The wziąć gram in Polish. A serial verb construction, or not?

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyzes the categorial status of thewziąćgram – a construction that is composed of two consecutive inflected verbs: the minor verbwziąć‘lit. take’ (V1) and a major verb (V2) – within the radial network of serial verb constructions (SVC). After comparing thewziąćgram with properties associated with the prototype of a SVC and its cross-linguistic instantiations, the author concludes that the construction can be regarded as a relatively canonical member of the SVC category. The gram complies with all the primary characteristics of the prototype of a SVC, and exhibits various secondary properties and phenomena that are associated with or accompany SVCs across languages. The position of thewziąćgram is canonical even though the Polish language utilizes verbal serialization only minimally and belongs to a geographic area that is scarce for systems with productive serialization. In this manner, Polish proves that verbal serialization is a grammatical device that is not unknown to Indo-European languages of Europe.