Caused accompanied motion constructions in Vera’a

Abstract

The expression of bring and take events (so-called ‘caused accompanied motion (CAM)’ events) in the Oceanic language Vera’a (North Vanuatu) is analysed in terms of lexical and constructional compositionality. The two lexical verbs centrally involved in CAM expressions have fairly general semantic content not specific to CAM events, meaning ‘move sth.’ and ‘accompany’. These are used in constructional frames with dative and locative prepositions, serialization with verbs of motion, and directional adverbs and particles. Such constructions can then yield a CAM reading. However, they can also receive a non-CAM reading, so that the verbalisation of CAM events is ultimately a matter of pragmatic inference in Vera’a and never unambiguously encoded. Different verbs are used to specify manner of handling themes, and manner of motion as well as direction can be incorporated in motion verbs in initial position of verb serialization (satellite-framed).