The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization, is a syntactic phenomenon common to many African, Asian and New Guinean languages. Contrary to subordination, where one clause is embedded into another, verb serialization strings two verbs together in a sequence in which no verb is subordinated to the other.[1]
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The following example of serialization comes from Nupe:
(1) Musa bé lá èbi.
Musa came took knife
"Musa came to take the knife."[1]
In the English translation, the verb "came" takes an infinitival complement headed by the infinitive "to take". In the Nupe original, however, the two verbs are in the same clause, forming a sole predicate.
Serial verb constructions exhibit the following recurrent properties:
(i) Strings of serial verbs share the same subject.
(ii) Subject Agreement is often cross-referenced on the two verbs.
(2) nu-takasã nu-dúmaka (Baré) 1SG-deceived 1SG-sleep "I pretended (that) I was asleep."[1]
In other cases, there is only a subject marker, but it is shared by the two verbs, as in the following example from Yoruba.
(3) ó mú ìwé wá
3SG took book came
"He brought the book."[1]
Both verbs are understood as third person singular.
(iii) The only constituent that can intervene between the two verbs is the object of one of them, and only in a subset of serial verb languages – cf. example (3).
(iv) There is only one negation marker for the whole construction.
(4) hena nihiwawaka nu-tšereka nu-yaka-u abi (Baré) NEG 1SG:go 1SG-speak 1SG-parent-FEM with "I am not going to talk with my mother."[1]
(v) Serial verbs cannot be marked independently for tense/aspect/mood categories. Either the relevant (identical) markers appear on both verbs, or a sole marker is shared by them (as they can share a subject marker, cf. example 3).[1]
The term serial verb is usually distinguished from compound verb or complex predication:
The difference between serial verbs and compound verbs, then, is that the former use more than one verb to express more than one action while the latter use more than one verb to express a single action. Compound verbs are very common in northern Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi and Punjabi. They are less common in other Indo-Aryan languages and are also found in Dravidian, Turkic, Korean and Japanese, some Tibeto-Burman languages, some Northeast Caucasian languages, and in Quichua. Serial verbs are found in all of these languages and, in addition to them, are found in Chinese, Mon–Khmer, Tai–Kadai, Kwa, and in many pidgins and creoles. (See V.S. Naipaul's use of the Trinidadian serial verbs insure-and-burn, choke-'n'-rob, etc.)
With the first verb in the continuative form (連用形 ren'yōkei):
No verb arguments can come between the two verbs.
With the first verb in the -te form (gerund or conjunctive participle):
This sequence is similar to English be seated: 'John is seated on a chair.'
Serial verbs can also be used to tie together any arbitrary string of verbs, often as a looser connection indicating causal or temporal relations, similar to English "and". A pair of examples from Hayao Miyazaki's Mononoke Hime:
The second verb can also take its own arguments, making this construction a way of connecting entire clauses.
Despite the frequency of the phenomenon, there is no standard view on the proper analysis of serial verb constructions. This is a current subject of debate among syntacticians.
As Tallerman (1998) points out, the serial verb construction is not totally unfamiliar to speakers of English, and can be found in some expressions surviving from Early Modern English, such as Let's go eat.[1]