The Serial Verb Constructions

Abstract

This thesis deals with morphological and syntactic properties of Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs). The SVCs can be found across languages from different parts of the world, especially in Bantu languages in Central Africa, and some Asian languages. However, there are also languages (e.g. Germanic ones) that seem to lack these constructions created by the process of serialization. The objective of this thesis is to first analyse their structure and sum up their morphological and syntactic properties that were previously demonstrated by other linguists. Secondly, a new proposal concerning the fact that SVCs can be also found in Japanese is made. In order to fulfil this task, a closer look is held on Korean whose word order is identical to that in Japanese. The final part of this thesis questions previous approaches to SVCs in Japanese, especially concerning their terminology. Afterwards, the outcome of this thesis suggests whether the previous approaches should be preserved or whether they should be updated and unified under a new terminology. Having examined the properties of SVCs in Korean and Japanese, we move back to the syntax of English, where English bare infinitives are compared to the already discussed SVCs.