The debate of the genesis of creole languages has been ongoing for many years. Although there are many theories that have been proposed, there are two that are the most polarized and have received the most amount of attention. These include universal theories and substrate theories. The central goal of the present paper is to investigate the role that serial verb construction (SVCs) can play in providing evidence for substrate influence in creoles. It does this by looking at the use of SVCs or lack thereof in the following creoles: Louisiana Creole, Haitian Creole, Papiamento, and Palenquero. I provide evidence that demonstrates that the presence of SVCs in a creole depends on whether they can also be found in their substrate language. By doing this, I successfully prove that substrate influence plays a bigger role than suggested by universalist. / text

This study identifies two syntactically distinguishable types of Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) in Mandarin Chinese (MC) and Jinjiang Southern Min (JSM), corresponding to the nuclear and core distinction made in Role and Reference Grammar (Foley and Van Valin 1984, Foley and Olson 1985, Van Valin and LaPolla 1997). This distinction is also made on the basis of a general consensus of the cross-linguistic classifications of the processes of monoclausal multi-verb construction formation (e.g., Butt 1993, 1997, Baker and Harvey 2010): namely, predicate fusion and argument fusion. In this study, I propose two sets of diagnostics to establish the distinction; these go beyond the range covered in previous studies (e.g., Olson 1981, Foley and Olson 1985, Crowley 2002, Chang 2007). In the first set of diagnostics in this study, seven inter-clausal diagnostics are considered as the threshold where the behaviours of bi-clausal structures and SVCs split. These diagnostics include independent negation, passivisation of the object of V2, independent modification by temporal adverbial, independent marking of viewpoint aspect, independent modification by manner adverbial, prosodic structure and the Coordinate Structure Constraint (Ross 1967) that is employed in a more restricted manner. In the second set of diagnostics, four intra-clausal diagnostics are adopted to make the distinction between nuclear and core SVCs, which include passivisation of O1, insertion of intervening material, coordination within the SVC, and obligatory topicalisation of undergoer argument. Of particular interest is the possibility that the same string of verbs may occur in superficially similar, but structurally different, SVCs: for example, the Cause-Effect SVC and the Excessive SVC. The diagnostics employed in this study are proposed as a novel method to establish the distinction between the SVCs and the bi-clausal structures, and more importantly, between core and nuclear types of SVC. Contributing to the originality of the new method of diagnosing the status of the SVCs proposed in this study, I add five novel diagnostics, such as passivisation of the object of V2, independent marking of viewpoint aspect, tone sandhi between adjacent verbs, coordination within the SVC and obligatory topicalisation of the undergoer argument, in addition to those that have been employed in the literature. I restrict myself to data of MC and JSM in discussing the rationale of the diagnostics. However, this novel method of identifying SVCs is expected to be cross-linguistically applicable with consistent results, while at the same time allowing for the possibility of cross-linguistic differences in the semantic sub-types of SVCs identified in each language.

This dissertation provides a syntactic representation of Motion Predicates (MPs) expressed by series of verbs known as Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) in Southern Tati –an Indo-European language spoken mainly in the Northwestern parts of Iran. This study addresses the sub-eventive decomposition of MPs by following the theoretical framework established by generative-constructivists like Borer (2005) and Ramchand (2008), as implemented for MPs in Benedicto and Salomon (2014).This dissertation also contributes to the documentation of Southern Tati, which iscategorized by UNESCO as ‘definitely’endangered.<br>

Este artículo analiza las construcciones verbales seriales (CVS) del mapudungun, lengua indígena hablada en el sur de la República Argentina, sobre todo en las provincias de La Pampa, Neuquén, Río Negro y Chubut. Los estudios tradicionales del mapudungun han tratado los verbos conformadospor dos o más raíces verbales como lexemas compuestos. A partir de la perspectiva tipológica, que define las construcciones verbales seriales como una secuencia de verbos que funciona como un predicado único, sin presentar elementos coordinantes ni subordinantes entre ellos, se las analiza estableciendo los distintos tipos de CVS, sus valores semánticos, así como su frecuencia de aparición en los corpora sobre los que se basanuestro trabajo. -- This article analyzes the serial verb constructions (SVC) of Mapudungun, an indigenous language spoken in the southern region of Argentina —mainly in the provinces of La Pampa, Neuquén, Río Negro y Chubut.Traditional investigations of Mapudungun have considered verbs constituted by two or more verbal roots as complex lexemes. From a typological trend, which defines SVC as a sequence of verbs that functions as a unique predicate, without presenting coordination or subordination elements betweenthem, we analyze Mapudungun SVC and, thus, establish a typology, their semantic values and the appearance frequency in the corpora we gathered for this investigation.

DIPLOMOVÁ PRÁCE SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN ARABIC Konstrukce sériových sloves v arabštině Bc. Adam Pospíšil Abstract The aim of this thesis is to investigate multi-verb structures in Egyptian Arabic (EA) which show some characteristics attributed to the typological notion of serial verb constructions (SVC). After providing a preliminary definition of an EA-specific SVC notion, the author examines a substantial quantity of data from EA, gathered mostly on social networks, in order to describe the syntactic and semantic behavíour of constructions which are yielded by such definition. Finally, the results of this investigation are considered from the perspective of the definition of SVC as a comparative concept provided by Haspelmath (2016), so as to view the observed constructions in a typological context.

本文研究漢語的連動結構。首先我們先將連動結構的定義做一個清楚的界定，之後再從動詞間的語意面著手，對連動結構中動詞間的語意關係，提出詳盡的說明與解釋。除此之外，根據連動句中詞彙的受限性以及動詞間的語意關聯性這兩個原則，我們再進一步將漢語的連動結構區分為四個類型。最後，我們從句法的層面切入來探討漢語的連動結構。我們認為不同的語意解讀是由於不同的句法結構所導致。 / This thesis investigates serial verb constructions (SVCs) in Mandarin Chinese. The serial verb constructions are often confused with other superficially similar structures; thus, the first objective of this study is to explicitly delimitate the definition of SVCs and to differentiate them from other structures. In addition, we will further explore the semantic relationship between the serial verbs and classify SVCs into several types according to the V1-V2 correlations, the independence between sub-events, and the lexical restrictiveness of the verbs. We will then analyze the syntactic relationship of the verbs. Finally, we also propose that there are two possible structures for SVCs in Mandarin. Chapter 1 is a brief introduction of the term “serial verb construction.” We will first go over its definitions, the functions it can convey, and the geographical distribution of languages with SVC. In Chapter 2, we will present the distinguishing characteristics of SVC and distinguish it from other similar structures. In Chapter 3, we will present different semantic correlations between the VPs. In Chapter 4, we will classify Mandarin SVCs into different subtypes based on the lexical and semantic criteria. Chapter 5 presents the tentative syntactic analyses of Mandarin SVCs. Chapter 6 concludes this paper.

Dans cette thèse, nous présentons une analyse syntaxique du vietnamien de Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville, dans la lignée de la syntaxe fonctionnelle mise en place par André Martinet et développée par la suite par ses continuateurs. Dans un premier temps, nous nous sommes intéressée au degré d’opposition verbo-nominal en vietnamien : nous proposons tout d’abord une synthèse des travaux menés à ce sujet, avant d’exposer notre analyse en classes, en nous appuyant sur des critères strictement syntaxiques. Une étude syntaxique détaillée des modalités (déterminants non déterminables) – les modalités nominalisantes, les modalités de degré, les modalités prédicatives et les modalités injonctives – a été nécessaire. Ces unités permettent de distinguer des comportements différents, et l’identification des grandes classes lexicales du vietnamien : nominaux, adjectifs, modaux et verbaux. Il apparait que ces classes d’unités s’organisent en un continuum, avec à un pôle les nominaux, à l’autre les verbaux. Dans un second temps, l’analyse porte sur les différents types de structures prédicatives du vietnamien. La variété des constructions – nucléaires et connectives – est au centre de l’étude, ainsi que l’identification des différentes fonctions. Enfin, nous exposons une analyse des “séries verbales”, phénomène très courant en vietnamien, mais décrivant en fait des réalités très diverses. Tout au long de l’analyse, nous accordons une importance particulière à la variation et aux zones de changements (réanalyses, lexicalisations, grammaticalisations), faisant état de la dynamique des différentes structures et de la langue elle-même. / We present here a syntaxic analysis of the Vietnamese language spoken in Ho Chi Minh City, in line with the functional syntax introduced by André Martinet and developed later by his followers. In a first part, we examined the extent of noun/verb opposition in Vietnamese. After a synthesis of work on this subject, we present our own analysis of the lexical classes, relying on strictly syntactic criteria. A detailed study of the syntactic modalités (undeterminable determinants) - nominalizing undeterminable determinants, undeterminable determinants of degree, predicative undeterminable determinants and injunctive undeterminable determinants - was necessary. These units are used to distinguish different behaviors, and leads to the identification of major lexical classes in Vietnamese: nominals, adjectives, modals and ‘verbals’. It appears that these classes of units are organized along a continuum. In a second part, the analysis focuses on the different types of predicative structures in Vietnamese. The variety of structures - nuclear and connective - is central to the study as well as the identification of the different functions. Finally, we present an analysis of "serial verb constructions" very common in Vietnamese, but actually reflecting very different realities. Throughout this study, we pay particular attention to the variation and change (reanalysis, lexicalizations, grammaticalizations), referring to the dynamics of the various structures and of the Vietnamese language itself.

Die Promotionsschrift ist eine deskriptive Grammatik der ozeanischen Sprache Daakaka. Die Sprache wird von etwa eintausend Sprechern auf der vulkanischen Insel Ambrym im Pazifikstaat Vanuatu gesprochen. Die Arbeit entstand im Rahmen eines Dokumentationsprojekts, vor dessen Beginn im Jahr 2009 die Sprache weder beschrieben noch nennenswert verschriftet war. Empirische Grundlage der Beschreibung ist die umfangreiche Datensammlung der Autorin. Unter den vielen bemerkenswerten Eigenschaften der Sprache finden sich ein sehr komplexes System nominaler Possession, semitransitive und pluraktionale Verben und eine außergewöhnlich große Bandbreite von Serialverbkonstruktionen. / The dissertation is a descriptive Grammar of the Oceanic language Daakaka. The language is spoken by about one thousand speakers on the volcanic island of Ambrym in the pacific nation of Vanuatu. The grammar was written in the course of a documentation project which started in 2009, and before which the language had neither been described nor written down. Among the many remarkable properties of the language are a very system of nominal possession, semitransitive and pluractional verbs and an exceptional range of serial verb constructions.