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I was reading a bit about Chinese (Mandarin specificially) on Wikipedia. According to the page on Chinese grammar, typical word order uses adverbs - auxiliary verb - main verb. It also says Chinese also allows serial verbs.

How does Chinese handle adverbs and auxiliary verbs when there are serial verbs? Does each verb in the serialization take adverbs or auxiliaries, as in [adverbs - auxiliary verb - verb#1] [adverbs - auxiliary verb - verb#2], or are all of the adverbs & auxiliaries placed at the beginning so that you can only have [adverbs - auxiliary verb - verb#1 - verb#2]?

I'd also be interested to know about other languages that make use of auxiliaries & serial verbs.

Vardelm wrote:How does Chinese handle adverbs and auxiliary verbs when there are serial verbs? Does each verb in the serialization take adverbs or auxiliaries, as in [adverbs - auxiliary verb - verb#1] [adverbs - auxiliary verb - verb#2], or are all of the adverbs & auxiliaries placed at the beginning so that you can only have [adverbs - auxiliary verb - verb#1 - verb#2]?

My inclination is to say the latter. After all, if you had all that gunk between verb#1 and verb#2, how would it be "serial"? That said, some adverbs can move around before or after an auxiliary depending on what they're modifying, and with "resultative verbs", the adverb expressing whether the result is attainable or not goes before verb#2, the verb of result. But beyond that, perhaps if you gave some examples with actual (English) words in the slots, à la "Could you do this: ...?" or "How would you express this: ...?", I could better understand and endeavor to answer your question.

Kou Daoguang wrote:But beyond that, perhaps if you gave some examples with actual (English) words in the slots, à la "Could you do this: ...?" or "How would you express this: ...?", I could better understand and endeavor to answer your question.

I have seen a few conlangs w/ serial verbs and thought they were nifty. However, this is the 1st time I'm really starting to dig into how real languages use them. So, I can give an example of what I'm thinking, but I don't know if they are really good examples of serial verbs, especially in Chinese. This is the best example I can think of:

I am going to go up into the attic and bring down the family pictures for you to look at.


Perhaps Chinese would just use multiple sentences instead of using one? I don't know. I get the sense (base on very scant knowledge so far, so it's likely I'm incorrect) that maybe serial verbs are used much more for idiomatic meanings than simply stringing multiple actions together.

Vardelm wrote:This is the best example I can think of:

I am going to go up into the attic and bring down the family pictures for you to look at.

I guess there are some "serial verbs" here, but they aren't going to work as you're suggesting. To add a little zing, I'm going to add "climbing" up into the attic:

I ARRIVE attic CLIMB-GET.UP-GO, TAKE family.pictures BRING-GET.DOWN-COME, GIVE you LOOK

Adverbs like "happily", "quickly", "often", "every day", and/or auxiliaries like "can", "want to", "be willing to", could go in front of ARRIVE, TAKE, GIVE. So would negation if you're negating any of the phrases: "I'm not climbing up to the attic", "I'm not bringing down the pics", "I'm not going to show you". But CLIMB-GET.UP-GO and BRING-GET.DOWN-COME are "resultative verbs", and those can be manipulated differently (I'm going to gloss awkwardly here just to make the point). If you can't climb up to the attic because, say, the ladder is too short, you can say CLIMB-NO-GET.UP-GO; the climbing part is fine, but getting to the attic is unattainable. If you can't bring the pictures down because their enormous oil paintings, it's BRING-NO-GET.DOWN-COME. Conversely, if these are achievable goals, it's CLIMB-YES-GET.UP-GO and BRING-YES-GET.DOWN-COME (those be the "blech" glosses).

If you can't climb up to the attic because your leg is broken, climbing isn't fine, and you negate an auxiliary "can" up front: no CAN ARRIVE attic CLIMB-GET.UP-GO

Other variables could come into play, I suppose, but that should be enough to get you started at least.

Kou Daoguang wrote:Other variables could come into play, I suppose, but that should be enough to get you started at least.

It does indeed. Thank you!