CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
The term verb serialisation has been called by various names such as “combination of verbs” (Christaller, 1875), “verbs in series” (Westermann, 1930), “serial verb construction (SVC)” (Stewart, 1963), “strings of verbs” (Ansre, 1966), “compressed sentence construction” (Awobuluyi, 1967) and “serial verbs” (Stahlke, 1970). Verb serialisation is “essentially a surface sentence containing a row of two or more verbs or verb phrases without any overt connective word between them” (George, 1975:1). It is a complex structure, and Stahlke (1970: 60) describes it as “a very perplexing type of surface structure”. This type of construction was first identified by Christaller (1875) in Twi, a Ghanaian language and later reported by Westermann (1930) in Ewe, another Ghanaian language. The phenomenon of verb serialisation is widely found in the languages of West Africa, Southeast Asia, Amazonia, Oceania, New Guinea, as well as in many pidgins and creoles (Aikhenvald, 2006). According to Dixon (2006:338), verb serialisation is not restricted to a particular linguistic typology. It is widespread, clearly recognisable robust grammatical construction found in perhaps one-third of the languages of the world. However, there appears to be none in Europe, north or central Asia, and rather few in North America or Australia.
A historical account of the studies on verb serialisation from 1875 when it was identified by Christaller in Twi till date would reveal a period of about one hundred and thirty nine (139) years of continued relevance and sustained interest in this aspect of grammar of language. The question is, why the sustained interest in verb serialisation? Interest in verb serialisation persists because of the intricacies and the multi-dimensional nature of the issues surrounding the phenomenon in languages as well as the cross-linguistic variations identified with such constructions. Lord (1993:1), Creissels (2000:240) and Ameka (2005:1) claim that the following four situations encouraged a blossoming of claims and counterclaims about verb serialisation. First, there are some spurious serial verb constructions in some languages. Secondly, there are various types of verb serialisation in a single language. Thirdly, there is cross-linguistic variation such that the properties of verb serialisation in one language may not map wholly unto those of another language, and finally, most of the times, there is no obvious distinction between verb serialisation proper and other verb sequence constructions (such as consecutive constructions) even in one language. Based on these problems, the question concerning the nature of serial verb constructions in languages arises again and again for over a century.
It is not surprising, however, that a linguistic phenomenon, attested in nearly one-third of the languages of the world has no universally applicable defining features. Defining verb serialisation cross-linguistically is
| Project details | Contents |
|---|---|
| Number of Pages | 124 pages |
| Chapter one | Introduction |
| Chapter two | Literature review |
| Chapter three | methodology |
| Chapter four | Data analysis |
| Chapter five | Summary,discussion & recommendations |
| Reference | Reference |
| Questionnaire | Questionnaire |
| Appendix | Appendix |
| Chapter summary | 1 to 5 chapters |
| Available document | PDF and MS-word format |
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