Facets of outcome in Thai complex events

Abstract

This paper examines two verb-sequencing constructions in Thai, denoting action–outcome events, referred to as ‘evaluation constructions’. It shows that the topic–comment relation has high relevance to the fundamental compositional system of the evaluation construction. Moreover, it is not the syntactic relation (subordinate, coordinate linkage) but the pragmatic relation, together with semantic factors, which plays an important role in connecting verbs.