Junctures in Etulo Verb Serialization

Verb serialization involves the use of two or more verbs in the expression of series of related events. This feature has been established for West African languages and also for Etulo, an Idomoid language of the Benue Congo language family. This present study examines verb serialization in Etulo in order to ascertain the juncture types that can be confirmed for the language. The study adopts the Role and Reference Grammar theoretical approach in the analysis of the data. Data for the study were elicited from Etulo native speakers resident in Adi, Buruku Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria. Based on the analysis of the collected data, the study confirms both nuclear and core junctures for Etulo language. Furthermore, these junctures are distinguished on the basis of argument realization and sharing in the language.

The limits of verb serialization

In some languages, verb serialization is productive. Others have just a few kinds of serial verbs. Limited verb serialization can be restricted to just a few directional verbs. Serial verbs need to be kept separate from clause sequences and multi-verb constructions of other kinds including coordinate and subordinate constructions and multi-verb constructions involving converbs and participles. Depending on their form, serial verbs may show similarities with other verb-verb combinations. Those which consist of several grammatical words need to be distinguished from other multi-word verb sequences—including coordinated clauses and clause chains. Monoclausal verb-verb sequences which may share some semantic similarities with serial verbs include constructions with auxiliary verbs and dependent verb forms (including converbs). Single-word serial verbs need to be distinguished from unproductive and lexically restricted verbal compounds. Productive serial verbs will have no restrictions on the mood, modality, and polarity, unlike quasi-serial verbs such as American English go eat.

Serial verbs

This chapter sets out the initial parameters for the concept of serial verbs with some initial examples and a list of definitional properties. The classification of serial verbs into symmetrical and asymmetrical is introduced. The components of a serial verb may have to be strictly contiguous. Alternatively, other constituents may intervene between them. Serial verbs may form one grammatical word, or they may consist of several words. Various grammatical categories can be marked on each components (concordant marking) or be expressed just once per construction (single marking). Verb serialization can be productive, or it can be limited. The history of studies of serial verbs is discussed in some detail in the Appendix. Special focus is on the empirical basis of our cross-linguistic analysis based on the investigation of c.700 grammars of languages from every part of the world, and the author’s own fieldwork in Amazonia and New Guinea.

COMPLEMENTATION (STRATEGIES) IN SUNDANESE

The chief goals of this paper are two-fold: to lay out a range of complex structures in Sundanese and to assess the extent to which Englebretson’s (2003) claim regarding the absence of complementation in colloquial Indonesian can be extended to Sundanese, a neighboring language typologically related to Indonesian. In his corpus study, Englebretson argues that the colloquial Indonesian lacks (syntactic) complement clauses and two verbs/clauses can be linked via complementation strategies, including verb serialization and nominalization. Examination of Sundanese complex structures reveals that Sundanese does evince syntactic complementation and elements that Englebretson might analyze as framing elements are demonstrably arguments of a predicate. Englebretson’s account therefore cannot be maintained in Sundanese.

Resultative constructions in heritage Ambon Malay in the Netherlands

Domains where languages have two or more competing syntactic constructions expressing the same meaning may be problematic for bilingual heritage speakers. One such variable domain is the resultative constructions in heritage Ambon Malay, a variety spoken in the Netherlands by Dutch-Ambon Malay bilinguals. In Ambon Malay, resultatives are expressed mostly by means of verb serialization (SVC), although resultative prepositional phrases (PP) and adjectival phrases (AP) also occur. In Dutch, resultative constructions usually involve verb particles, PPs and APs. This overlap of structures poses the conditions for transfer effects between the two languages. The frequency distribution of SVCs, PPs and APs is investigated in semi-spontaneous speech from heritage speakers of Ambon Malay and compared to that of baseline speakers. Heritage speakers show an increase in the frequency of constructions shared by both languages (PPs and APs), while they underuse the constructions attested only in the heritage language (SVC).

Hittite pai- ‘come’ and uwa- ‘go’ as Restructuring Verbs

The present article provides a new syntactic analysis of the Hittite phraseological construction involving the verbs pai- ‘come’ or uwa- ‘go’ and a second finite verb. Most approaches have treated the construction as monoclausal in terms of verb serialization (Garrett 1990). This study will take a different approach, arguing that pai- and uwa- select a phrasal complement. The features that apparently set the construction apart from other cases of embedding in Hittite will be explained as effects of Restructuring (Rizzi 1982), a phenomenon Hittite also exhibits outside of the construction in question. It will further be argued that uwa- functions as a raising verb while pai- functions as a control verb, accounting for the differences in syntactic behavior between the two.