[Lingtyp] Query: Habitual serial verb constructions

Tue Apr 18 15:18:59 UTC 2023

Some creole languages have a habitual derived from a verb ‘know’. A case in point is Papiamentu – see https://apics-online.info/valuesets/47-48.

From: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of Jess Tauber
Sent: Tuesday, 18 April 2023 8:22 am
To: Isabelle BRIL <isabelle.bril at cnrs.fr>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; s.gregersen at isfas.uni-kiel.de
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Query: Habitual serial verb constructions

In Yahgan, the progressive suffix is -gaiata, which on the surface appears to have no lexical verb source. But there is a form, akaiata/age:ata, meaning to 'reach' as with a hook or boat-pole and draw the object encountered close to one. Mu:tu: (from sit sg.) has no progressive sense in this language. There is a verb ka:taka which refers to incremental approach to some goal, and it was often used suffixially (with some aspectual sense related to the lexical gloss, but not fully grammaticalized, it would seem).

Jess Tauber

On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 4:28 AM Isabelle BRIL <isabelle.bril at cnrs.fr<mailto:isabelle.bril at cnrs.fr>> wrote:

Dear all,

In that line of thought, you might also be interested by a book edited by Bril & Ozanne-Rivierre on Oceanic languages.

2004, Bril I. et F. Ozanne-Rivierre (éditeurs), Complex predicates in Oceanic languages: Studies in the dynamics of binding and boundness. [Collection EALT 29]. Mouton de Gruyter

Best

Isabelle
Le 18/04/2023 à 05:47, Daniel Ross a écrit :
Dear Sune and others,

In Ross & Lovestrand (2018) and Ross (2021, ch.4) SVCs with posture verbs are surveyed, and they were found in around 40% of languages with SVCs. "Posture SVCs" (especially with SIT and STAND, also LIE, and rarely others) were defined to include both literal posture constructions ("sit and read") and also grammaticalized, especially aspectual functions (e.g. "sit read" as progressive or similar). Development of a progressive or similar function was very common in the sample, while other functions of posture verbs were rarer. In general, although I did not specifically look for this in the survey, my impression is that habitual is not a typical function of posture verbs in SVCs, and also overall I do not think that habitual is a particularly common function of SVCs in general. On the other hand, descriptive work on SVCs is generally biased toward "famous" types like SIT as progressive, so it's possible this is underreported. Regardless, given the examples so far this appears to be especially frequent in ([Mainland?] Southeast) Asian languages, so it seems possible to me that it might be a regional feature rather than a typical pathway for SVCs in general. Already in these few messages we have examples from elsewhere, so I don't mean it would be a unique development, but just that it's not the kind of extremely common development that would be hard to attribute as a regional feature like some other types of SVCs, such as SIT progressives or TAKE instrumentals. I imagine that sometimes progressive could further grammaticalize as habitual, but that doesn't seem to be typical (although this may also be under-reported).

There is also a murky question for SVCs regarding at which point we would consider them to be auxiliaries. One overly strict criterion would be to require a lack of homophony to a lexical verb, which would count English HAVE perfectives as some kind of lexical construction (not SVC due to form, but that's beside the point: Anderson 2006 is a relevant survey of auxiliaries, finding that 'Auxiliary Verb Constructions' can be of essentially any form, including all of those commonly associated with "SVCs"). In this case, my instinct would be to say that this is a relatively grammaticalized function, although again that's just my impression from general familiarity with SVCs, not too much with this specific type. We could similarly consider SIT progressives to be auxiliary constructions, except that there seems to be a continuum from literal to grammaticalized usage (see Lødrup 2019 for a detailed analysis of a similar construction where it isn't clear how bleached it really is). With KNOW (for example), I don't see a possible continuum via SVCs: in fact, this seems to be some kind of complementation (paraphrased as "know how to V", or maybe "be familiar with Ving", later grammaticalizing as habitual). This complement-taking function of KNOW is explicitly excluded by Haspelmath (2016: 305). Whether or not we accept that particular argument, this seems to violate the single-event criterion (however that should be interpreted), because knowing how to do something and doing that action are not co-extensive, so they don't form a macro-event. I can know how to do something without actually doing it: "I know how to speak Spanish" does not entail that I am currently speaking Spanish. Interestingly, habitual aspect similarly actually does not entail that the predicate holds at the current moment: "I speak Spanish" does not entail "I am speaking Spanish". Overall, this seems removed from prototypical SVCs and suggests complementation as a more likely source. I realize that some authors prefer to use "SVC" for anything that looks like SVCs, especially in languages with many SVCs, but that is a somewhat loose classification focusing only on form (vs. function: see Ross 2021 about this specific issue for defining SVCs).

Anderson, Gregory D. S. 2006. Auxiliary verb constructions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199280315.001.0001
Lødrup, Helge. 2019. Pseudocoordination with posture verbs in Mainland Scandinavian: A grammaticalized progressive construction? Nordic Journal of Linguistics 42(1). 87–110. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0332586519000027
Ross, Daniel & Joseph Lovestrand. 2018. What Do Serial Verbs Mean? A Worldwide Survey. Presented at Syntax of the World’s Languages (SWL) 8, INALCO, Paris, September 3, 2018. https://swl8.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/Ross_Lovestrand_SWL8.pdf
Ross, Daniel. 2021. Pseudocoordination, Serial Verb Constructions and Multi-Verb Predicates: The relationship between form and structure. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Ph.D. dissertation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5546425

I hope those notes may be helpful!
Daniel

On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 7:33 PM Laura Arnold <Laura.Arnold at ed.ac.uk<mailto:Laura.Arnold at ed.ac.uk>> wrote:
Dear Eva, dear Sune,

Ambel (Austronesian > South Halmahera-West New Guinea) is another example—in this case, the SVCs contain the element hey 'good'. These are functionally very similar to the Papuan Malay taw constructions, and speakers often use the taw constructions to translate the Ambel hey constructions. There are further details in section 13.1.3.2 (especially p550) of the Ambel grammar: https://laura-arnold.org/documents/Arnold_2018_AGrammarOfAmbel.pdf

Several other nearby languages have similar constructions using 'good', which may also be analysable as SVCs. Let me know if you'd like further information.

All the best,
Laura

________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of Sune Gregersen <s.gregersen at isfas.uni-kiel.de<mailto:s.gregersen at isfas.uni-kiel.de>>
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2023 09:20
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Query: Habitual serial verb constructions

This email was sent to you by someone outside the University.
You should only click on links or attachments if you are certain that the email is genuine and the content is safe.

Dear colleagues,

In connection with an investigation of habitual markers, we are looking for information on languages which use serial verb constructions (SVCs) to express habitual meaning, i.e. for customarily or typically recurring situations. An example of this is seen in (1), from Papuan Malay [ISO 639-3: pmy], where the verb taw can be combined with another verb to express a habitual situation. Outside of this construction, the verb taw means 'know', as in (2):

(1) Papuan Malay (Kluge 2023: 8)
dong taw maing foli
3PL know play volleyball
'they habitually play volleyball'

(2) Papuan Malay (Kluge 2023: 7)
mama de blum taw tempat itu
mother 3SG not.yet know place DISTAL.DEM
'mother doesn’t yet know that place'

We adhere to the definition of SVC offered by Haspelmath (2016: 296): "a monoclausal construction consisting of multiple independent verbs with no element linking them and with no predicate–argument relation between the verbs".

That the verbs must be "independent" means that they must be able to occur on their own in a non-elliptical utterance (see Haspelmath [2016: 302–304] for details). This does not exclude the possibility that the verbs in a SVC are pronounced as a single phonological word. Hence the definition also covers some constructions which may be termed differently in grammars, e.g. "verb incorporation", "verbal compounds", or "secondary verbs". An example of such a SVC is seen in (3) from Northern Paiute [pao]. The combination of 'kill' with čakwi, literally 'carry', gives the habitual meaning 'would kill'. However, 'carry' may also be used as an independent verb, as shown in (4):

(3) Northern Paiute (Thornes 2003: 266)
nɨnmi kammɨ koi-čakwi
1.EXCL jackrabbit kill.PL-carry
'We would kill jackrabbits.'

(4) Northern Paiute (Snapp et al. 1982: 68)
baa-huu-na i gunna pa-to-ǰakwi-kɨ-kwɨnai-hu
water-flow-SUBORD my wood water-shoulder-carry-APPLIC-away-PUNCTUAL
'The flood carried away my wood.'

Apart from Papuan Malay and Northern Paiute, we have examples from the following languages so far: Anamuxra [imi], Dumo [vam], Kwomtari [kwo], Lao [lao], Sezo [sze], Tariana [tae], and Yace [ekr]. We would be most grateful for any information on other habitual serial verb constructions, including verbal compounds, in any language of the world.

With all best wishes,
Eva van Lier (Amsterdam) and Sune Gregersen (Kiel)

REFERENCES

Haspelmath, Martin. 2016. The serial verb construction: Comparative concept and cross-linguistic generalizations. Language and Linguistics 17(3). 291–319. https://doi.org/10.1177/2397002215626895

Kluge, Angela. 2023. Serial verb constructions in Papuan Malay: Forms, functions and indeterminacy. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 16(1). 1–36. http://hdl.handle.net/10524/52507

Snapp, Allen, John Anderson & Joy Anderson. 1982. Northern Paiute. In Ronald W. Langacker (ed.), Studies in Uto-Aztecan grammar 3: Uto-Aztecan grammatical sketches, 1-92. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/8593

Thornes, Timothy Jon. 2003. A Northern Paiute grammar and texts. Doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon.
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336.
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

_______________________________________________

Lingtyp mailing list

Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>

https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

--

Isabelle Bril

Directeur de recherches (LACITO-CNRS)

Directeur d'Etudes à l'EPHE (Typologie et Typologie des langues austronésiennes)
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20230418/d5e07364/attachment.htm>