Journal article
Serial verb constructions and their subtypes in Avatime
Rebecca Defina
STUDIES IN LANGUAGE | JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING CO | Published : 2016
Abstract
This paper presents a description of Avatime serial verb constructions (SVCs), their properties, functions, and subtypes. Such a description is of wider typological interest due to Avatime’s status as an agglutinating member of the Ghana-Togo Mountain branch of the otherwise typically isolating Kwa language family. It is also notable for the unusual system of truncated agreement markers and the distinction between nuclear and core SVC subtypes not typically reported for West African languages.
Grants
Funding Acknowledgements
Firstly, I am grateful to the Avatime people for their support and assistance. The ideas here were first presented at the 43rd Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics in Leiden 2013. Many thanks for the discussion and comments received there. This paper also greatly benefitted from discussions with Robert D. Van Valin, thank you. Also many thanks to Felix Ameka, Julija Baranova, Thomas Bearth, Gabriella Garrido, Rosa Gisladottir, Stephen C. Levinson, Asifa Majid, Saskia van Putten, Gunter Senft, Ewelina Wnuk, and two anonymous reviewers for commenting on earlier versions of the paper. This work was supported by the Max Planck Gesellschaft.