-like items that are used to convey a single meaning like wash the plates clean. The author argues that their formation is a consequence of contact between different languages.

Author : Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald,Pieter Muysken,Joshua Birchall
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2010-12-17
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789004194526

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Multi-verb Constructions by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald,Pieter Muysken,Joshua Birchall Pdf

This book surveys multi-verb constructions in multiple languages from the Americas, showing a very rich tapestry of typologically unusual constructions, including serial verbs, auxiliaries, co-verbs, phasal verbs. Where possible, a diachronic perspectrive is offered.

Author : Claire Lefebvre
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027223241

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Serial Verbs by Claire Lefebvre Pdf

The papers in this volume offer several analyses of verb serialization written within various theoretical frameworks: grammatical, comparative and cognitive/functional. They cover a wide range of language families. All authors address two basic questions about verb serialization: First, what is the structure and thematic constitution of the construction? The answers to this question cover the spectrum of the options that are available in current grammatical theory. Second, what aspect of the grammar differentiates between languages which have serial constructions and those which do not? The specific proposals made by the authors are discussed by R. Larson in the concluding paper. Larson opens new perspectives for research on verb serialization by posing the following question: what analogues for verb serialization can be found in the more familiar grammatical apparatus of English? It is suggested that verb serialization finds a clear parallel in the secondary predicate structures of English.

Author : Gunter Senft
Publisher : Pacific Linguistics Research School of Pacific and Asian Stu
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : UOM:39015075647498

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Serial Verb Constructions in Austronesian and Papuan Languages by Gunter Senft Pdf

"This volume of new work explores the nature of verb serialisation in a range of languages from the Pacific region - both Austronesian and non-Austronesian. Serial verbs can be described linguistically as a sequence of verbs which behave as a single complex predicate. A particular focus of this book is the detailed examination given by most authors to the relationship of such uniclausal linguistic structures with the real world notion of eventhood. The book also makes a valuable addition to the description and analysis of serial verb constructions from the Pacific, a region which has generally been under-represented in cross-linguistic discussions of verb serialisation. The book will appeal to syntacticians and typologists as well as to Austronesianists and Papuanists."--Provided by publisher.

Author : Mark Sebba
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 1987-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027252227

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The Syntax of Serial Verbs by Mark Sebba Pdf

This monograph is about the chains of verbs commonly found in Creole Languages, West African languages, in particular the Kwa sub-group of Niger-Congo, Chinese and certain other languages and have acquired the name of 'serial verbs' in the literature. As a case study, the serial constructions of Sranan, a creole language of Surinam with an English lexical base, are examined in detail.

Author : Osamuyimen Thompson Stewart
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2013-10-31
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781135726744

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The Serial Verb Construction Parameter by Osamuyimen Thompson Stewart Pdf

An investigation of the serial verb construction, this work engages central issues in syntactic theory-complex predicates, clausal architecture and syntactic variation.

Author : Brian Nolan,Elke Diedrichsen
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2017-01-26
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027266125

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Argument Realisation in Complex Predicates and Complex Events by Brian Nolan,Elke Diedrichsen Pdf

This book offers a comprehensive investigative study of argument realisation in complex predicates and complex events at the syntax-semantic interface across a wide variety of the world’s languages, ranging over languages such as German, Irish, Sicilian and Italian, Lithuanian, Estonian and other Finno-Ugric languages, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra from Australia’s Western Desert region, Japanese, Tepehua (Totonacan, Mexico), Cheyenne, Mexican Spanish, Boharic Coptic, and Persian. This volume examines the syntactic variation of complex events, complex predicates and multi-verb constructions within a single clause where the clause is view as representing a single event, studying their semantics and syntax within functional, cognitive and constructional frameworks, to arrive at a better understanding of their cross linguistic behaviour and how they resonate in syntax. These constructions manifest considerable variability in cross-linguistic comparisons of complex predicate formation. In European languages, for example, typically one of the verbs in a verb-verb construction highlights a phase of an underspecified event while the matrix verb specifies the actual event. In contrast, serial verbs require each verb to provide a sub-event dimension within a complex event that is viewed holistically as unitary in syntax. This book contributes to an understanding of complex events, complex predicates and multi-verb constructions across languages, their syntactic constructional patterns and argument realisation.

Author : AIKHENVALD.
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2024-07-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0191833703

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SERIAL VERBS. by AIKHENVALD. Pdf

Author : Volker Unterladstetter
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2024-07-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783961102167

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Multi-verb constructions in Eastern Indonesia by Volker Unterladstetter Pdf

Constructions with multiple verbal elements have posed a long-standing challenge to linguistic analysis. Most studies of verb serialisation have been confined to single languages rather than looking at crosslinguistic patterns. This book provides the first in-depth account into the areal characteristics of multi-verb constructions (MVCs) in Eastern Indonesia. By collating published data as well as corpus data from 32 Austronesian and Papuan languages, the study traces commonalities as well as differences in MVC use across the area. Analysis takes place on two levels: first, the morpho-syntactic behaviour of MVCs is taken into account. As this plane of analysis arguably does not provide any meaningful insights into why MVCs are construed and used the way they are, a semantic account of MVCs is presented. One of the main hypotheses advanced in this book is that the crucial driving force behind multi-verb construals is semantic interaction between the verbs, leading to four principal techniques of event formation: merging, staging, modification, and free juxtaposition. The study aims at showing that while all four techniques are, to varying degrees, in use in Eastern Indonesian languages, the morpho-syntactic output does not necessarily mirror these underlying differences in event conception. Applying insights from Davidsonian event semantics as well as from predicate decomposition, the book provides a model of event interaction that helps to explain differences in MVC behaviour such as issues in constituent order or operator assignment.

Author : Carol Lord
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 1993-08-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027276858

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Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions by Carol Lord Pdf

This work examines both historical and comparative evidence in documenting the sweep of diachronic change in the context of serial verb constructions. Using a wide range of data from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in meaning and usage result in syntactic, morphological and lexical change. The process by which verbs lose lexical semantic content and develop case-marking functions is described; it is argued that the change is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to affix, along a grammaticalization continuum. This same grammaticalization process is shown to result in the development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. Strong parallels across languages are found in the meanings of the verbs that become “defective” and in the functions they come to mark. The changes are documented in detail, with examples from a number of languages illustrating the effect of the changes on typology and word order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and aspect, and the relevance of notions such as discourse topic, foreground and transitivity. With respect to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the author has taken a relatively nonpartisan approach, and the discussion is accessible to students of language as well as of interest to theoreticians.