The serial verb construction in Tujia

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive description of the serial verb construction (henceforth SVC) in Tujia. It shows that serial verbs or verb phrases in Tujia are linked by the particle lie 55. lie 55 does not contribute any semantic content to the construction, but only functions as a linking particle. lie 55 is not used for any other purpose in any other structure. SVCs in Tujia can be classified into two types: non-symmetric and symmetric, depending on argument sharing. Symmetric SVCs can be further divided into three types according to how the arguments of the verb are shared: those which share both agents and patients, those which share only agents and those which do not share any arguments. SVCs in Tujia can be used to indicate various types of semantic relations: most frequently this involves sequentiality, but also action-result, cause-effect, and action-purpose. The use of a linking particle in SVCs is rarely reported in the existing literature, so that the present research contributes to the general typology of SVCs.