Three-Participant Events in Serial Verb Constructions and the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Three-participant events are typologically encoded in a variety of
ways. The encoding strategy examined in this study is the serial
verb construction [SVC]. In contrast to the three-place predicate
strategy used typically in non-serializing languages, the serial
verb strategy involves a sequence of two or more verbs. They
function together as a single predicate and share the three
participants between them (Margetts and Austin 2007). The aim
of this study is to show that the syntax-semantics interface
developed by Role and Reference Grammar [RRG] (Van Valin
and LaPolla 1997; Van Valin 2005) provides a useful descriptive
and theoretical framework for a typological investigation of SVCs
encoding three-participant events. The resulting analysis reveals
the syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs that differentiate
them from both three-place predicate constructions and clause
chaining (multi-clausal) constructions.