The essence of serial verbs

This chapter provides an integrated summary of the properties of serial verbs discussed throughout the book, and their parameters of variation. The definition of serial verbs with their characteristic properties is followed by the principles of argument sharing within serial verbs. In terms of their composition, serial verbs divide into symmetrical and asymmetrical types. There can be nesting within serial verb constructions. The two broad kinds of constructions are contrasted in terms of their semantics, order of components, and propensities towards grammaticalization or lexicalization. Contiguity and wordhood are further typological parameters of variation within serial verbs. Grammatical categories such as person of the subject, aspect, tense, modality, evidentiality, or mood, can be marked concordantly on each component, or just once per construction. Serialization can be productive or limited. It is essential to distinguish serial verbs from multi-verb sequences of other kinds. Origins and development of serial verbs are briefly summarized.

What are serial verbs good for?

Serial verb constructions can express a multitude of grammatical meanings—including directionality, aspect, comparison, increasing valency, and many more. These meanings may be expressed with affixes in other languages. Using a serial verb may help express definiteness and focus. Detailed portrayal of various facets of one single event is a function of symmetrical serial verbs. Languages with serial verbs—or ‘serializing’ languages—are not exclusively associated with any particular type of language. Serial verbs are a major means of expressing grammatical meanings in languages with few if any bound morphemes. Many of these languages are highly analytic and isolating in their profile. Languages with little verbal morphology tend to rely on serial verbs for expressing the relevant meanings. Prolific use of serial verbs is a corollary of the language having a comparatively small number of verbs with a wide range of meanings.

Serial verbs

In terms of their composition, serial verb constructions divide into asymmetrical and symmetrical. Asymmetrical serial verbs consist of a minor component from a closed class of verbs, and a major component from an open class; this is the head of the construction. Symmetrical serial verbs consist of several components from open classes. Asymmetrical serial verb constructions cover a wide array of meanings—direction and orientation, aspect, extent and change of state, associated posture and motion, increasing and reducing valency, and marking the index of comparison. They are also used as complementation strategies with secondary concept verbs and with complement-taking verbs, and mark manner modification in event-argument constructions. The recurrent meanings of symmetrical serial verbs cover cause-effect, result, and manner, in addition to synonymous verb constructions. The established properties of asymmetrical and symmetrical serial verbs are defined in terms of their meanings, iconicity, internal structure, and grammaticalization and lexicalization.

Recognizing a serial verb

A serial verb construction is a sequence of verbs which act together as a single predicate. Serial verbs are always monoclausal and are pronounced as a single verb would be. The components of a serial verb construction share tense, aspect, modality, reality status, evidentiality, mood, and also polarity values. A serial verb construction typically refers to what can be conceptualized as one event, and one recognizable event type, in terms of cultural stereotypes available to the speakers. Serial verbs tend to share at least one argument. An overwhelming majority of serial verbs have a single overall argument structure, with the subjects, objects and obliques belonging to the whole construction. In switch-function serial verb constructions, the O (or the recipient) of the first component is the same as the S (rarely, the A) of the second one. Event-argument and resultative serial verb constructions share no arguments.

A fieldworker’s guide

These guidelines are intended for linguists working on a comprehensive grammar of a language. They provide orientation to the questions to be addressed in order to establish a complete picture of serial verb constructions. Ideally, the analysis of serial verb constructions ought to deal with as many as possible of the topics listed below. These points will be useful for linguists working on previously undescribed or insufficiently documented languages, and for those who work on better-known languages, concentrating on subtle details of use which have not been accounted for before. This is by no means a questionnaire. It is a checklist of features which need to be described, analysed, and illustrated, for an indepth view of serial verbs in a given language. Relevant sections of this book are indicated in parentheses....

The rise and fall of serial verbs

We have identified three scenarios for the emergence of serial verb constructions: clause fusion scenario, whereby serial verbs emerge out of sequences of clauses; the verbal modification scenario, and the concurrent grammaticalization scenario. The development of serial verbs may correlate with the expansion of analytic structures and the loss of inflectional morphology. Serial verbs in some language families are of fair antiquity. In many instances their emergence can be accounted for by language contact. Serial verbs in Creole languages often reflect the substratum influence of the languages which contributed to their formation. In the course of language history, serial verbs can lose their status as such. Minor components in asymmetrical serial verb constructions become grammatical markers—auxiliaries, or bound morphemes. Symmetrical serial verbs become lexicalized units no longer separable. Serial verbs tend to be acquired by children at an early age.

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.

The many facets of serial verbs

A single language can have more than one kind of serial verb construction. Serial verbs may differ along the parameters of wordhood and contiguity. Different types of serial verbs may differ in their meanings and the degree of their grammaticalization or lexicalization. The closer the components are in surface structure, the more likely they are to grammaticalize or to lexicalize, and the more restrictions they will display. We expect single-word serial verbs to be more cohesive in their semantics than multi-word serial verbs, in accordance with the principle of iconic motivation. Semantic groups of verbs which are likely to occur in serial verb constructions form a hierarchy, with verbs of direction and motion being most likely, and stative verbs the least likely to occur. If a language has serial verb constructions, we expect directional serial verbs to develop before any other type. All the languages with symmetrical serial verbs also have asymmetrical ones.

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.

Formal properties of serial verbs

Components of a serial verb can be contiguous or non-contiguous. A serial verb may consist of one grammatical word, or form several grammatical words. Correlations between contiguity and wordhood of serial verbs allow us to establish four types of constructions, each with its own analytical problems. The surface marking of person of the subject on the verb and within the verbal phrase containing a serial verb construction can be concordant—then the subject is marked on every component of a serial verb. Concordant marking can be obligatory or optional. Alternatively, the subject can be marked just once per construction. Objects are always marked just once. Verbal clausal categories—tense, aspect, modality, evidentiality, mood, and reality status—can be marked concordantly, on each component. Or they can receive truncated or optional marking. In some languages with strict transitivity, all components of serial verbs have to have the same transitivity value.