Serial verb construction
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Serial_verb_construction".

The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization, is a syntactic phenomenon common to many African, Asian and Guinean languages. Contrary to subordination, where one clause is embedded into another, verb serialization strings two verbs together in a sequence in which no verb is subordinated to the other1.

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The phenomenon

The following example of serialization comes from Nupe:

(1) Musa bé   lá   èbi.
    Musa came took knife
   "Musa came to take the knife."2

In the English translation, the verb "came" takes an infinitival complement headed by the infinitive "to take". In the Nupe original, however, the two verbs are in the same clause, forming a sole predicate.

Serial verb constructions exhibit the following recurrent properties:

(i) Strings of serial verbs share the same subject.

(ii) Subject Agreement is often cross-referenced on the two verbs.

(2) nu-takasã nu-dúmaka                (Bare)
    1SG-deceived 1SG-sleep
    "I pretended (that) I was asleep."3

In other cases, there is only a subject marker, but it is shared by the two verbs, as in the following example from Yoruba.

(3) ó   mú   ìwé  wá
    3SG took book came
    "He brought the book."4

Both verbs are understood as third person singular.

(iii) The only constituent that can intervene between the two verbs is the object of one of them, and only in a subset of serial verb languages - cf. example (3).

(iv) There is only one negation marker for the whole construction.

(4) hena nihiwawaka nu-tšereka nu-yaka-u      abi           (Bare)
    NEG  1SG:go     1SG-speak  1SG-parent-FEM with
    "I am not going to talk with my mother."5

(v) Serial verbs cannot be marked independently for tense/aspect/mood categories. Either the relevant (identical) markers appear on both verbs, or a sole marker is shared by them (as they can share a subject marker, cf. example 3).6

Notes

Despite the frequency of the phenomenon, it should be noted that there is no standard view on the proper analysis of serial verb constructions. This is a current subject of debate among syntacticians.

As Tallerman (1998) points out, the serial verb construction is not totally unfamiliar to speakers of English, and can be found in some expressions surviving from Early Modern English, such as Let's go eat.7

References

  1. ^ Tallerman, M. (1998). Understanding Syntax. London: Arnold, pp.79-81.
  2. ^ Tallerman, M. (1998). Understanding Syntax. London: Arnold, pp.79-81.
  3. ^ Tallerman, M. (1998). Understanding Syntax. London: Arnold, pp.79-81.
  4. ^ Tallerman, M. (1998). Understanding Syntax. London: Arnold, pp.79-81.
  5. ^ Tallerman, M. (1998). Understanding Syntax. London: Arnold, pp.79-81.
  6. ^ Tallerman, M. (1998). Understanding Syntax. London: Arnold, pp.79-81.
  7. ^ Tallerman, M. (1998). Understanding Syntax. London: Arnold, pp.79-81.

External links

Akan.org Teleteaching course, serial verbs subsection
SIL LinguaLink on Serial Verbs
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