Serial Verbs

work in progress ... pardon the mess

Serial verb constructions are extremely common in WP. Eventually, we hope to be able to describe the full range of serial verb constructions in WP.

Complex events

Serial verb constructions (SVC) may be used to describe complex events consisting of many individual sub-events.

sinamme    Tubbe gang    tipping biring diakang Kuang Bi Habbang Le
that.there T.    3SG:AGT get.up  run    descend  KB - HL
'from there Tubbe people got up and ran down to Kuang Bi Habbang Le'

halia me          pering, duang sing pai   me         pering ga
water be.located  pour   snake that slice  be.located pour   PERF
'poured water in and put that cut up snake in'

Elaboration

SVC's may serve to elaborate generic verbs. An example of this occurs above with biring diakang 'run down'. These two verbs do not refer to sequential events, but rather to the same event. The second verb diakang elaborates the first by indicating direction. Another example is the following. The second verb sauke-yabe elaborates the first by indicating how the people are making noise.

habbang mau     aname    horang     sauke-yabe
village there  person make.noise  dance.lego-lego
'over there in the village people are making noise dancing lego-lego'

Argument structure constraints

SVC's may be used to avoid the expression of more than one full nominal argument per verb phrase. In this example the monovalent SVC biring wa takes the 3sg pronoun as its single argument, while the bivalent verb -asang also takes only one explicit argument, wenang (also cross-referenced by the verb prefix ga-).

ging    biring wa    wenang      ga-asang
3PL.AGT run    go    grandfather 3SG-say
'they ran to tell grandfather'  [tonu.118]

Subordinating/dverbial functions

Some SVC have an adverbial function, often indicating with the serial verb ma 'come'. The following example is a single utterance consisting of six verbs. The first two verbs have a nominal denotation, refering to that which is eaten and drunk. The 'ma' verb acts as an adverbial subordinator indicating 'for the purpose of'

na  ba'ai  gallang   ma  ga-ni
eat drink  look.for  come 3sg-give
'look for food and water to give her'

Apparent "subordinating" constructions can be formed without ma. Note that there is no syntactic or morphological evidence for subordination. In the following example, the meaning 'order them to go' functions as a complex event: he ordered them, then they went.

as   tang    gi-hauwang  wa    kuba        ga-asang
also further 3PL-order   go    grandmother 3SG-say
'then he order them to go tell grandmother'

Last updated sometime in December 2006