Serial Verbs and Clause Chains

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Serial Verbs and Clause Chains

Post by chris_notts »

Well, I was chatting about Serial Verbs and Clause Chaining on IRC and Nuntar requested more information, so here's my attempt to pull some stuff together from what I had close to hand.

DESCRIBING MORPHOSYNTAX

SERIAL VERBS

A serial verb construction contains two or more verb roots that are neither compounded nor members of separate clauses. Serial verbs occur in all types of languages, but may be more common in languages that have little or no verbal morphology. English marginally employs serial verbs in such constructions as the following:

(2) run go get me a newspaper

In many other languages, serial verbs are a much more well installed characteristic of the grammar. Typically, verbs in series will express various facets of one complex event. For example, the concept expressed by the English verb bring is divisible into at least two components, the picking up or taking of the object and the movement towards a deictic centre. In many languages, this complex concept is embodied by a serial verb construction (3a):

(3) Yoruba

a. mo mu iwe wa ile
I take book come house
I bought a book home

b. mo mu iwe; mo si wa ile
I take book I and come house
I took a book and came home

Example 3b illustrates a pair of coordinate clauses that employ the same two verb roots as the serial construction in 3a. The formal factors that distinguish 3a as a serial construction are the following:

1. There is no independent marking of subject on the verb
2. There is no independent tense/aspect marking on the verb
3. The intonation is characteristic of a single clause

The following example illustrates that in the Yoruba serial-verb construction, TAM information is carried by the first verb:

(4) mo n mu iwe bo (*wa)
I PROG take book come:PROG (come:PERF)

In example 4 the auxilliary that specifies progressive aspect comes before the first verb, and is not repeated before the second. Nevertheless, the form of the verb come must be consistent with the progressive aspect, bo, rather than perfective aspect, wa.
Example 5a illustrates that the negative particle is associated with the first verb. Nevertheless, negation has scope over the entire clause. Example 5b illustrates that negation cannot be associated with the second verb:

(5)

a. emi ko mu iwe wa
I.NEG not take book come
"I did not bring a book"

b. *emi mu iwe ko wa
*I book take not come

In contrast to serial verb constructions, in coordinate clauses each clause may have its own tense, aspect, and mode.
Another interesting formal characteristic of prototypical serial verb constructions is that when a constituent of the second verb is clefted for pragmatic purposes, it moves to the front of the entire serial verb construction. Example 6a illustrates the same Yoruba clause with the constituent "to the house" clefted; 6b illustrates that such fronting cannot occur when the construction involves two separate clauses:

6.

a. ile ni mo mu iwe wa
house is I take book come

b. * ile ni mo mu iwe mo si wa
I ........ and come

.......... (skipping some examples not relevant)

The actual meaning of a serial verb construction can be ambiguous out of context. The following example from Thai is provided by Foley and Olson (1985):

(12)

John khap rot chon khwaay taay
John drive car collide buffalo die

a. John drove the car into a buffalo and it (buffalo) died
b. John drove the car into a buffalo and it (the car) stalled
c. John drove the car into a buffalo and he (John) died

Semantically, Serial verb constructions often mean something slightly different to than what the series of verbs would mean if cast in separate clauses. However, if the meaning has changed very much it is possible that one of the verbs in the series has been reanalysed as an auxilliary. In fact, serial verbs are a major diachronic source of auxilliaries (my note: also, a major source of case markers).

That's serial verbs. I hope to post more from DS on clause chaining a little later, and then examples and more info from "The Papuan Languages of New Guinea", "The Amazonian Languages", and other books. It just might take me a day or two.
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Post by chris_notts »

DESCRIBING MORPHOSYNTAX

CLAUSE CHAINING

Since the mid-1960s there have been many studies dealing with clause chaining languages. THe paradigm example of clause-chaining languages occur in the highlands of New Guinea, both Irian Java and Papua New Guinea, though clause chaining is a well recognised phenomenon in Australia and the Americas. In descriptions of such languages there is usually a distinction between "final" and "non-final" clauses. These terms are based on the fact that in clause-chaining languages, as identified in these previous studies, the sequentially final clause in a clause chain is inflected for tense or aspect while the other clauses are not. Longacre hypothesizes that, while it is a logical possibility for languages to have clause chains where the more completely inflected clause occurs initially in the chain, no clear examples of such languages have been documented. Since 1985, however, some languages of this type have been documented (eg Panare) , though it remains the case that languages in which the more highly inflected clause comes at the end seem to be in the majority and tend to employ longer clause chains.
More recently the term medial clause has begun to replace the term non-final clause in descriptions of clause chaining structures. This term reflects the fact that this clause type occurs chain-internally, ie in the middle of a clause chain. As defined by Longacre, a medial clause is one in which: (a) has a reduced range of tense-aspect possibilities in comparison to final clauses (b) usually specifies subject reference in terms of (ie the same or different from) the subject of the final clause, and (c) usually expresses temporal relations such as "overlap" and "succession" with respect to other clauses in the sequence. A clause chaining language, then, is a language that employs a sequence of medial clauses followed by a final clause as a major discourse structuring device.

That's the definition given in Describing Morphosyntax, but compared to the general definition I think it's too strict. The key is really part (a). In a clause chain you have separate clauses (not multiple verbs forming one clause as in serial verbs) where all but one verb, either the initial or final verb, have restricted inflectional possibilities wrt TAM etc and only the final verb, at most, can stand on its own. All the verbs before the final one cannot be used as an independent clause. An example of a clause chaining system that satisfies (a) but not (b) or (c) is Japanese -te, which is pretty stereotypical of what is meant by clause chaining in general Linguistic literature.
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Post by chris_notts »

A marginal example can be found in English by forming chains with -ing verbs, eg:

panting, the man ran down the beach

the final clause "the man ran down the beach" is complete in and of itself, but *panting is not a valid clause in English. In English, though, this is a minor sentence type, whereas in languages like Japanese and most Papuan languages it may be the normal method of coordination.
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Post by chris_notts »

Tons of examples later, either this evening or over the weekend.
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Post by Radius Solis »

I don't think "Panting, the man ran down the beach" is an example of anything much like clause chaining, whether marginal or otherwise. The "panting" is a subordinate adverbial clause (save for the elision of a preposition like "while" or other standard adverbial clause trappings) - whereas clause chaining involves independent clauses that are mooshed together more tightly than coordinate clauses and typically lack TAM marking on all but the final clause. "Panting" in your example has fully independent TAM.

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Post by Salmoneus »

Radius Solis wrote:I don't think "Panting, the man ran down the beach" is an example of anything much like clause chaining, whether marginal or otherwise. The "panting" is a subordinate adverbial clause (save for the elision of a preposition like "while" or other standard adverbial clause trappings) - whereas clause chaining involves independent clauses that are mooshed together more tightly than coordinate clauses and typically lack TAM marking on all but the final clause. "Panting" in your example has fully independent TAM.
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Post by chris_notts »

Radius Solis wrote:The "panting" is a subordinate adverbial clause (save for the elision of a preposition like "while" or other standard adverbial clause trappings) - whereas clause chaining involves independent clauses that are mooshed together more tightly than coordinate clauses and typically lack TAM marking on all but the final clause. "Panting" in your example has fully independent TAM.
I know the example is inexact, I was trying to give an idea. Also, panting does not have its own TAM in that example (as Salmoneus says), and clause chaining does not involve independent clauses. The clauses are separate, unlike in serial verb constructions, but only the full marked clause is independent. All the other verbs are dependent.
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Post by nebula wind phone »

Perfect timing, dude. Attan's a serial verb language, and I've been stuck for weeks trying to figure out what sentences like (12) should mean. Letting them be ambiguous is a perfect solution, and if Thai's willing to do it then so am I.
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Post by TzirTzi »

(The serial verbs were so cool I had to go add them to ttihtue :P. Sorry to interupt, but could you check whether I've understood them correctly? Thanks :)

"3.2.7 Serial Verbs
Ttihtue makes use of clauses with serial verbs to describe series of connected actions all sharing the same subject and object, and being in the mood/aspect. In such a clause, the object is placed before the first verb, as normal, but is ellipted from the others. The subject, however, is placed with the final verb, and ellipted from the others. For example, ‘reh byennnis gaddagenn reidam Mi Joicani’ (spelling regularised), ‘the king (has) wanted (and) hunted a stag’. Note that verbs beyond the first are put in the imperfect, but semantically are identical to the first (in this example perfect). "

NB unmarked word order OVS)
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Post by Tuli »

Serial verbs are so much fun!

Perhaps my books can contribute a little:
To quote from Thai: An Essential Grammar, by David Smyth:
"Verb serialization, in which a number of verbs sharing the same subject follow one after the other, with no intervening conjunctions or prepositions, is extremely common in Thai;"
And an example from the same book:
เขาไปซื้อมากิน
Kháw pay sú’u’ maa kin
He—go—buy—come—eat
He went out to buy something and brought it back to eat.
I’m using u’u’ to represent what I’m fairly certain is /M:/.

And an example from Japanese of my own, with the -te form:
食べ物を食べて、病気になりました。
Tabemono o tabete, byouki ni narimashita.
Food-object particle eat-TE form, sick-to become-POLITE-PAST.
I ate the food and became sick.
I became sick because I ate the food.
At least, I'm pretty sure this counts as a serial verb. :) (EDIT: I suppose this is actually an example of clause chaining)
Or perhaps this:
行って来ます。
Itte kimasu.
Go-TE form come-POLITE.
I'm going out and coming back.

However, something like this:
ผมพูดภาษาไทยไม่เป็น
Phǒm phûut phaasǎa thay mây pen
I—speak—language—Thai—not—can
I can’t speak Thai.
(Which is not considered as a serial verb construction in the book, and is my own example) would not be considered a serial verb construction, because the negative comes before the second verb?

And the equivalent Chinese phrase:
我不会说汉语。
Wǒ bù huì shuō hànyǔ.
I—not—can—speak—Han—language.
I can’t speak Chinese.
Would this be considered a serial verb construction, since the negative modifies the first verb?

I am to be held accountable for the ungrammaticalness of any example save the first. :)

Edit: Corrected the pinyin, as Tengado pointed out.
Last edited by Tuli on Fri Jun 30, 2006 7:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by kodé »

Classical Armenian uses serial verbs (must. find. examples!)

Biblical Hebrew sort of does a clause chain-like thing with waw-consecutives. IIRC the first clause is in the perfect, then following clauses take the conjunction 'waw' and the imperfect, while the perfect aspect actually carries over.

So not really, because the non-initial clauses have aspect, but a little similar, because that aspect is more like a 'dummy' aspect, and those clauses take the initial one's aspect.
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Post by Tengado »

Tuli wrote:
And the equivalent Chinese phrase:
我不会说汉语。
Wǒ bù shuō hànyǔ.
I—not—can—speak—Han—language.
I can’t speak Chinese.
Would this be considered a serial verb construction, since the negative modifies the first verb?

I am to be held accountable for the ungrammaticalness of any example save the first. :)
You forgot the pinyin for 会 [hui4], but the sentence is fine. I think this would be a serial verb constructiosn as all the verbs agree for TAM and negativity, unlike the Thai one in which the two verbs are different in negativity.

Watched "Tam Yoong Gong" [spelling?] again the other day. Thai is awesome. Which is lucky because my copy had no english subtitles.


Clause chaining sounds interesting. Can't wait for the examples.
- "But this can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."

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Post by chris_notts »

Here's a partly helpful explanation:

THE PAPUAN LANGUAGES OF NEW GUINEA

CLAUSE CHAINING

In this section I turn to what is probably the most distinctive feature of Papuan languages in general and, further, their most alien feature to speakers of the languages of Europe. The discourse of most Papuan languages is structured along radically different principles from that of English. All languages must have means by which clauses are put together to form sentences, and sentences to form texts. A text is not just a random assemblage of clauses and sentences. Such an assemblage would be meaningless, without coherence. A text is a coherent linking of clauses and sentences, and this coherence is achieved by rules of the language which state how clauses and sentences can be joined.
As I mentioned above, the system by which most Papuan languages achieve this at first strikes speakers of English as very alien. Consider the following sentence from Iatmul, constructed by joining a number of clauses together:

nkəy-ət yɨ-kə waalə klə-laa yə-nt-əy-an ntɨ nkət vɨ-kɨyə-wɨn
house-ALL go-and dog get-and.then come-3SG.M-UNREAL-if 3SG.M-ALL see-UNREAL-1SG
“If he comes after he has gone to the house and got the dog, I will see him”

The primary division in the sentence occurs after yə-nt-əy-an “if he comes”. The first half includes yə-nt-əy-an and all the material preceding it; it corresponds to what would be identified as a subordinate conditional clause in English. The second half corresponds to a main clause and contains the fully inflected verb vɨ-kɨyə-wɨn “I will see”. Note that there is no overt conjunctions connecting the two clauses in Iatmul, such as English if. Rather, the verbal morphology serves this function.
But the subordinate conditional clause is itself complex, consisting of a number of subclauses. Preceding yə-nt-əy-an are two minimally inflected verbs yɨ-kə “go and” and klə-laa “get and then”. Again, there are no real conjunctions connecting these subclausal units. The verbal affixes -kə and –laa perform this role. Iatmul verbs are normally inflected for status and the person and number of their actor. But these verbs have no such affixation, only the “linking” suffixes -kə and –laa. These verbs take their specifications for status and the person and number of the actor from the closest following verb inflected for these features, in this case yə-nt-əy-an. They are dependent for these on this verb, and I will call them “dependent verbs”. Many studies of Papuan languages call them “medial verbs” because of their usual medial position in the sentence. English has something of these dependent verbs in structures like “Sitting down, John struck the fly”. The verb sitting has no inflection for tense or for person and number of actor. These are supplied by the fully inflected verb struck, upon which it is dependent. The suffix –ing on sitting is a linking suffix, indicating that the act of sitting and striking are simultaneous.
Contrasting with these minimally inflected dependent verbs are the fully inflected yə-nt-əy-an and vɨ-kɨyə-wɨn. But these two verbs are not of equal status. vɨ-kɨyə-wɨn is the main verb of the whole sentence, and it terminates the sentence. Only it can be inflected for the outer operator, illocutionary force: a-vɨ-mɨla IMP-see-2SG.M.IMP “see (it)!” (*a-yə-mɨla-əy-an IMP-come-2SG.M.IMP-UNREAL-if). vɨ-kɨyə-wɨn is a truly independent verb: it can stand on its own as a complete sentence and is not linked overtly to any other sentence. yə-nt-əy-an is rather different. Although fully inflected for status and person and number of its actor, and thus independent from the point of view of these features, it may not stand alone as a complete sentence, and is overtly linked to the clause containing vɨ-kɨyə-wɨn by the suffix –an “if”. It terminates a clause which is syntactically subordinate to the main clause. This is a subordinate clause/main clause relationship. The subordinate clause is a conditional, and functions like an adverbial modifier to the main clause. The subordinate clause functions as part of the main clause, and this relation of a part within a whole, or embeddedness, is how I will define subordination. Verbs of such subordinate clauses, although fully specified in Iatmul for status and for person and number of the actor, are necessarily linked to a main clause, and are therefore not independent. I will refer to such verbs of subordinate clauses as “subordinate-dependent” and fully inflected verbs of main clauses as “independent”. This assigns a three way typological distinction to the verbs of the Iatmul sentence above:

Iatmul verbs
-Independent e.g. vɨ-kɨyə-wɨn
-Dependent
--Coordinate e.g. klə-laa
--Subordinate e.g. yə-nt-əy-an

Note that I have now coined the term “coordinate-dependent” for the dependent or “medial” verbs discussed above, which take their specification for status and for person and number of actor from a following fully inflected subordinate-dependent or independent verb. By my definition of subordination, clauses containing such verbs are not considered subordinate. They do not function as arguments of some main clause. They do not function as embedded parts within a whole, but are linked to a fully inflected verb in a linear string, much like beads on a necklace. Because the linking of such clauses is at the same structural level, rather than as part within whole, I regard such clauses as coordinate and verbs of such clauses as “coordinate-dependent”. The remainer of this sectio will deal with coordinate-dependent verbs, which for the purposes of this section I will abbreviate to “dependent verbs”. Subordinate dependent verbs and subordinate clauses will be the topic of section 6.4.
An important distinction that must be clearly established is between dependent verbs on the one hand, and serial or compound verbs on the other. Serial or compound verb structures are constructions in which verb-stems are juxtaposed to form a complex predicate, which then takes a single set of core and peripheral arguments to form one clause. Dependent verbs may each take their own set of core and peripheral arguments so that each dependent verb corresponds to its own clause. Contrast the following Yimas examples:

marɨmp-ɨn ama-awŋkwi-sɨpaŋ-ɨt
river-OBL 1SG.S-down.in.water-bathe-PERF
“I bathed in the river”

marɨmp-ɨn awŋkwi-mp-I antɨ-nan yampara-mp-I ama-tɨpaŋ-ɨt
river-OBL down.in.water-SEQ-DEP gound-OBL stand-SEQ-DEP 1SG.S-bathe-PERF
“I went down into the river, stood on the ground and washed”

The first example is a serial verb construction. The verb-stems are juxtaposed to form a single complex predicate which is associated with a single core argument ama, 1SG.S, and peripheral argument marɨmp-ɨn “in the river”. Grammatically, the serialized verbs form a single word with one set of core argument prefixes and one tense suffix.
The second example illustrates dependent verbs. Like Iatmul, dependent verbs in Yimas always take their actor and tense specifications from the independent verb, in this case ama-tɨpaŋ-ɨt “I washed”. The dependent verbs have minimal inflection: suffixes –mp, to indicate that the relationship between the clauses is one of sequence, and –I, to mark the verbs as dependent. However, each of the dependent verbs is associated with its own peripheral arguments, marɨmp-ɨn “in the river” and antɨ-nan “on the ground”, whereas in the serial verb construction marɨmp-ɨn “in the river” is associated with both verb stems, with the complex predicate as a whole. This is the primary characteristic differentiating dependent verbs from serial verbs. Dependent verbs may select their own set of peripheral nominals, serial verbs may not. Dependent verbs form the centre of individual but dependently linked clauses; serial verbs form a single complex centre of one clause. This difference in structure is undoubtedly correlated with the fact that serial verb constructions quite often become lexicalized, the meaning of the whole not predictable from its parts. This results from the single clause structure of serial verb constructions; the complex predicate gradually becomes seen more as a simplex lexeme. This is rarely, if ever, true of dependent verbs. The chaining of dependent verbs is normally fully productive grammatically, with no ad hoc restrictions or idiosyncratic meanings. This follows from the fact that dependent verbs constitute whole clauses, which may be chained together to form sentences.
The constraints that languages apply to serial verb constructions show some variation. Minimally, for all languages, the verb stems in a serial construction must share a single set of peripheral nominals. Yimas goes even further, requiring that all the verb stems have a single set of core nominals:

impa-mpu-yakal-irɨm-tay-ntut
3DL.U-3PL.A-EXT-stand-see-RM.PAST
“they stood watching them two”

In the example above the verbal affixes mpu-, 3PL.A, and impa, 3DL.U, are associated with the complex predicate as a whole. This view is warranted because the prefixes cannot be plausably associated with the closest verb stem irɨm “stand”, as it is intransitive and the complex predicate is transitive. Further, the extended aspect inner operator yakal- must modify both verb stems. Shared inner operators is another common feature of serial verb constructions in many languages. This never applies to dependent verbs, which may always independently select their inflections for inner operators.
Barai also opposes serial verb constructions to dependent verbs, but the constraints are less rigid than in Yimas. Again, peripheral nominals must be shared, but the verbs in some serial constructions may select their own independent set of core nominals:

mufuo fu fi fase isoe-ke
late.afternoon he sit letter write-UNREAL
“in the late afternoon, he will sit and write a letter”

In this example the verb isoe “write” occurs with core nominal fase “letter”, which bears no relationship to the verb fi “sit” in the serial construction. But the peripheral nominal mufuo “late afternoon” must modify both verbs. If the peripheral nominal is to modify only one of the verbs, a construction with a dependent verb rather than a serialized structure must be used. The first verb will occur with an obligatory linking suffix –na “and then”:

fu fi-na mufuo fase isoe-ke
he sit-and late.afternoon letter write-UNREAL
“he will sit and in the late afternoon will write a letter”

Note that the dependent verb fi-na “sit and then” takes its unreal status specification from the final independent verb isoe-ke “will write”.
I conclude that dependent verbs must be sharply distinguished from serial verbs. In addition to the systematic syntactic and semantic differences between them which were pointed out, there is also a very general morphological difference. Serialized verbs usually appear in their base stem forms and are juxtaposed with no connecting morphology. Dependent verbs, although stripped down inflectionally from independent verbs, usually have some overt morphology, at least a linking suffix.





I think this discussion of the definitions and difference between the two, while rather long, is worth reading. I do partly take issue with the conclusion the author draws though, for two reasons:

1. He fails to distinguish between compound verbs and serial verbs. While similar in many ways, they are not the same

2. I don't believe the distinction between the two is as great as he makes out. The issue is basically one of integration of the two events, with greater clausal integration reflecting greater integration of two events in the eyes of the speaker. Here is the hierarchy as I see it:

compound verbs > serial verbs > chained verbs > coordinated clauses

Compound verbs reflect the maximum amount of integration, with serial verbs not far behind. In both these possibilities, many verbs form a single complex clause, reflecting a view of the speaker of the actions as forming a single complex event. Chained verbs reflect a view of the events as separate, but still closely linked. Independent coordinated verbs (or independent verbs simply placed paratactically together) reflect the least amount of integration two events in a single sentence can have.
I think of this as a cline. The extent to which serial verbs or verb chains are extended from their prototypes in a language reflect the other options available. In Barai, for example, both serial verbs and chained verbs are available, but coordination of fully independent verbs is somewhat difficult. Thus the primary distinction is between serial verbs, which reflect the more integrated view of events, vs chained verbs which reflect a less integrated view. The compound verb or coordinated independent clause strategies are either not available or restricted in use.

This is just my view though. I could expound it in more detail if anyone is interested.
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Post by Tuli »

I can't tell if serial verbs can take different objects in Thai:
ผมขับรถไปกรุงเทพฯ
Phǒm khàp rót pay kruŋthêep.
I--drive--car--go--Bangkok.
The verbs have the same subject, but none of the examples pointed out in my Thai grammar specifically as serial verbs have different direct objects.

Well, it could be said that the implied objects of "go" and "come" are different from the implied object of "buy" and "eat." Not something I initially thought of, since those verbs don't take objects in English. :) So now I'm back where I started, uncertain. The book isn't the most technical in the world, but it doesn't ever say serial verbs in Thai can't have different objects.

Those Papuan languages truly are treasures. So different. :)
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Post by Tengado »

Tuli wrote:I can't tell if serial verbs can take different objects in Thai:
ผมขับรถไปกรุงเทพฯ
Phǒm khàp rót pay kruŋthêep.
I--drive--car--go--Bangkok.
The verbs have the same subject, but none of the examples pointed out in my Thai grammar specifically as serial verbs have different direct objects.

Well, it could be said that the implied objects of "go" and "come" are different from the implied object of "buy" and "eat." Not something I initially thought of, since those verbs don't take objects in English. :) So now I'm back where I started, uncertain. The book isn't the most technical in the world, but it doesn't ever say serial verbs in Thai can't have different objects.
Are these not just separate clauses with the repeated subject omitted, similar to English "He got in his car and went to Bangkok"? I thought serial verbs had to have just a chain of verbs with no non-verbs intervening? Like "I drive go buy bread", or the hit and run buffalo example.
- "But this can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."

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Post by Miekko »

Tengado wrote:
Tuli wrote:I can't tell if serial verbs can take different objects in Thai:
ผมขับรถไปกรุงเทพฯ
Phǒm khàp rót pay kruŋthêep.
I--drive--car--go--Bangkok.
The verbs have the same subject, but none of the examples pointed out in my Thai grammar specifically as serial verbs have different direct objects.

Well, it could be said that the implied objects of "go" and "come" are different from the implied object of "buy" and "eat." Not something I initially thought of, since those verbs don't take objects in English. :) So now I'm back where I started, uncertain. The book isn't the most technical in the world, but it doesn't ever say serial verbs in Thai can't have different objects.
Are these not just separate clauses with the repeated subject omitted, similar to English "He got in his car and went to Bangkok"? I thought serial verbs had to have just a chain of verbs with no non-verbs intervening? Like "I drive go buy bread", or the hit and run buffalo example.
Are these not just separate clauses with the repeated subject omitted, similar to English "He got in his car and went to Bangkok"? I thought serial verbs had to have just a chain of verbs with no non-verbs intervening? Like "I drive go buy bread", or the hit and run buffalo example.
Nope.
There's a constraint against them having different TAM markers; there's also some other constraints that suggests your analysis to be too simple.

Secondly. some langs with serial verbs apparently permit constructions like Subject Verb1 Verb2 Object1 Object2.
< Cev> My people we use cars. I come from a very proud car culture-- every part of the car is used, nothing goes to waste. When my people first saw the car, generations ago, we called it šuŋka wakaŋ-- meaning "automated mobile".

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Post by tron cat »

Funny. I just got a book out on this very topic - "Syntax of Serial Verbs". Reading it right now.
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Post by Tengado »

Miekko, what did you do with the quoting? You managed to put my reply inside Tuli's post and outside too. Threw me for a second!
Miekko wrote:
Tengado wrote:
Tuli wrote:I can't tell if serial verbs can take different objects in Thai:
ผมขับรถไปกรุงเทพฯ
Phǒm khàp rót pay kruŋthêep.
I--drive--car--go--Bangkok.
The verbs have the same subject, but none of the examples pointed out in my Thai grammar specifically as serial verbs have different direct objects.

Well, it could be said that the implied objects of "go" and "come" are different from the implied object of "buy" and "eat." Not something I initially thought of, since those verbs don't take objects in English. :) So now I'm back where I started, uncertain. The book isn't the most technical in the world, but it doesn't ever say serial verbs in Thai can't have different objects.
Are these not just separate clauses with the repeated subject omitted, similar to English "He got in his car and went to Bangkok"? I thought serial verbs had to have just a chain of verbs with no non-verbs intervening? Like "I drive go buy bread", or the hit and run buffalo example.
Are these not just separate clauses with the repeated subject omitted, similar to English "He got in his car and went to Bangkok"? I thought serial verbs had to have just a chain of verbs with no non-verbs intervening? Like "I drive go buy bread", or the hit and run buffalo example.
Nope.
There's a constraint against them having different TAM markers; there's also some other constraints that suggests your analysis to be too simple.
Errr...that wasn't an analysis - I wasn't suggesting for a moment that that was the only defining feature of serial verbs. I know there are TAM constraints too, and the constraint on different "negativity" [negated or not] .

And you didn't answer Tuli's question [is that Thai example one of serial verbs with intervening different objects?] or say why it's not just separate clauses with an omitted subject.
- "But this can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."

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Post by Miekko »

Tengado wrote:Miekko, what did you do with the quoting? You managed to put my reply inside Tuli's post and outside too. Threw me for a second!
I don't know, but I did correct it later.
Miekko wrote:
Tengado wrote:
Tuli wrote:I can't tell if serial verbs can take different objects in Thai:
ผมขับรถไปกรุงเทพฯ
Phǒm khàp rót pay kruŋthêep.
I--drive--car--go--Bangkok.
The verbs have the same subject, but none of the examples pointed out in my Thai grammar specifically as serial verbs have different direct objects.

Well, it could be said that the implied objects of "go" and "come" are different from the implied object of "buy" and "eat." Not something I initially thought of, since those verbs don't take objects in English. :) So now I'm back where I started, uncertain. The book isn't the most technical in the world, but it doesn't ever say serial verbs in Thai can't have different objects.
Are these not just separate clauses with the repeated subject omitted, similar to English "He got in his car and went to Bangkok"? I thought serial verbs had to have just a chain of verbs with no non-verbs intervening? Like "I drive go buy bread", or the hit and run buffalo example.
Are these not just separate clauses with the repeated subject omitted, similar to English "He got in his car and went to Bangkok"? I thought serial verbs had to have just a chain of verbs with no non-verbs intervening? Like "I drive go buy bread", or the hit and run buffalo example.
Nope.
There's a constraint against them having different TAM markers; there's also some other constraints that suggests your analysis to be too simple.
Errr...that wasn't an analysis - I wasn't suggesting for a moment that that was the only defining feature of serial verbs. I know there are TAM constraints too, and the constraint on different "negativity" [negated or not] .

And you didn't answer Tuli's question [is that Thai example one of serial verbs with intervening different objects?] or say why it's not just separate clauses with an omitted subject.[/quote]
Ah, are you answering for the specific case of Thai? I only objected to the general case. Sorry.
< Cev> My people we use cars. I come from a very proud car culture-- every part of the car is used, nothing goes to waste. When my people first saw the car, generations ago, we called it šuŋka wakaŋ-- meaning "automated mobile".

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Post by Tengado »

Miekko wrote:
Tengado wrote:Miekko, what did you do with the quoting? You managed to put my reply inside Tuli's post and outside too. Threw me for a second!
I don't know, but I did correct it later.
Actually, no you didn't. It's still like that now. Below I've bolded the two copies of my post - one embedded in Tuli's, and one in the right place. You also messed up the quoting in your last message too. :P
Miekko wrote:
Tengado wrote:
Tuli wrote:I can't tell if serial verbs can take different objects in Thai:
ผมขับรถไปกรุงเทพฯ
Phǒm khàp rót pay kruŋthêep.
I--drive--car--go--Bangkok.
The verbs have the same subject, but none of the examples pointed out in my Thai grammar specifically as serial verbs have different direct objects.

Well, it could be said that the implied objects of "go" and "come" are different from the implied object of "buy" and "eat." Not something I initially thought of, since those verbs don't take objects in English. :) So now I'm back where I started, uncertain. The book isn't the most technical in the world, but it doesn't ever say serial verbs in Thai can't have different objects.
Are these not just separate clauses with the repeated subject omitted, similar to English "He got in his car and went to Bangkok"? I thought serial verbs had to have just a chain of verbs with no non-verbs intervening? Like "I drive go buy bread", or the hit and run buffalo example.
Are these not just separate clauses with the repeated subject omitted, similar to English "He got in his car and went to Bangkok"? I thought serial verbs had to have just a chain of verbs with no non-verbs intervening? Like "I drive go buy bread", or the hit and run buffalo example.
Nope.
There's a constraint against them having different TAM markers; there's also some other constraints that suggests your analysis to be too simple.
Errr...that wasn't an analysis - I wasn't suggesting for a moment that that was the only defining feature of serial verbs. I know there are TAM constraints too, and the constraint on different "negativity" [negated or not] .

And you didn't answer Tuli's question [is that Thai example one of serial verbs with intervening different objects?] or say why it's not just separate clauses with an omitted subject.

Ah, are you answering for the specific case of Thai? I only objected to the general case. Sorry.

No I was saying i thought serial verbs in general had to be just be chains of verbs with no intervening morphemes. I wasn't saying that was the only defining feature of them [of course ther are more cosntraints like the TAM etc].

When I asked "are they not just a series of separate clauses with an omitted subject" I was talking specifically about the Thai example

ผมขับรถไปกรุงเทพฯ
Phǒm khàp rót pay kruŋthêep.
I--drive--car--go--Bangkok.

Is it a serial verb construction, or is it just
I--drive--car----go--Bangkok?
Or is it just an imaginary distinction anyway?
- "But this can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."

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Post by Tuli »

I'd be inclined to say that it largely depends on the definition of serial verb, and that the distinction isn't all that important, but it's good for discussion. :)
My first Thai example is what leads me to believe that Thai serial verbs can have different objects:
เขาไปซื้อมากิน
Kháw pay sú’u’ maa kin
He—go—buy—come—eat
With the implied objects something like:
He go [store] buy [food] come [home] eat [food].
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Post by chris_notts »

Tengado wrote: No I was saying i thought serial verbs in general had to be just be chains of verbs with no intervening morphemes. I wasn't saying that was the only defining feature of them [of course ther are more cosntraints like the TAM etc].
If you'd read what I typed in, you'd see that by most definitions (outside of Sino-Tibetan linguistics) this is not true. In particular, serial verb constructions commonly allow you to select your own object/abs argument, which tend to occur next to the verb they're an argument of.
In particular, the examples from Barai illustrate a language with serial verbs which can occur with intervening morphemes.
The issue here is that there are several definitions that are not compatible, for serial verbs in particular and for the difference between serial verbs and clause chains on the other hand. My own view, as I explained, is that prototypical serial verbs and clause chains are merely different points on a cline of integration. Chinese serial verb constructions, which do not allow any intervening morphemes to occur between verb roots and do not allow verbs to select their own arguments at all, are on the more integrated end of the spectrum. (Incidentally, are you sure they're really serial verbs? At the most integrated end you tend to get compound-verbs. Could the Chinese examples be compounded?)
When I asked "are they not just a series of separate clauses with an omitted subject" I was talking specifically about the Thai example

ผมขับรถไปกรุงเทพฯ
Phǒm khàp rót pay kruŋthêep.
I--drive--car--go--Bangkok.

Is it a serial verb construction, or is it just
I--drive--car----go--Bangkok?
Or is it just an imaginary distinction anyway?


Not knowing Thai, I can't say. It would depend on the circumstances such verb sequences can occur in (remember, Serial verbs typically occur for actions that integrate tightly into one event), what inflections or TAM marking, if any, each verb can take (serial verbs usually only take one set of TAM marking, and even in the odd cases where this is not strictly true, they certainly cannot disagree in marking), and what other strategies Thai has for coordination.
Like lots of things in linguistics, the boundaries are a bit fuzzy.

EDIT: For instance, if the Thai construction was such that:

*he go school study later in afternoon
= he went to school, he studied later in the afternoon

was ungrammatical, that would be suggestive of a serial verb construction, because having a temporal phrase like that in there associated with only one verb tends to force a conception of two events rather than one complex event.
Similarly, other non-core arguments like location etc generally need to be shared, switching topic in the middle of a chain is often not allowed, etc.
Try the online version of the HaSC sound change applier: http://chrisdb.dyndns-at-home.com/HaSC

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Post by Tuli »

Thanks, Chris. :)
It appears that Thai serial verbs can be a sequence of events or a bunch of simultaneous events. And the first example does seem to have multiple locations, but it's very clearly one sequence of events.

Again, I don't speak Thai by any means, but I'm pretty sure "He go school study" is grammatical, with the meaning "He went to school in order to study":
เขาไปโรงเรียนศึกษา
Kháw pay rooŋ rian sù’ksǎa
But I'm not sure what adding "later in the afternoon" would do.

Fishing through my Thai grammar, there's this example:
ไปเช้ากลับเย็น
Pay cháaw klap yen
Go--morning--return--evening
We'll go in the morning and return in the evening.

So, perhaps something like
เขาไปโรงเรียนเช้าศึกษาบ่าย
Kháw pay rooŋ rian cháaw sù’ksǎa bàay
He—go—school—morning—study—afternoon
Meaning “He went to school in the morning and studied in the afternoon.”

Hopefully this helps someone. :)
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Post by Tengado »

chris_notts wrote:
Tengado wrote: No I was saying i thought serial verbs in general had to be just be chains of verbs with no intervening morphemes. I wasn't saying that was the only defining feature of them [of course ther are more cosntraints like the TAM etc].
If you'd read what I typed in, you'd see that by most definitions (outside of Sino-Tibetan linguistics) this is not true. In particular, serial verb constructions commonly allow you to select your own object/abs argument, which tend to occur next to the verb they're an argument of.
In particular, the examples from Barai illustrate a language with serial verbs which can occur with intervening morphemes.
I had read what you wrote, but that's a lot to take in in one go, especially when I can't read half the examples because they're nice little boxes. [By the way - what does the "ALL" in the Iatmul clause chaining example mean - allative?] It's all very interesting, thanks.
Chinese serial verb constructions, which do not allow any intervening morphemes to occur between verb roots and do not allow verbs to select their own arguments at all, are on the more integrated end of the spectrum. (Incidentally, are you sure they're really serial verbs? At the most integrated end you tend to get compound-verbs. Could the Chinese examples be compounded?)
I agree about the spectrum viewpoint - that's what I meant when I asked if the distinction between two clauses with a shared dropped subject and serial verbs with their own object was imaginary.

Could the Chinese examples be seen as compound verbs? I think maybe not as they can have objects between them.
我去买东西
I go buy things [things literally = "east-west"!]
我去超市买东西
I go supermarket buy things

Random info in Chinese serial verbs [from my grammar book, not out of my piyan]
* They usually express sequences of events - Chinese has what the book calls "strong narrative presupposition" - you almost always state events in chronological, cause-effect order: "because A, so B", not "B because of A".
The verbs can disagree for perfectiveness, so maybe it is not a true serial verb?
我下了课回家去
I finish PERF class return home go
After I get out of class, I return home.
Only the first verb is perfective
Compare
我下了课回家去了
I finish PERF class return home go PERF
After I got out of class I returned home
The whole sentence is perfective
Optional sequence connecting words such as "then" "after" can be used between the verbs without changing the meaning
我下了课以后就回家去
I finish class PERF after [就 is a strange emphatic adverb, don't ask what it means] return home go
After I get out of class I return home
But, the initial perfective marking, and the connectors can all be omitted:
每天都一样.下课回家
Every day all same. Finish class return home
Every day is the same. (I) get out of class and return home.
- "But this can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."

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