From Coordination to Verbal Serialization – the PÓJŚĆ (Serial Verb) Construction in Polish

• Authors: Alexander Andrason
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present paper studies the PÓJŚĆ gram in Polish – a construction composed of the verb pójść ‘walk’ and another inflected verb. The author demonstrates that the PÓJŚĆ can be represented as a set of stages on the path linking bi-clausality/bi-verbiness and monoclausal/mono-verbiness. Specifically, it spans the section ranging from a non-canonical, less cohesive instantiation of a serial verb construction (SVC) (in which it overlaps with asyndetic coordination) to a canonical instantiation of SVC (in which it complies with the SVC prototype to a large extent). Accordingly, the study corroborates the view that SVCs may derive from asyndetic coordination and, by accumulating properties associated with different parts of the clausality/verbiness continuum, gradually develop towards SVC. This gradualness is not only diachronic, but may also be observed synchronically.

Keywords

EN

serial verb construction; Polish; semantic maps; grammaticalization; cognitive linguistics

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Research in Language
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 19-46

Dates

published

2018-03-30

Contributors

author

Alexander Andrason

• University of Stellenbosch

References

• Aikhenvald, Alexandra. 2006. Serial verb constructions in typological perspective. In Alexandra Aikhenvald and Robert M. W. Dixon (eds.), Serial Verb Constructions: A Crosslinguistic Typology, 1-68. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Aikhenvald, Alexandra. 2011. Multi-verb Constructions: Setting the Scene. In Alexandra Aikhenvald and Pieter Muysken (eds.), Multi-verb Constructions: A View from the Americas, 1-26. Leiden: Brill.
• Aikhenvald, Alexandra and Robert M. W. Dixon. (eds.) 2006. Serial Verb Constructions: A Crosslinguistic Typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Andrason, Alexander. 2016. A Complex System of Complex Predicates: Tense, Taxis, Aspect and Mood in Basse Mandinka from a Grammaticalization and Cognitive Perspective. PhD. Thesis. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University.
• Andrason, Alexander. 2018. The WZIĄĆ gram in Polish – a serial verb construction, or not? STUF – Language Typology and Universals 71. 1-53.
• Andrason, Alexander. Forthcoming. Categorial gradience and fuzziness – The QWM (serial verb construction) in Biblical Hebrew. In Gideon R. Kotzé, Christian S. Locatell and Jack Messarra (eds.), The Ancient Text and Modern Reader. Leiden: Brill.
• Andrason, Alexander and Locatell, Christian. 2016. The perfect wave. Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 5. 7-121.
• Andrason, Alexander and Mawande Dlali. 2018. The EK construction in Xhosa: A cognitive account. Jezikoslovlje 18 (3). 383-421.
• Balzac, Honoré. 2015. Ojciec Goriot. Translated by Amelia Bortnowska. Białobrzegi: Masterlab.
• Bisang, Walter. 2009. Serial verb constructions. Language and Linguistics Compass 3 (3). 792-814.
• Boas, Hand. 2013. Cognitive Construction Grammar. In Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, 233-254. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Bybee, Joan. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bybee, Joan. 2013. Usage-based theory and exemplar representations of constructions. In Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, 49-69. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Croft, William. 2003. Typology and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Croft, William. 2013. Radical Construction Grammar. In Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, 211-232. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dixon, Robert M. W. 2006. Serial verb constructions: Conspectus and coda. In Alexandra Aikhenvald and Robert M. W. Dixon (eds.), Serial Verb Constructions: A Crosslinguistic Typology, 338-350. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Fried, Mirjam and Jan-Ola Östman. 2004. Construction Grammar: A Thumbnail Sketch. In Mirjam Fried and Jan-Ola Östman (eds.), Construction Grammar in a Cross-Language Perspective, 11-86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Gębka-Wolak, Małgorzata. 2012; Weź się zastanów! Problem status gramatycznego przyimperatywnego weź. Poradnik Językowy 4. 49-63.
• Gębka-Wolak, Małgorzata and Andrzej Moroz. 2017. Idź zadzwoń, chodź zobacz – dwurozkaźnikowe struktury we współczesnej polszczyźnie potocznej. Talk at the 5th Conference Kultura Komunikacji Językowej. 9 May 2017.
• Goldberg, Adele. 2003. Constructions: a new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Science 7(5). 219-224.
• Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Goldberg, Adele. 2013. Constructionist approaches. In Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, 15-31. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Góralczyk, Iwona. 2010. “Weź, pokochaj smoka.” The wziąć construction in Polish: A Construction Grammar analysis. Prace Językoznawcze 12. 89-104.
• Haspelmath, Martin. 2003. The geometry of grammatical meaning semantic maps and crosslinguistic comparison. In Michael Tomasello (ed.), The New Psychology of Language, 211-242. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Haspelmath, Martin. 2016. The serial verb construction: Comparative concept and cross-linguistic generalizations. Language and Linguistics 17 (3). 291-319.
• Hoffmann, Thomas and Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Construction Grammar: Introduction. In Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, 1-12. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hopper, Paul and Elizabeth C. Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Jackendoff, Ray. 2013. Constructions in the Parallel Architecture. In Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, 70-92. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Janda, Laura. 2015. Cognitive linguistics in the Year 2015. Cognitive Semantics 1. 131-154.
• Joseph, Brian D. and Arnold M. Zwicky. (eds.) 1990. When Verbs Collide: Papers from the (1990) Ohio State Mini-Conference on Serial verb constructions. Working Papers in Linguistics 39. The Ohio State University.
• Lefebvre, Claire. (ed.) 1991. Serial Verb Constructions: Grammatical, Comparative and Cognitive Approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Narrog, Heiko and Johan van der Auwera. 2011. Grammaticalization and semantic maps. In Heiko Narrog and Bernd Heine (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization, 318-327. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Östman, Jan-Ola and Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Dialects, discourse, and Construction Grammar. In Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, 476-490. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Rosch, Eleanor. 1973. Natural categories. Cognitive Psychology 4. 328-350.
• Rosch, Eleanor. 1975. Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 104. 192-233.
• Rosch, Eleanor. 1978. Principles of categorization. In Eleanor Rosch and Barbara B. Lloyd (eds.), Cognition and Categorization, 27-48. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Rosch, Eleanor and Carolyn B. Mervis. 1975. Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories. Cognitive Psychology 7. 573-605.
• Rosen, Carol. 1997. Auxiliation and serialisation: on discerning the difference. In Alex Alsina, Joan Bresnan, and Peter Sells (eds.), Complex Predicates, 175-202. Stanford: CSLI.
• Schiller, Eric. 1990. The typology of serial verb constructions. Chicago Linguistic Society 26. 393-406.
• Schönefeld, Doris. 2006. Constructions. Constructions 1. 1-39.
• Taylor, John R. 2003. Linguistic Categorization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953 [2001]. Philosophical Investigations. London: Blackwell Publishing.
• Zwicky, Arnold M. 1990. What are we talking about when we talk about serial verb constructions? In Joseph, Brian D. and Arnold M. Zwicky. (eds.), When Verbs Collide: Papers from the (1990) Ohio State Mini-Conference on Serial verb constructions, 1-13. The Ohio State University.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/rela-2018-0001