Serial Verbs: Grammatical, Comparative and Cognitive Approaches: 8 (Studies in the Sciences of Language Series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9027223246 ISBN 13: 9789027223241

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 1991

Synopsis

The papers in this volume offer several analyses of verb serialization written within various theoretical frameworks: grammatical, comparative and cognitive/functional. They cover a wide range of language families. All authors address two basic questions about verb serialization: First, what is the structure and thematic constitution of the construction? The answers to this question cover the spectrum of the options that are available in current grammatical theory. Second, what aspect of the grammar differentiates between languages which have serial constructions and those which do not? The specific proposals made by the authors are discussed by R. Larson in the concluding paper. Larson opens new perspectives for research on verb serialization by posing the following question: what analogues for verb serialization can be found in the more familiar grammatical apparatus of English? It is suggested that verb serialization finds a clear parallel in the secondary predicate structures of English.

About this title

Synopsis

The papers in this volume offer several analyses of serial verbs written within various theoretical frameworks: grammatical, comparative and cognitive/functional. They cover a wide range of language families: Misumalpan, Kwa, Bantu, Chinese and Papua New Guinea languages. All the authors address two basic questions about verb serialization: first, what is the syntactic structure and the thematic constitution of the construction? The answers to this question cover the spectrum of possibilities available in current grammatical theory. Second, what aspect of the grammar differentiates between languages which have serial constructions and those which do not? The last paper, by Larson, discusses each of the specific proposals made by the authors and poses the following question: what analogues for verb serialization can be found in the more familiar grammatical apparatus of English? It is suggested that verb serialization finds a clear parallel in the secondary predicate structures of English.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027223246
• ISBN 13: 9789027223241
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 218
• Editor: Lefebvre Claire