Re: Serial verbs (was Re: Marking nouns with person?)

Yahya/David Peterson wrote:

> Yahya wrote:
>
> <<
> Hi Chris,
>
> Could you give me an example of what you mean by serial verbs?
>  >>
>
> I'm kind of not Chris,
Nor I... but I wonder whether a google for "serial verbs" might not turn up
useful info?  Also maybe "SVC" (the usual abbrev. for _serial verb
constructions_).  I tried searching the Conlang archive for "serial verbs"
but got nothing... IIRC, the website on Solomon Is. languages I posted
discusses them a bit... see msg. # 125598 of 05/06/02 (June 2, 2005) in the
Conlang Archive.

Kash sort-of has serial verbs, e.g.--
yayama yanopra ratu
he-run he-cross street = He ran across the street, although this might
equally well be viewed as deletion of "and"-- or even

yamelo yayama yanopra ratu "
he-want..... = he wanted to run across the street

> In a language like Thai, you also use a serial verb in a similar
> construction (or at least some call it serial verbs).  So to say "I give
> you a book", you'd say something like "You get book come me",
> where the verb "come" indicates that the theme (book) comes via
> the argument of "come" (me).  Others have argued that these are
> nothing more than prepositions (e.g., "You get the book from me").
> Not knowing really anything about Thai, I won't put forth an opinion.
Well, this gets into the interesting question of "prepositions as verbs" (or
is it vice versa?). Indonesian has a few, such as _sampai_ '1. arrive; 2.
until, up to'