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

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005 12:54:55 -0400, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
>
>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...
I often can't find things in the archives via the search function that I'm
sure are there. And I'm sure serial verbs are there somewhere in the last 5
years.

This thread brings up a question: is there some standard term for a serial
verb and its arguments? I might want to adapt it. Or maybe some term that
encompasses each of the following (a) a verb and its arguments (including
subject), (b) a noun and its possessor (if any), (c) a preposition and its
object, and probably some similar things. I suppose that if serial verbs
are analyzed as prepositions, then "prepositional phrase" could be used,
but calling a main verb or an ordinary noun a preposition is a bit weird.

Jeff

BTW, Roger, congrats on starting new lang!

>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'
>=========================================================================

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