Linguistics Department Colloquium:

Christopher Weedall (visiting scholar, Australian National University)

Serial verb constructions in Sajolang (Miji)ː Towards grammaticalization

Adjacent verbs in Sajolang (Sino-Tibetan, NE India), which has SOV order, commonly occur where a deeper analysis of the surface structure indicates two different types of verbal adjacency: embedded object clauses and serial verb constructions. In this talk, I will focus on the serial verb construction (SVC) behavior and show that there are at least four subtypes of SVCs.

I show that SVCs behave largely as described by most typological accounts but have some differences compared to those accounts. Stress patterns of adjacent verbs are also one of the ways for identifying the headedness and types of compounds in the language of each SVC type.

The data presented sheds light on an under-studied region of the Himalayas and NE India. The analyses presented here suggest that the crosslinguistic concept of SVCs as represented in previous studies needs to be revised to accommodate the Sajolang data as well. These analyses also provide a useful comparison for historical and comparative linguistics when considering shifts between isolating and agglutinating phases of a language.