Serial Verb Constructions in North-West Semitic languages: From a synchronic radiation back to the 'Big Bang'

What it is about

The paper compares serial verb constructions (two verbs forming one event, the first a "minor" verb adding aspect or mode) in Canaano-Akkadian, Ugaritic, Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic, measuring each against the prototype of a serial construction and its degree of grammaticalization. In Biblical Hebrew at least fourteen roots serve as the first, minor verb: הלך, קום, שׁוב, יסף, מהר, נשׂא, נתן, and in Hif'il רום, שׁכם, רבה, יאל, חלל, plus סבב and יכל, adding repetition (שׁוב, יסף), "no longer" (negated יסף), inception, immediacy (קום), speed (מהר), earliness (שׁכם), willingness, ability. The קום type alone has 152 cases, mostly wayyiqtol and imperative, always positive, always with a human subject, rare in poetry; its two verbs show conjunctive and disjunctive accents in about equal measure. Ordering the four languages from looser to tighter patterns, the author reconstructs the source of serialization as two clauses joined by *wa "and".

Ideas

• I1. A rule in the trees: when one of the minor roots (above) is immediately followed by a verb with the same subject and the same form (or imperative + imperative / wayyiqtol + wayyiqtol), mark the pair as a serial construction (e.g. compound:svc or a MISC flag) instead of two independent clauses.
• I2. Gloss and world: one event, with the minor verb as a modifier — קום + V "set about V-ing / promptly V", שׁוב + V "V again", לֹא יסף + V "no longer V", מהר + V "quickly V". Check against JPS 1917 ("rose up and went" vs. "went").
• I3. Count serial pairs in the Torah by minor root, verb form, polarity and the accent on the first verb (conjunctive vs. disjunctive), to compare with the paper's profile of קום.

For Mova

I1 is a head rule for tools/macula (UD conventions, 13. Biblical Hebrew in Mova: the tools §6) and a section of 08-syntax.md (coordination). I2 belongs to 06-verb.md and to the event reading behind tools/macula/src/prag.rs (one mainline event, not two). I3 uses accents from 02-cantillation.md.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.5842/65-1-970

@inproceedings{andrason2022serial,
  title = {{Serial Verb Constructions in North-West Semitic languages: From a synchronic radiation back to the 'Big Bang'}},
  author = {Andrason, Alexander},
  booktitle = {Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.5842/65-1-970},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5842/65-1-970}
}

References

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