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Pseudo-Coordination and Multiple Agreement Constructions
Edited by Giuliana Giusti, Vincenzo Nicolò Di Caro and Daniel Ross
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 274] 2022
► pp. 315–336

Chapter 14
Pseudocoordination and Serial Verb Constructions as Multi-Verb Predicates

| University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | University of California
Verbal pseudocoordination (as in English go and get) is often seen as an idiosyncratic phenomenon described in exceptional terms. This paper establishes the typological context to explain key properties of pseudocoordination, integrated into a more general typology of multi-verb constructions. At the same time, principled motivations are given for the arbitrary list of traditional properties attributed to Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs). The broader category of Multi-Verb Predicates (MVPs) is proposed as any monoclausal multi-verb construction with two verbs forming a complex predicate. Subtypes of MVPs are distinguished by their form: pseudocoordination with a linker ‘and’, while SVCs have no linker. Structural properties of MVPs, such as shared inflectional features on each verb, are readily explained as due to monoclausality.
Keywords: pseudocoordination, serial verb constructions, converbs, complex predicates, multi-verb predicates, typology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The definition of serial verb constructions
  • 3.Variation in multi-verb constructions
  • 4.Multi-verb predicates
  • 5.Explaining morphosyntactic variation in pseudocoordination
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.274.14ros
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