34.526, Review: Typology: Aikhenvald (2022)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-34-526. Fri Feb 10 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.526, Review: Typology: Aikhenvald (2022)

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Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2023 18:13:32
From: Sanford Steever [sbsteever at yahoo.com]
Subject: Serial Verbs

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36847817


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-2193.html

AUTHOR: Alexandra Y Aikhenvald
TITLE: Serial Verbs
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Sanford B Steever,  

SUMMARY

In “Serial Verbs” Aikhenvald explores and analyzes serial verb constructions,
a widespread linguistic phenomenon barely discussed in introductory linguistic
texts or elementary syntax volumes. The present book is the result of
decades-long interest in the topic, beginning with her fieldwork on Tariana,
through to an international workshop (Aikhenvald and Dixon 2006). 

The book consists of nine chapters, a fieldworker’s guide, references, and
three indexes. The volume under review is the 2022 paperback of the original
2018 hardback, which was the subject of Schwaiger’s  2018 helpful review.
There is naturally a degree of overlap between the two.

Chapter 1: Serial verbs: The framework. This chapter provides a definition of
SVC, discusses its history in linguistics, and sets out the format of the
book. The prototypical SVC has six properties or criteria (pp. 3-4): (1) it
consists of two or more verbs, each of which could also function as the sole
verb in a clause; (2) there is no marking of dependency—such as coordination,
subordination, or dependency of any sort—between the verbs within an SVC; (3)
an SVC is monoclausal—it functions as a single predicate; (4) the SVC may have
its own transitivity value; (5) there is usually one core argument shared by
all the verbs in an SVC; and (6) the SVC is conceived of as describing a
single event.

Chapter 1 introduces the basic distinction between asymmetrical and
symmetrical SVCs used throughout. Asymmetrical SVCs are ‘headed’ constructions
in that one component is a ‘lexical’ verb while the other verb is chosen from
a restricted set of elements specifying direction, valency, or certain
grammatical categories. Symmetrical SVCs are not headed constructions in that
both components are ‘major’ verbs.

Chapter 2: Recognizing a serial verb. This chapter introduces grammatical
arguments for the defining properties of SVCs. They constitute one predicate,
appear in a single clause, and, significantly, cannot be dissolved into a
coordinate structure or other complex construction. They typically have the
prosodic contours of a single verb/predicate, not those of conjoined clauses.
The components share values of tense, aspect, modality, etc., generally marked
once on the SVC but, in an important subcase, marked on each member of the SVC
as indicators of concord between the components. Speakers perceive SVCs as
denoting one event rather than as a series of discrete events.

Cross-linguistically and even within a single language, there exist other
verb-verb complexes that resemble SVCs but are to be distinguished from them
on account of one or more differences in the six criteria noted in Chapter 1.
For example, Steever (2021) describes Dravidian compound verbs that broadly
resemble SVCs, except that they bear morphological markings of dependency
between the elements, contra criterion 2. (True SVCs do occur as a minority
pattern in Dravidian.)

Chapter 3: Serial verbs: Their composition and meanings. Chapter 3 explores
the differences between asymmetrical and symmetrical SVCs. Symmetrical SVCs
tend to amplify the lexical resources of a language while asymmetrical SVCs
tend to add to its grammatical resources. Consonant with this synchronic
characterization, in linguistic change asymmetrical SVCs tend to
grammaticalize so that the ‘minor’ element becomes a marker of, say, aspect,
while symmetrical SVCs tend to lexicalize, creating new, more semantically
specific lexemes in the language.

Chapter 4: Formal properties of serial verbs. Chapter 4 examines two basic
parameters of SVCs: contiguity of the elements in the SVC and wordhood of the
SVC. Many SVCs require the two components to be adjacent/contiguous, while
some others allow them to be interrupted by other elements, such as clitics or
even individual words. It is among those SVCs whose elements must be
contiguous that the issue of wordhood arises. Aikhenvald’s schema allows SVCs
whose elements constitute a single “grammatical word.” Chapter 8 demonstrates
that SVCs may historically undergo univerbation to become single words
bracketed by word boundaries and with no internal word boundaries. So at what
point does the structure cease to be an SVC with two words and become a single
word? The notion of grammatical word is not hotly pursued, but different
languages may well calibrate it loosely or tightly so that some have
word-formation rules which synchronically permit verbs with compound stems or
roots, i.e., non-SVCs, while others do not. 

Chapter 5: The limits of verb serialization. Having built up an impressive
corpus of examples, Chapter 5 seeks to differentiate SVCs from other, similar
constructions with which they might be confused, such as double verb
constructions (pp. 122-23). The chapter works through several illustrations of
potential SVCs that fail to meet Aikhenvald’s criteria, ranging from idiomatic
collocations with fixed grammatical markings to sequences of clauses. In some
of the latter, the presence of a conjunction or other kind of clause
connector, even one that may be optionally deleted, defeats the
characterization of the candidate construction as an SVC. Causative
constructions present another point in case. While some periphrastic causative
constructions resemble SVCs, their verbal elements may be negated
independently of each other (pp. 129-30), a possibility not characteristic of
SVCs. Some other causatives, however, are so condensed that only the subject
of the causing event remains, serving in effect as the agentive subject of the
condensed construction; some of these latter may well be potential SVCs.

Chapter 6: The many facets of serial verbs. In Chapter 6 Aikhenvald
demonstrates that languages may have multiple kinds of SVCs, varying according
to the parameters previously laid out. A number of Australian languages, for
example, have both contiguous and non-contiguous SVCs. The majority of
contiguous SVCs are one word, rather than multi-word SVCs (see Table 6.1).
Section 6.2, focusing on asymmetrical SVCs, explores what kinds of lexemes
appear in the minor verb slot, and shows that the majority are verbs of
motion, posture, direction, or location. 

Chapter 7: What are serial verbs good for? Chapter 7 explores how various
grammars exploit different SVCs. Among their many grammatical functions, they
may express directionality, aspect, modality, or increased valency. In some
cases, the verb in the minor slot appears to function as an adposition and
tests must be applied (p. 168) to distinguish them from, say, prepositions. In
other cases (p. 173), SVCs are used in preference to single verbs to express
politeness, on the notion that longer expressions tend to convey greater
politeness than their shorter counterparts. SVCs are also shown to express
gradations of definiteness and focus. Section 7.3 illustrates how SVCs may be
used to dissect an event into its subcomponents, such as the manner and path
of a movement. Section 7.4 outlines the typological properties associated with
languages that have SVCs, including the presence or absence of certain
grammatical categories or classes and features of the verbal lexicon. One of
Aikhenvald’s observations that deserves to be pursued further is whether the
absence of categories such as adverb or adposition promotes the use of
asymmetrical SVCs.

Chapter 8: The rise and fall of serial verbs. Chapter 8 focuses on the
historical development, and loss, of SVCs. In one of several diachronic
trajectories, some SVCs appear to arise when a language transitions from a
synthetic toward an analytic character in which verbs, once formally inflected
for markings of dependency or subordination, lose those markings, bringing two
unvarnished verbal elements into direct contiguity, creating an SVC. At the
other end of the spectrum, historical processes such as univerbation may
contract the SVC into a single word which is no longer segmentable into two
discrete, independent verb forms, implying a countermove from an analytic to a
synthetic morphology (see Steever 1993). Despite where they came from or what
they might develop into, SVCs represent a relatively stable family of
constructions that are synchronically present in many languages and, under the
right circumstances, typologically available to all. As elsewhere in the book,
examples from a broad variety of languages illustrate the various diachronic
forces to which SVCs are subject.

Chapter 9: The essence of serial verbs. Chapter 9 provides an able summary of
the book’s content. Although the initial characterizations of SVCs, made in
Chapter 1, are rehearsed here, in this chapter they are now supported by the
numerous examples from a database of nearly 800 languages that have been
introduced throughout the course of the book. The breadth and depth of this
database makes the case for SVCs all the more compelling.

A fieldworker’s guide: Serial verb constructions—how to know more. This last
section is intended to guide fieldworkers on achieving a comprehensive
description of serial verb phenomena when conducting fieldwork on a language.
More than a checklist, it indicates what other facets of grammar a researcher
ought to consider when describing SVCs.

EVALUATION

The existence of SVCs challenges the widespread assumption of ‘one verb, one
clause’ (see page 9), which has placed SVCs in a blind spot for many
researchers and notational systems, and kept them on the periphery of
mainstream linguistic discourse. On this theory, each verb implies a clause of
its own so that SVCs must be derived from conjunctions by eliminating the
apparatus of conjoined sentences. The arguments throughout Aikhenvald’s richly
documented and well-argued book provide a much needed antidote to this
misconception. Serial verb constructions deserve to be recognized as widely
as, say, passive constructions, so it is up to researchers to determine how
SVC phenomena are to be incorporated into their models of syntax.

Further progress in the study of serial verbs will continue as we bring into
sharper focus notions that bear on their analysis: the definition of
“grammatical word,” the criteria for what constitutes a single event, and a
more finely grained typology of causative structures. For example, applying
some of the criteria developed for identifying and individuating events in
Truswell 2021, recently reviewed in LinguistList (Vol-33-3546. Mon Nov 14
2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875), may cast further light on how serial verb
constructions organize event structure. Certain approaches to causatives treat
them as one event causing another event, which would disqualify them as SVCs.
But there are different kinds of causative (p. 129) on a cline from indirect
to direct causation, where some direct causatives more closely resemble SVCs.
Here there is a need to independently establish a policy on how to individuate
events so that we can distinguish ‘true’ causatives, representing a
relationship between two events, from others, which may be represented by
SVCs. Also, the relation between SVCs and the inventory of parts of speech in
the languages in which they occur is worth further exploration since some SVCs
clearly perform functions that in other languages would be served by adverbs
or adpositions. 

Comparison of SVCs with similar phenomena is bound to cast light on both kinds
of structure, particularly on compound verb constructions which have markings
of dependency on at least one member of the compound. For example, Kageyama,
Hook, and Prashant (2021) covers a broad swath of verb-verb complexes in Asian
languages, some of which have SVCs, others of which do not. Their broad
similarities call for a study to compare and contrast their inner workings.
Serial verbs thus set the stage for a number of worthy follow-on projects.

With a database of roughly 800 languages, transcription issues naturally
arise. Yoruba ‘I’ is represented as ‘mo’ on p. 24 and ‘Mo’ on p. 26. (Copy
editors appear to have uppercased some initial letters of words in languages
whose transcriptions or writing systems make no distinction between upper and
lower case.) Although they could be two homonyms, Cantonese keoi5 is glossed
as ‘classifier’ on p. 47 and as ‘third person singular’ on p. 48. None of
these hiccups is overly distracting or impedes the analysis.

In summary, Aikhenvald has performed a great service by providing linguists
with both a framework and an explicit vocabulary for describing and analyzing
serial verb phenomena, not to mention an extensive empirical database of
illustrative forms. Given the broad implications that SVCs have for syntactic
and semantic analysis, general linguists cannot afford to miss out on the
insights of this valuable book. They will find it a pleasure to read such a
well-written book.

Reviewer’s note

In 1988 I wrote a book called “The serial verb formation in the Dravidian
languages,” included in Aikhenvald’s bibliography. Its main focus was a set of
compound verbs, both of whose members are marked for tense and
person-number-gender marking, and which overlap with some of the examples of
SVCs in Aikhenvald’s corpus. My attention was on why Dravidian grammar, which
is normally very sparing with markers of finiteness, should have this kind of
multiple exponence. In retrospect I might have used another term such as
multiple exponence or verbal concord construction when I was casting about for
a name to describe the Dravidian phenomena, but settled on serial verb
formation. I am grateful that Aikhenvald recognized my different goals when
using the term “serial verb.”

REFERENCES

Aikhenvald, Alexandra and R. M. W. Dixon. 2006. Serial verb constructions: a
cross-linguistic typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kageyama, Taro, Peter E. Hook, Prashant Pardeshi (eds.). 2021. Verb-Verb
Complexes in Asian Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schwaiger, Thomas. 2018. Review of Serial Verbs. Alexandra Aikhenvald. Oxford
Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory. LinguistList,
ihttps://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-4351/

Steever, Sanford B. 1988. The serial verb formation in the Dravidian
languages. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

Steever, Sanford B. 1993. Analysis to synthesis: the development of complex
verb morphology in the Dravidian languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Steever, Sanford B. 2021. Verb + verb sequences in Dravidian. In Kageyama,
Hook, and Pardeshi (eds.), pp. 327-353.

Truswell, Robert (ed.). 2021. The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sanford B. Steever is an independent scholar specializing in Dravidian
languages and linguistics, particularly morphology, syntax, and language
history. Recent books include Dravidian Syntactic Typology (2017) and the
second edition of The Dravidian Languages (2020); recent articles include
essays on Dravidian lexicography and correlative structures in Dravidian.





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