Verb serialisation and incipient grammaticalisation in Abma

Abstract

Verb serialisation has come to light only relatively recently in Oceanic linguistics. Initially, discussion of serialisation was confined to African languages, and was originally referred to as "verbal combinations" by Christaller (1875) and Westermann (1930). Later, Stewart (1963) coined the term "serialisation" and conducted the first transformational analysis. Ansre (1966) discussed how purported "serial verbs" have grammatical as well as verbal features. Stahlke (1970), Bamgbose (1974) and Schachter (1974) all examined Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) within various theoretical frameworks, but continued to focus on African languages. Not until later was there a more extended typological discussion of SVCs by Foley and Olson (1985), Sebba (1987), Lord (1982, 1993) and Alsina, Bresnan and Sells (1997), among others. SVCs were first mentioned in the Austronesian context by Dempwolff (1939: 66), who noted that some simple sentences in Jabem had several predicates for the same subject. However, it was Crowley (1987b) who really drew Oceanic languages into mainstream discussion by examining SVCs in Paamese.