Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions

284 Pages·1993·23.03 MB·English

by  Carol Lord (Ed.)

HISTORICAL CHANGE IN SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS
TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN LANGUAGE (TSL)
A companion series to the journal "STUDIES IN LANGUAGE"
Honorary Editor: Joseph H. Greenberg
General Editor: T. Givón
Editorial Board:
Wallace Chafe (Santa Barbara) Charles Li (Santa Barbara)
Bernard Comrie (Los Angeles) Johanna Nichols (Berkeley)
R.M.W. Dixon (Canberra) Andrew Pawley (Canberra)
Matthew Dryer (Buffalo) Doris Payne (Oregon)
John Haiman (St Paul) Frans Plank (Konstanz)
Kenneth Hale (Cambridge, Mass.) Jerrold Sadock (Chicago)
Bernd Heine (Köln) Gillian Sankoff (Philadelphia)
Paul Hopper (Pittsburgh) Dan Slobin (Berkeley)
Ronald Langacker (San Diego) Sandra Thompson (Santa Barbara)
Volumes in this series will be functionally and typologically oriented, cove­
ring specific topics in language by collecting together data from a wide vari­
ety of languages and language typologies. The orientation of the volumes
will be substantive rather than formal, with the aim of investigating univer­
sals of human language via as broadly defined a data base as possible, lean­
ing toward cross-linguistic, diachronic, developmental and live-discourse
data. The series is, in spirit as well as in fact, a continuation of the tradition
initiated by C. Li (Word Order and Word Order Change, Subject and Topic,
Mechanisms for Syntactic Change) and continued by T. Givón (Discourse
and Syntax) and P. Hopper (Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragma­
tics).
Volume 26
Carol Lord
HISTORICAL CHANGE IN SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS
HISTORICAL CHANGE
IN
SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS
CAROL LORD
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
Amsterdam/Philadelphia
1993
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lord, Carol.
Historical change in serial verb constructions l Carol Lord,
p. cm. -- (Typological studies in language, ISSN 0167-7373; v. 26)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general—Verb phrase. 2. Grammar, Comparative and gen­
eral-Syntax. 3. Grammar, Comparative and general-Grammaticalization. 4. Linguistic
change. I. Title. II. Series.
P281.L65 1993
415-dc20 93-12679
ISBN 90 272 2913 9 (hb.) / 90 272 2914 7 (pb.) (European; alk. paper) CIP
ISBN 1-55619-416-1 (hb.) / 1-55619-417-X (pb.) (U.S.; alk. paper)
© Copyright 1993 - Carol Lord.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 75577 · 1070 AN Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · 821 Bethlehem Pike · Philadelphia, PA 19118 · USA
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Chapter 1: Serial verbs I
1.1 Grammaticalization 3
1.2 Case and topic 4
1.3 Data 7
Chapter 2: Locative verbs and prepositions 9
2.1 Locatives in Twi 9
2.2 Locative verbs, prepositions, and prefixes II
2.3 The Locative extended: Yoruba ní 20
2.4 Conclusions 29
Chapter 3: Verbs and Recipient/Benefactive marking 31
3.1 Twi verbs of giving 31
3.2 Yoruba 'give to', 'to, for' 33
3.3 Engenni 'give','to, for' 38
3.4 Ewe and Awutu 'give', 'for' 39
3.5 Senufo case markers from 'come' and 'give' 41
3.6 Caribbean creole parallels 42
3.7 Parallels in Asian languages 43
3.8 Conclusions 44
Chapter 4: Comitative verbs, prepositions and conjunctions . . 47
4.1 Twi ne, Engenni naa, Awutu ne 47
4.2 Ga kέ 'with' 53
4.3 Comitative verb, preposition and conjunction:
Yoruba kpέlu, Ewe kplé, Fon kpôdô...kpô/ 56
4.4 Conclusions 62
Chapter 5: Verbs and object markers 65
5.1 Twi de 'take', marker of oblique NPs, Patients,
transitivity/causativity, and definiteness 65
5.1.1 Examples of the particle de 66
5.1.2 Analyses by Riis, Christaller, Stewart, Boadi . . . 68
5.1.3 Evidence for earlier verb status of de 70
5.1.4 Development of de as marker of oblique objects . 73
VI CONTENTS
5.1.5 Development of de as Patient marker with verbs
that take Recipient objects 74
5.1.6 Development of de as Patient marker
with verbs that take Factitive objects 78
5.1.7 Development of de as Patient marker
with verbs that take Locative objects 83
5.1.8 Development of de as marker of
transitivity/causativity 86
5.1.9 Patient def ined in terms of de 94
5.1.10 Parallel with course of development
of object marking in children's speech 95
5.1.11 Path of development of serial verb
constructions with causative interpretation . . . . 97
5.1.12 Coordinate structures as historical source
of serial verb constructions and de construction . 101
5.1.13 The de construction and the definite/indefinite
object distinction 111
5.1.14 Conclusions 113
5.2 Mandarin Chinese bă 'take', object marker 114
5.3 Ga kέ as incipient object marker 117
5.4 Idoma object marking 121
5.5 Nupe'take' 126
5.6 'take' in Dagbani and Gwari 128
5.7 Engenni 'take' 129
5.8 Awutu parallels 131
5.9 Vagala, Kalam and Chickasaw 'take' 134
5.10 Conclusions 136
Chapter 6: Beyond conventional case roles 139
6.1 Akan de-verbal prepositions marking NPs
outside traditional semantic roles 140
6.1.1 Twi gye 'take', 'except' 140
6.1.2 wi gyaw 'leave', 'without' 141
6.1.3 Fante képìm 'go up to', 'until' 141
6.1.4 Twi sen 'surpass', 'more than' 142
6.2 Ewe de-verbal prepositions 146
6.3 Coverbs in Vietnamese 147
6.4 Senufo de-verbal postpositions 148
CONTENTS VII
6.5 Conclusions 149
Chapter 7: Complementizers and subordinating conjunctions . 151
7.1 Twi se: from verb of comparison to complementizer
and subordinating conjunction 151
7.1.1 se as full verb and comparative particle 152
7.1.2 se as complementizer 156
7.1.3 se as adverbial subordinator introducing
clauses of purpose and result 161
7.1.4 se marking conditional clauses 164
7.1.5 se marking factitive objects 166
7.1.6 se as 'approximately' with objects
indicating quantity 167
7.1.7 se marking reason clauses 168
7.1.8 se in frozen combinations 172
7.2 Twi se: the verb 'say' as quotative 176
7.3 Comparison of Twi se and se complementizers 180
7.4 Ewe 'say' complementizer and clause introducer . . . . 184
7.5 Ga 'say' complementizer and clause introducer 190
7.6 Engenni 'say' complementizer and clause introducer . . 192
7.7 Gokana 'say' complementizer 197
7.8 Kusal complementizer 198
7.9 Idoma 'say' and 'resemble' verb/complementizers . . . 199
7.10 Parallels in pidgin and creole languages 202
7.11 Overview of verb/complementizer correspondences . .206
7.12 Conclusions 209
Chapter 8: Adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs 215
8.1 Twi verbs used as adverbs 217
8.2 Yoruba verbs used as adverbs 219
8.3 Engenni adverbials 225
8.4 Ewe de-verbal adverbs 228
8.5 Adverbs and aspects from verbs in Tibetan 229
8.6 De-verbal adverbs in Edo 231
8.7 Conclusions 233
Chapter 9: Pragmatics, typology and teleology 235
9.1 Implications for typological structure 235
VIII CONTENTS
9.2 Meaning relations between verbs
in a serial construction 237
9.3 Clause position of de-verbal prepositions
and auxiliaries 240
9.4 Directionality of category change
in the serial verb context 245
9.5 The "why" question 247
Notes 251
References 259
Language Index 269
Index 271
PREFACE
Serial verb constructions occur in various language families scattered
around the globe. In these constructions, a sentence typically contains two
or more verb phrases without overt connective morphemes. The seman­
tic/pragmatic relationship between the verb phrases varies somewhat from
one language to another. In some languages, serial constructions are used
to express case-role relationships such as Locative, Recipient, Benefactive,
Comitative, Instrument, and Patient; their morphological and syntactic
properties tend to show a continuum from fully verbal to highly defective.
Comparison of serial verb constructions in several languages sup­
ports the view that the case-marking functions of verbs have developed in
the serial construction context. The verbs have lost lexical semantic con­
tent through a "bleaching" or "desemanticization" process, and have lost
morphological and syntactic capabilities as a result. The change has been
directional, from major category (verb) to minor category (preposition) to
grammatical morpheme (case-marking affix) along a grammaticalization
continuum. This same grammaticalization process has resulted in the
development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions,
adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs.
Works that have focused on serial verb constructions in a single
language have sometimes mistakenly assumed that all other serial verb
languages work the same way. Similarly, generalizations about the prop­
erties of a few serial verb combinations have sometimes been assumed to
be true for all serial verb combinations in a given language. The cross-
language descriptions and analyses here will, I hope, contribute to our
understanding of the range of serial verb constructions as well as the
linguistic structures which evolve from serial constructions. The data here
illustrate the sweep of grammaticalization and show how shifts in meaning
and usage result in syntactic, morphological, and lexical change. I have
tried to avoid the assumptions and terminology of any single theoretical