English and Mandarin Serial or Non-serial Verb Constructions

This paper addresses serial verb constructions (SVCs) in English and Mandarin. Although Mandarin and English is different in the total number of SVC types, three so-called SVC types are found to be common across English and Mandarin: purposive SVCs (e.g. go eat); causative SVCs (e.g. I made him laugh); perceptive SVCs (e.g. I saw him laugh). This paper has demonstrated typical SVCs have unique features distinct from typical subordinate or coordinate constructions. This study proposes three semantic criteria to distinguish SVCs from non-SVCs. Based on the three criteria, this study shows that purposive constructions are considered a canonical SVC type while perceptive constructions are not a typical SVC and may be better to be analyzed as subordinate constructions. This study also provides reasons for Mandarin to have more SVCs: differences of lexicalization between English and Mandarin; lacking of syntactic markers and inflections in Mandarin and frequent pronoun dropping in Mandarin. Keyword: Serial verb constructions; Event Structure, English; Mandarin