Omschrijving
This book provides an in-depth typological account of the forms, functions, and histories of serial verb constructions, in which several verbs combine to form a single predicate. It uses an inductively-based framework for the analysis and draws on data from languages with different typological profiles and genetic affiliations.
Aikhenvald has performed a great service by providing linguists with both a framework and an explicit vocabulary for describing and analyzing serial verb phenomena, not to mention an extensive empirical database of illustrative forms. Given the broad implications that SVCs have for syntactic and semantic analysis, general linguists cannot afford to miss out on the insights of this valuable book. They will find it a pleasure to read such a well-written book.
The book not only captures an impressively diverse linguistic phenomenon, but its author achieves this in an impressively reader-friendly manner. Aikhenvald's "Serial verbs" will thus equally appeal to advanced students of linguistics, linguists interested in SVCs or the syntax-semantics interface in general as well as anyone with a basic linguistic knowledge and a curiosity about the diversity of human languages.
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Australian Laureate Fellow, Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Indigenous Health and Equity Research at Central Queensland University and Foundation Director of the former Language and Culture Research Centre at James Cook University.