Abstract
Serial verb constructions (abbreviated as SVC) are a fascinating syntactic structure where more than one finite verb occurs in the same clause. Since the first description of this phenomenon in the two West African languages Akan and Twi by the two German missionaries Riis (1854) and Christaller (1875) (cited in Lovestrand 2021: 110, Lord 1993: 7) the phenomenon has been studied in a wide variety of other languages. Still, there is no final consensus on what SVCs are up to this day. Nonetheless, more recent publications about SVCs (e.g. Aikhenvald 2006, Bisang 2009, Haspelmath 2016) have led to a growing consensus on essential features, e.g. the presence of more than one verb, expressing one event, and some morphosyntactic implications like having a single aspect value. Most of this work is based on anecdotal evidence from different languages instead of systematic data collection.
The goal of this thesis is to conduct a preliminary typological study of SVCs in Tibeto Burman languages. The first step is to define a set of features typical for SVCs based on previous literature based on which a questionnaire is developed. Since there is no established terminology for describing SVCs, the aim is to define the used terms as clearly as possible to avoid further confusion. In the next step, 15 Tibeto Burman languages are surveyed according to this questionnaire for multiverbal constructions that could potentially be SVCs. The data analysis shows that there are fundamental problems in the study of SVCs. In contrast to what is suggested in the literature, no clear SVC types emerge with similar features. Instead, the found variation is bigger than anticipated. Further, due to grammaticalization processes at work, it can be hard to find out if an element in a construction is a verb or not. To summarize, the study shows that SVCs are not a unitary phenomenon and further research is needed about grammaticalization processes at work in SVCs and how this affects the verbhood status of the affected verb.
Muheim, Nora