OpenissuesTop_GrammarMatrixSerialVerbConstructions

Mentor: EmilyBender (ebender at u dot washington dot edu, http://faculty.washington.edu/ebender)

Co-mentors welcome!

Open Issue: Serial Verb Constructions

Problem Statement

Serial verb constructions (roughly, constructions where a clause contains two or more 'main' verbs, which typically share some or all of their arguments) are common in the world's languages, but not that prominent in the initial set of DELPH-IN languages. I would love to see an extension to the Grammar Matrix which allowed users to add serial verb constructions through the customization system. This would require first determining the target semantic representation, then working from the typological literature to map out the range of kinds of serial verb constructions, developing analyses for each kind, and relating them to the customization questionnaire.

Existing Literature

Melanie Owens's forthcoming [http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/mowens.html dissertation] is a typological study of the semantics of SVCs.