An intragenetic typology of Kwa serial verb constructions

Abstract

This article presents the results of an intragenetic crosslinguistic study of serial verb constructions (SVCs) in Kwa. Based on a sample of 28 Kwa languages, the article examines the crucial morphosyntactic features of Kwa SVCs and the range of meanings of the two most common grammaticalized types of Kwa SVCs, ‘take’ and ‘give’ SVCs. The morphosyntactic features of SVCs considered include unity of subject, unity of TAM, unity of negation, and absence of an overt marker of a syntactic relation. The three types of ‘take’ SVCs – lative ‘take’ SVCs, instrumental ‘take’ SVCs, and objectal ‘take’ SVCs – are treated separately. Uses of different types of ‘take’ SVCs and of ‘give’ SVCs turn out to be subject to implicational cross-Kwa restrictions that are formulated via hierarchies or semantic maps. Significant crosslinguistic variation is discovered, and it is argued that sometimes the similarities between Kwa languages can be most naturally explained by independent development.

3 Serial verb constructions and motion semantics

“…Our focus is on asymmetric SVCs which restrict one verb to a class of motion verbs. However, in at least some languages, there is a type of SVC where the verb 'take' is the restricted verb that can be combined with an unrestricted number of main verbs, including motion verbs (Shluinsky 2017;Lee 2019). This is the case in Fon, as shown in examples ( 21) and ( 22).…”

El prohibitivo en las lenguas mayas cholanas y tseltalanas: un estudio microtipológico

“…Pueden ser causadas por contactos, tanto internos como externos, o por las tendencias del desarrollo individual (Shluinsky 2017: 335). Últimamente, varios fenómenos lingüísticos en varias familias del mundo han sido analizados bajo la perspectiva microtipológica; véase, solo por citar algunos ejemplos, Chamoreau (2012), Forker (2013, von Waldenfels (2014) y Shluinsky (2017). El presente artículo continúa desarrollando el mismo enfoque metodológico.…”

Accounting for the variation in West Benue resultative constructions

“…There is broad agreement that serial verb constructions (SVC) in Benue-Kwa languages fall into a variety of syntactic subclasses such as (instrumental) 'take'-SVCs, (benefactive) 'give'-SVCs, 'say'-SVCs, comparative SVCs and some others (cf. Baker 1989, Lefebvre 1991, Lawal 1993, Déchaine 1993and Shluinsky 2017. Among these are also the so-called resultative SVCs (RSVC), which in West Benue languages minimally consist of two verbs or verbal roots V 1 and V 2 , where typically V 1 is some agentive or inchoative predicate and where V 2 is an unaccusative inchoative or stative predicate (cf.…”

“…'fight', whose realisation remains mandatory even in RVCs ( 27). ( 27 Finally, this lexical rule is capable of accounting for the well known fundamental properties of RVCs in Benue-Kwa, according to which all the verbal components share the same values polarity and TAM (Stahlke 1970: 60,78,80, Baker 1989: 513, Aikhenvald 2006: 1, Bisang 2009or Shluinsky 2017. Bohnemeyer et al (2007: 497, 502-508) and Bohnemeyer & Van Valin (2017: 144-148) argue that syntactic constructions differ with respect to whether or not they have the macro-event property (MEP).…”