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

Support verb constructions (henceforth: SVCs) are constructions consisting of a verb with a reduced meaning (when compared to the full verb) and a noun. Previous analyses (e.g. von Polenz 1963, Winhart 2002) provide a detailed account of the function of the verb in SVCs. However, neither of the two approaches fully explains why certain verb-noun combinations are unacceptable. Geraten ('to get into') can combine with Brand ('fire') in but not with Feuer ('fire') even though the two nouns are synonyms. This dissertation proposes a novel approach towards identifying selectional restrictions in German support verb constructions by applying insights from Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1985) and Construction Grammar. It differs from syntactic-centric and lexical-conceptual structure approaches in that frame-semantic information is shown to directly influence a verb's and a noun's ability to combine with each other. I argue that the nominalization Feuer cannot combine with the support verb because the frame- semantic information evoked by Feuer is incompatible with the frame semantics of geraten. Thus, either the verb and/or the noun blocks the formation of a support verb construction. My analysis demonstrates that in order for the support verb and the noun to be able to combine, their frame-semantic information needs to be compatible. However, in some circumstances SVCs need to be listed as idioms in the lexicon because there do not seem to be any compositional restrictions that allow geraten to combine with Brand ('fire'), but not Feuer ('fire'). Based on a corpus of more than 1000 SVCs with geraten, I show that there are different patterns of productivity and idomaticity. Some SVCs, such as ins Rollen geraten ('to start rolling'), allow widespread replacement of the noun with near-synonyms. Other SVCs, such as in Brand geraten ('starting to burn'), do not allow such replacement. In this view, both the abstract meaning of an SVC (e.g., in X geraten 'to get into X') and item-specific knowledge needs to be captured to be able to account for the full range of SVCs headed by geraten. Therefore, I posit a new construction that captures all the meanings expressed by SVCs with geraten. / 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.

Title: Syntactic characteristics (features) of stretched verb constructions in the language of german journalism Summary: This thesis interprets the meaning and the use of stretched verb constructions. The german newspapers "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", "Mannheimer Morgen" and "Bild" were chosen as the research objects. The thesis is devided in three chapters. The first chapter explains the theory in general and describes the newspapers and the research method in detail. The practical part analyses the use of these verbs in newspapers and shows that their use depends not only on the newspaper but on the region. The last chapter offers some grammar exercises for the practical use of this construction. Keywords: stretched verb constructions, syntax, newspaper analyse, exercises

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.

Previous studies on children’s acquisition of depicting verbs in signed languages have chiefly studied the use of classifiers in verbs of motion and location, particularly the order in which the different classes of handshape are acquired. The age of the children in these studies have ranged from age three to thirteen, and an important finding has been that classifier constructions are not fully acquired until early adolescence. Most of these studies have used an elicitation tool to investigate the production and comprehension of classifiers, but have not provided any adult target norms of the test items when scoring children’s achievement. The present dissertation provides a detailed description of both adults’ and children’s verb constructions in descriptions of cutting and breaking events in Swedish Sign Language (SSL), specifically focusing on the number of hands used in signing, handshape category and hand activity, which has not been previously described for any sign language. As part of this study, 14 deaf adults (ages 20–72) and 11 deaf children (2;1–6;6) of deaf parents, all native-users of SSL, performed a task that involved describing 53 video clips of cutting and breaking events. The clips show an event in which an actor separates material, either with the aid of a tool or without. Additionally, some clips show an entity separating by itself without an actor being involved. The adults described the events with depicting verb constructions that are produced with two hands. The analysis of the handshapes produced three categories: substitutor, manipulator and descriptor. The most frequent construction in the description of events without a tool was two acting manipulators (depicting a hand handling an object), whereas in descriptions of events with a tool the combinations were acting substitutor or manipulator with a non-acting manipulator. The acting hand referred to the tool and the non-acting manipulator to the affected entity. In descriptions of events without an actor, either two substitutors or two manipulators were used. In addition to depicting verb constructions, the descriptions also contained resultative complements, i.e. signs carrying information about the result of the activity being carried out. The complements were either lexical signs or some form of depicting verb construction. Similar observations have not been noted for any other signed language. In the manner of the adults, the children used depicting verb constructions in descriptions of cutting and breaking events (681 tokens), but they also used pointing and lexical signs (64 tokens). Nearly half of the verb constructions that were used by the children corresponded to the adult target forms. The majority of the constructions describing events without a tool corresponded to the adult target forms using two acting manipulators, even among the youngest informants. In events with a tool, only a third of the constructions corresponded to the adult target forms (emerging at 4;8 – 5;0); the remaining two-thirds were deviating constructions in terms of number of hands, handshape category and hand activity. Resultative complement are sparsely used by children (57 tokens), the most chosen type of complement being lexical signs. Pervasive features of children’s constructions were the addition of contact between the hands and a preference for substitutors, something not found in adults’ constructions. These features were elucidated within the framework of Real Space blending theory, with the study showing that children first use visible blended entities and that invisible blended entities do not emerge until 4;8–5;0. / <p>Disputationen teckenspråkstolkas</p>

Construções com verbo-suporte (CVS) são ligações verbo-nominais que possuem um significado único, como por exemplo, zu Ende bringen (levar a cabo, concluir). O substantivo ligado ao verbo-suporte (VS) pode estar ou não precedido por uma preposição. Por meio de uma CVS é possível expressar a mudança na Aktionsart em relação ao verbo-base, que é o verbo que dá origem ao substantivo da parte nominal da CVS. A Aktionsart expressa pela CVS com bringen e com kommen é, respectivamente, perfectiva ingressiva causativa e perfectiva ingressiva. As CVS podem ter significado ativo ou passivo, sendo bringen um VS com significado ativo, pois expressa um agente ou uma causa, e kommen um VS com significado passivo, uma vez que não os expressa. Por isso, kommen é o principal substituto para bringen na formação de CVS, mantendo Aktionsart perfectiva ingressiva de bringen, mas sem expressar um agente ou causa. No entanto, ao fazermos o levantamento de CVS com bringen, verificamos que esse VS também pode ocorrer na voz passiva, o que nos levou a investigar se essas formas coocorrem paralelamente a todas as CVS com bringen elencadas para compor esta pesquisa. O levantamento de CVS com bringen na voz ativa e passiva e das CVS com kommen foi feito através da ferramenta de busca, gerenciamento e de análise de corpus Cosmas II. As CVS com bringen que compõem o corpus constituído para este trabalho foram categorizadas como prototípicas (preposicionadas e com substantivo deverbal) ou não prototípicas. Além disso, foram categorizadas de acordo com a resposta afirmativa ou negativa a testes de lexicalização, que consistem em descobrir se cada CVS com bringen aceita determinadas mudanças em sua parte nominal, como pluralização do substantivo, adjetivação entre outros. Concluímos que a formação da voz passiva com bringen e a possibilidade de substituir o VS bringen por kommen não dependem da lexicalização da CVS, mas sim da presença ou não de preposição na parte nominal da CVS. / Light-verb constructions (LVCs) are verb-noun combinations with a single meaning, for example, zu Ende bringen (to bring to an end). The noun attached to the light verb may or may not be preceded by a preposition. By means of a LVC it is possible to express a change in the Aktionsart in comparison to the Aktionsart of the verb which gives rise to the noun of the LVC. The Aktionsart, expressed by the LVC with the verbs bringen and kommen, are perfective ingressive causative and perfective ingressive respectively. LVCs may have either a passive or an active meaning. While the light verb bringen has an active meaning, because it expresses a cause or an agent, the verb kommen has a passive meaning. The verb kommen is the main substitute for the light verb bringen, because, although it has a passive meaning, it still maintains the perfective ingressive Aktionsart. However, the corpus data of the constructions with bringen has showed us a great amount of passive-voice constructions. As a result, we have researched if both ways of expressing passivity may occur with all LVCs comprising the verb bringen, which were chosen as the corpus of this research. The data survey was made with Corpus Search, Management and Analysis System Cosmas II. The constructions with the light verb bringen were categorized as prototypical (with a preposition and a deverbative noun) or not prototypical. They were also categorized according to their response to the lexicalization tests, which consist in ascertaining if the constructions accept some changes in their nominal part, like pluralization of nouns, adjectivation, and so on. We concluded that the formation of passive voice of such constructions does not depend on the lexicalization of the LVCs but rather on the presence of a preposition in the nominal part of the LVC.

A presente pesquisa está inserida nos estudos com base na Gramática de Construções Cognitiva, e tem por objetivo realizar um mapeamento sintático-semântico do verbo stellen, com ênfase em seu uso como verbo-suporte. Para a realização desse mapeamento, analisou-se contextos de uso do verbo stellen em que ele ocorre como verbo pleno, como integrante de construções com verbo-suporte e de outros fraseologismos que se inserem nas fronteiras com essas construções. A análise dos dados está baseada na abordagem construcional de Goldberg (1995 e 2006), para quem construções são definidas como pareamentos entre forma e significado. A autora se foca em um tipo específico de construção as chamadas construções de estrutura argumental que seriam, por si só, portadoras de sentido, independentemente de outros itens lexicais que compõem as sentenças. No que diz respeito à análise da estrutura argumental das construções com verbo-suporte (doravante CVS), levamos em conta os trabalhos de Wittenberg e Piñango (2011), Rostila (2011) e Wittenberg (2016). A metodologia adotada baseou-se na elaboração de um corpus composto por informações retiradas de entradas de dicionários em língua alemã e por excertos de textos retirados do Arquivo Wikipedia Artikel und Diskussionen, fornecido pelo banco dados COSMAS II, do Institut für Deutsche Sprache, da Universidade de Mannheim. Os resultados obtidos com o estudo aqui realizado confirmam o princípio da economia semântica postulado pela Gramática de Construções, já que os sentidos atribuídos tradicionalmente ao verbo stellen, são, na verdade, resultado da instanciação do verbo nas construções argumentais que ele pode integrar, são elas, a Construção de Movimento Causado, a Construção Transitiva, a Construção Resultativa e a Construção Bitransitiva. Os resultados da análise das CVS deverbais indicam que o sentido dessas construções é influenciado pela estrutura argumental tanto do verbo-suporte, quanto do componente nominal, em um processo de partilha de argumentos. Além disso, foram encontradas no corpus CVS formadas por stellen que, por serem altamente lexicalizadas, são consideradas unidades armazenadas como um todo no Léxico. / This master\'s dissertation belongs to the studies of Cognitive Construction Grammar and aims to demonstrate a sintatic and semantic investigation of the light verb stellen. Thus, the verb was analyzed in contexts, in which the verb stellen is a fullverb and as a component of light verb constructions and other phraseologies, which are considered as borderline cases of such constructions. This analysis was carried out following Goldberg\'s perspective (1995). The author assumes that the constructions are defined as form-meaning pairs and are considered as the fundamental unit of grammar. Goldberg argues, that constructions, disregarding their verbal meaning, are the significant components because of the Argument Structure. The analysis of the Argument Structure of the light verb constructions is based on the scientific researches of Rostila (2011), Wittenberg and Piñango (2011) and Wittenberg (2016).After all, this analysis is described as qualitative and based on corpus. For the creation of the corpus, examples were used from German dictionaries as well as dictionaries for German as a foreign language. Besides, references of the archive Wikipedia Artikel und Diskussionen of the IDS COSMAS II database of texts of the University of Mannheim were collected.The results confirm the principle of the semantic economy because the meanings, that are traditionally assing to the verb stellen, can be understood as the result of the relations between verb and four argument structure construciotns: The Caused Motion Construction, the Transitive Construction, the Resultative Construction and the Ditransitive Construction. Hence, the results of the analysis of non-deverbal light verb constructions suggest that both the argument structure of the light verb and the argument structure of the nominal element influence the entire meaning of the construction within a process of argument-sharing. In the corpus, there were other examples of light verb constructions with the verb stellen, of which its nominal component had no separate Argument Structure. Those light verb constructions are highly lexicalized and therefore included in the lexicon as a whole.

La présente étude est centrée sur les constructions verbales scientifiques. Ce lexique se situe à mi-chemin entre le lexique de la langue générale et celui de la terminologie. Il s’agit de termes utilisés à des fins d’expressions scientifiques, pour contribuer à l’élaboration du fonctionnement rhétorique et pragmatique de l’écrit scientifique. En nous fondant sur le modèle du Corpus Pattern Analysis, nous élaborons une ressource lexicale des patrons verbaux à l’aide de techniques du TAL sur des corpus numériques. Notre objectif est d’intégrer à cet outil les collocations et les constructions verbales récurrentes dans les écrits scientifiques. Cette ressource a pour objectif d’aider les locuteurs allophones dans leur rédaction d’écrits académiques en français.Sur le plan didactique, afin de mieux comprendre les difficultés des étudiants allophones en matière de constructions verbales scientifiques, nous établissons un diagnostic qui comporte à la fois l’analyse des erreurs et celle des cas de suremploi et de sous-emploi de certaines de ces constructions verbales. Les résultats ont montré que le statut de novice, en matière de rédaction scientifique, confronte de manière identique les étudiants natifs et non-natifs aux difficultés liées au genre du discours. Afin de répondre à ces besoins langagiers, nous avons proposé d’intégrer la ressource lexicale des patrons dans l’enseignement de l’écrit académique dont l’objectif est de guider les étudiants vers l’autonomie et la manipulation de corpus numériques. / The present study focuses on scientific verb constructions, i.e., the lexicon situated between general language and terminology and which is used for scientific expressions, whose rhetorical and pragmatic function must be mastered while writing scientific discourse. Based on the Corpus Pattern Analysis model, we develop a lexical resource of verb patterns using NLP techniques, which include collocations and recurring verbal constructions. The purpose of this resource is to help non-native speakers to write their academic writings in French.From an educational point of view, in order to understand better the difficulties of foreign students with regard to scientific verb constructions, we establish a diagnosis which includes the analysis of both errors and cases of overuse and underuse (notably compared to native students). The results show that both unexperienced natives and non-natives have to face difficulties related to discourse genre. In order to answer these linguistic needs, we suggest that a verb pattern resource should be integrated into corpus-based teaching of academic writing so as to help students gain autonomy in corpus manipulation.