[Lingtyp] lexical aspect / actionality / Aktionsart in verb serialization / verb compounds / lexical affixes etc.

Fri May 24 00:00:05 UTC 2024

There is always room for further study of these questions, but this doesn't
mean that previous scholarship can be swept away. Almost all of the
questions raised in this thread involving "take-and" as well as other
hendiadic verbal expressions, INCLUDING aspect, aktionsart and
transitivity, as well as history, are discussed in the papers of mine cited
dated 2005 and 2007, almost always from corpus data. For example
intransitives like *took the present version and commented on it*,
instrumentals like *took a pair of scissors and cut it, *and the
effective/affective distinction in *took his dissertation and tore it up *vs.
?*took his dissertation and wrote it*. (Where *re-wrote *would work.) These
papers are readily accessible in academia.edu, but I will be happy to
forward copies to anyone that asks via <hopper at cmu.edu>. Obviously there's
much more to be said, but please don't ignore what has already been done.
Cheers,
Paul

On Thu, May 23, 2024 at 6:57 PM Daniel Ross via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> Hi Adam,
>
> This is an interesting question and one that seems surprisingly
> under-researched, now that you mention it, regarding serial verb
> constructions. Specific papers may have mentioned something about lexical
> aspect, but a specific reference discussing this in general isn't coming to
> mind at the moment.
>
> Of course aspectual functions of verbs in (or grammaticalized from) SVCs
> are widely reported. For an overview of semantic types, see my presentation
> here:
> https://swl8.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/Ross_Lovestrand_SWL8.pdf
> That is also mentioned in chapter 4 of my dissertation (with a broader
> overview of SVCs and their typology) here:
> https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.5546425
>
> Of the four main types surveyed here, posture SVCs often express
> imperfective aspect. It wouldn't surprise me if there were lexical aspect
> restrictions on the verbs that combine with posture verbs like that, but
> I'm not aware of a general discussion about it.
>
> My dissertation also gives an overview of pseudocoordination constructions
> ('go and get', etc.), which are similar to SVCs (but have 'and' linking the
> verbs). That includes the TAKE AND construction, although it should be
> noted that this function of TAKE is very different from SVCs: in SVCs, TAKE
> usually serves an argument-increasing function (e.g. instrumental 'take
> knife cut bread', etc.), while in pseudocoordination ('He took and left')
> the function of TAKE is exceptionally intransitive,* functionally similar
> to GO AND, often expressing surprise or suddenness. (More about this in my
> dissertation.) It has often been observed for these constructions that
> (varying by language and construction type) they may be restricted to
> agentive, intentional, in-control, etc., subjects or actions. See for
> example Weiss (2008, linked below) on Russian subjects controlling the
> action in this construction. This is not directly connected to lexical
> aspect, but does overlap with questions of verb selection; for example,
> stative verbs seem unlikely in a construction like "Go [/take] and know
> Spanish!".
> https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-11813
>
> [*TAKE can also be used transitively in pseudocoordination more like SVCs,
> as in English "He took the money and ran" or "He took the knife and cut the
> bread" but that's not as widely studied or as clearly grammaticalized as
> the TAKE AND type. Interestingly, this intransitive-like TAKE is also not
> widely used similarly in SVCs cross-linguistically.]
>
> More generally, it is interesting that aspect is a common function in
> SVCs, but probably not tense per se, so this suggests to me that aspect is
> more integrated with the SVCs, while tense is something about the clause as
> a whole. It is generally stated (in most definitions of SVCs) that both
> verbs must share TAM, including both tense and aspect, but that may be
> slightly overstated, because some languages seem to allow at least some
> flexibility for aspectual combinations while tense matching seems to be
> exceptionless. In other words, some languages appear to permit the verbs in
> SVCs to differ in aspect as long as they combine in a way that is
> compatible with interpretation as a single event. By strict (and
> traditional) definition some scholars might exclude these as SVCs, but
> regardless they are multi-verb constructions that could be of interest to
> you. As one example, see Lovestrand (2018:98-103) on Barayin for specific
> restrictions on grammatical combinations of (distinct) aspect marking in
> SVCs.
> Lovestrand, Joseph. 2018. Serial verb constructions in Barayin: Typology,
> description and Lexical-Functional Grammar. University of Oxford Ph.D.
> dissertation.
> https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:39406562-02d3-46f5-abf3-180d22225925
>
> In summary, this does seem to be a relevant question for further study. It
> seems plausible that there may be some restrictions based on event
> structure for which verbs can combine, but I don't know of any
> generalizations to report at the moment because it hasn't been studied
> extensively from a comparative perspective.
>
> Daniel
>
> On Wed, May 22, 2024 at 11:01 AM Paul Hopper via Lingtyp <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> A couple of papers of my own on this topic:
>>
>> Paul Hopper, 2007 “Emergent Serialization in English: Pragmatics and
>> Typology.” In Jeff Good, ed., *Language Universals and Language Change, *
>> 520-554*.* Oxford U. Press.
>>
>> Paul Hopper, 2007 “Verb serialization with *to take* in English, with a
>> note on French and German.” *Combat pour les Langues du Monde: Hommage à
>> Claude Hagège *ed. Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest, 199-210, Editions
>> L’Harmattan.
>>
>> Paul Hopper, 2002 “Hendiadys and auxiliation in English.” *Complex
>> Sentences in Grammar and Discourse,* ed. Joan Bybee and Mickey Noonan,
>> 145-173. Benjamins.
>>
>> Coseriu 1996, mentioned by Paolo Ramat, also some discussion by me in the
>> Jeff Good 2007 volume, proposes syntactic diffusion to explain the spread
>> of 'take' in Europe. Maybe, but 'take' is common as the first term in
>> serialization constructions, see e.g. Carol Lord 1993 Historical Change in
>> Verb Serialization (Benjamins) on West African languages and a lot more
>> studies. One intriguing aspect is the emergent grammar of hendyadic
>> combinations like *go ahead and, turn around and, *and many others,
>> including, at a further point on the spectrum, *pick up the phone and,
>> roll up one's sleeves and, look NP in the eye and,* etc. It might be
>> hard to draw a line between the grammatical and the idiomatic
>> identification of aspect.
>>
>> There is a large bibliography reflecting a variety of approaches. I'm
>> aware of Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen's work on hendiadys from an Interactional
>> Linguistics perspective, for example.
>>
>> - Paul Hopper
>>
>> On Wed, May 22, 2024 at 9:06 AM Randy J. LaPolla via Lingtyp <
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Adam,
>>> Modern Mandarin Chinese does not have causative accomplishment and
>>> causative achievement verbs, and so to express the sense of such verbs,
>>> e.g. I broke a cup, one uses a serial verb construction where the first
>>> verb expresses the causal action and the second verb expresses the
>>> resulting accomplishment or achievement, e.g. [I hit-broke a cup]. This has
>>> been recognised for some 40+ years, so is discussed in any grammar of
>>> Chinese since then. This sort of thing is also found in some other
>>> Sino-Tibetan languages. See Matisoff 1969 (attached) or his 1973 Grammar of
>>> Lahu (U of California Press) for discussion of Lahu examples.
>>>
>>> Randy
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 22 May 2024, at 5:29 PM, Adam James Ross Tallman via Lingtyp <
>>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I'm interested in combinations of lexical elements (serial verb
>>> constructions or verb compound constructions or whatever) and whether there
>>> is anything specific work which has described, classified or theorized
>>> about these in terms of lexical aspect. I guess the question is:
>>>
>>> When V1 combines with V2, what happens to the actionality class of the
>>> combination? Is one just subordinated to the other or is there some way in
>>> which the aspects of each are coerced?
>>>
>>> I've seen a lot of discussions about how pieces of such constructions
>>> might evolve into grammatical aspect markers (e.g. "finish" gradually
>>> becomes a completive marker), but I wonder why there appear to be few
>>> descriptions of the actionality classes of lexical combinations?
>>>
>>>
>>> best,
>>>
>>> Adam
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Adam J.R. Tallman
>>> Post-doctoral Researcher
>>> Friedrich Schiller Universität
>>> Department of English Studies
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> __________
>>
>> Paul J. Hopper
>>
>> Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Humanities
>>
>> Department of English
>>
>> Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences
>>
>> Carnegie Mellon University
>>
>> Pittsburgh PA 15213, USA
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-- 

__________

Paul J. Hopper

Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Humanities

Department of English

Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh PA 15213, USA
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