The Conlang FAQ

Serial verb consturctions

adapted from a 25 Nov 96 post by Matt Pearson

One example that we should note when talking about how other languages are structurally different from English is this:
In English, the sentence "I swim across." would not be conceptually organized that way in French. I don't remember how to say it in French, but basically the sentence would come out more like "I cross by swimming."
What is the term used to describe this distinction?
I don't think there is one. But what you're talking about is remin- iscent of the distinction between languages which make heavy use of prepositional phrases (like English), versus languages which make use of "serial verb constructions" - that is, a string of verbs which all take the same subject/topic, and which together denote a complex action. Many West African languages are of the serial verb construction type. Some examples to illustrate how complex actions are handled in the two types of languages:

   English:  "I cut the bread with the knife"
   SVC Lang: "I take knife cut bread"

   English:  "I run into the house"
   SVC Lang: "I run enter house"

   English:  "I gave the book to Bill"
   SVC Lang: "I hand book give-to Bill"
And so on. Tokana is sort of a mixed case: It has both prepositional phrases and serial verb constructions. An example of the latter:

   Ma sihanun = "I swam"
   Me theseh sihkunu = "I crossed the river"
   Ma sihanun thesah sihkunu = "I saw across the river"
       (lit. "I swim-PAST cross-the river")

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Last updated: 25 April, 1997