Abstract
This research paper provides a meaning-based account to examining Hakka syntactic constructions that comprise multiple verbs in their scope. The investigation is based on an interdisciplinary approach from the interface of syntax and semantics. The paper is organized into two main parts. The first part of this paper claims that the prototypical construction of the serial verb construction is a syntactic configuration that contains two verbs in the same clause, indicating two interdependent subevents happening at close time intervals. In addition, the paper proposes that greater distance in structural and semantic interdependence between the two verbs forms a gradation deviating from the prototype. In this part, a prototype model, rather than a criterial attribute model, is adopted to define the Hakka serial verb construction (SVC). The second part of paper provides a typological study that classifies the Hakka SVCs into subtypes based on the syntactic structure and the semantic relationship of the component verbs. Syntactic tests are used to test the clausehood of the multi-verb constructions identified in this part.
Highlights
This research paper provides a meaning-based account to examining Hakka syntactic constructions that comprise multiple verbs in their scope
The first part of this paper claims that the prototypical construction of the serial verb construction is a syntactic configuration that contains two verbs in the same clause, indicating two interdependent subevents happening at close time intervals
This paper pursues a categorization of different subtypes of serial verb construction (SVC) based on the semantic relationship between the verbs involved
Summary
We first briefly review the wild discussions surrounding the SVC in the literature of linguistics in terms of the basic definition and scope of the syntactic configuration. We show that the prototype theory better captures the uncertainty of the construction in comparison with the tradition criterial-attribute model
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