Asymmetrical Serial Verb Constructions in Kriol of Northern

Australia

Dorothea Ho↵mannUniversity of Chicago

dorohoffmann@uchicago.edu

1 Introduction

This paper deals with semantic constraints of asymmetrical serial verb constructions (SVCs) in mo-tion event descriptions in Kriol. Furthermore, discourse environments in which these constructionsoccur are taken into account. Kriol is an English-lexified Creole spoken by approximately 20.000people across northern Australia. There are a number of di↵erent varieties showing slight lexical,morphological and phonological di↵erences. Today it is the major means of communication amongAboriginals and has often replaced traditional indigenous languages (Ho↵mann, 2012). For thisinvestigation, three varieties of Kriol, namely Roper, Westside and Daly River Kriol are taken intoaccount. Additionally, this analysis is limited to motion event descriptions.As for many other Creole languages (McWhorter, 1998), it has been observed that Kriol’s serialverb constructions form prosodic units and are asymmetrical (Meakins, 2010). A limited numberof ‘minor’ verbs belonging to a semantically and grammatically restricted class can form SVCs to-gether with unrestricted ‘major’ verbs (Aikhenvald, 2006). All SVCs in Kriol denote single events.In example (1) the most common minor verb go in an SVC with the stative verb stap encodes atelic motion event.

(1) imin3sg:aux.pst

go

gostap

stopdeyathere

langaloc

detthat

tritree

‘it stopped there at the tree’ RK1

While such constructions have previously been described (Meakins, 2010), a number of minor verbsand their semantics in SVCs are examined here for the first time. In example (2) the function ofthe minor verb ran is to denote the speed of motion.

(2) imin3sg:aux.pst

ran

rungalimap

climblaloc

big-wanbig-nr

stonstone

‘he quickly climbed up a big stone’ RK

Some major verbs that combine with the limited number of minor verbs in motion event descriptionsare subject to semantic constraints. For example, the most general motion verbs kam ‘come’ andgo can form SVCs with an unrestricted number of major verbs, including non-motion verbs (3).However, other minor verbs such as ran in example (2) only combine with a semantically restricted

1All examples are from my own fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2013 (Ho↵mann, 2013) unless otherwiseindicated. Furthermore, each example is labeled with regards to the variety of Kriol spoken: RK = Roper Kriol, WK= Westside Kriol, DK = Daly River Kriol.

1

set of major verbs, namely motion verbs. They function as temporal modifiers (2), causatives (4),modals (14), and to denote a starting point of motion (13. This behavior sets them apart fromthe unconstrained minor verbs which can also combine with non-motion verbs to encode directedaction (3) and location after motion (1).

(3) imin3sg:aux.pst

go

gosing-at-sing-at

rdp-call-outblafordet

detfrog

frog

‘he called out to the frog’ RK

Furthermore, certain types of discourse environments such as communicative discourse of givingdirections appear to trigger the use of SVCs in motion event encodings which are otherwise ratherrare expressions in Kriol.As a result, this paper aims to provide a systematic analysis of the semantic constraints anddiscourse environments of Kriol serial verb constructions in motion event descriptions. The basisof this study is a corpus of communicative discourse as well as personal and traditional narrativesfrom published (e.g. (Sandefur, 1982) and unpublished fieldwork-based sources2.

2 Asymmetrical serial verb constructions in Kriol

Serial verb constructions (SVCs) in Kriol are of relevance to the description of motion events. Whileit has been observed that Kriol SVCs are limited concerning the types of verbs involved, at leastone function of the relatively rare construction appears to be to encode a path of action (Meakins,2010, 20). I will pay particular attention to a number of SVCs that have not been previouslydescribed for Kriol and also mention some frequency counts from my datasets to highlight the lowdistribution of the construction and will finally comment on the type of discourse environments inwhich SVCs occur.

I follow Aikhenvald’s definition of SVCs for my analysis of Kriol:

A serial verb construction is a sequence of verbs which act together as a single predicate,without any overt marker of coordination, subordination, or syntactic dependency ofany other sort. Serial verb constructions describe what is conceptualized as a singleevent. They are monoclausal; their intonational properties are the same as those of amonoverbal clause, and they have just one tense, aspect and polarity value (Aikhenvald,2006, 1).

SVCs in Kriol are asymmetrical. They include a verb form from a semantically and grammaticallyrestricted class (Aikhenvald, 2006, 3) (Meakins, 2010, 20). Therefore, the first verb in the SVC istermed ‘minor’ and the second one ‘major’ verb.Meakins (2010, 20-21) mentions only three di↵erent minor verbs that form SVCs in Kriol, namelygo to mark path, jidan ‘sit’ for continuative aspect and meikim ‘cause’ for causative constructions.Two of those can be used in motion expressions as exemplified in (4), (1), (5), and (6).

2The majority of this investigation is based on a dataset of Frog Stories (Mayer et al., 1969) FMD for bothlanguages. This children’s picture book has been used widely for crosslinguistic comparative purposes. The picturestell the story of a frog who escapes from a little boy’s house. After realizing that the frog is missing, the boy andhis dog go out in search of it and experience all kinds of adventures on the way. In the end they find the frog in apond with his family. Speakers are asked to look at the entire book first and then to retell the narrative to anotherspeaker who has not seen the book.Additionally, I compiled a more general motion event dataset CMD including a variety of genres such as communica-tive and narrative discourse. This will be referenced occasionally.

2

(4) walwell

dumajbecause

detdet

dogdog

binaux.pst

meik-im

make-trboldan

falldetthat

shugabeg-flaihoney-fly

kemphouse

‘because the dog, (by shaking), caused the beehive to fall down’ RK

Generally, a maximum of two verbs are combined to form a SVC. Even though these do not occurfrequently (e.g. in 8.5% in the CMD, 4% in the FMD, and 7.5% in a corpus of route descriptionsalone), they appear to be a preferred option for certain types of motion event descriptions. Themost common constructions to encode a motion event coming to a standstill involves the generallocomotion verb go in combination with a stative stap ‘stop’ in (1), locomotion kipgon ‘continuegoing’ in (5), or manner verb draiv ‘drive’ in (6). The latter two are only attested in Roper Krioland appear to be subject of individual speaker variation.

(5) jisjust

go

gokipgon

keep+goingstreit-danstraight-down

‘just continue going straight down‘ RK

(6) motikacar

binaux.pst

go

godraiv

drivepaspast

tubala3du

kawucow

‘the car drove past the two cows’

In addition to those previously described minor verbs, a limited number of others occurr in myKriol dataset listed in Table 1 below. Concerning the use in motion event descriptions only, Idistinguish between minor verbs encoding a path of motion that can combine with any major verb(‘open minor verbs’) and such minor verbs encoding path or manner of motion which might onlycombine with motion verbs (‘closed minor verbs’).

Table 1: Open and closed minor verbs in Kriol asymmetrical serial motion verb constructions

open minor verbs

go

+ motion, locative, gaze, othersgo+adverbial su�xkam

kam+adverbial su�x

closed minor verbs

trai

+ motion verbmeikim

stat

ran

Generally, the most common minor verb in my datasets by far is the open minor verb go. Itaccounted for 60% of SVCs in the FMD and 79% in the CMD. Even when go is combined with anadverbial su�x, SVCs might still be formed (7), albeit rarely.

(7) tubala3du

binaux.pst

go-at

go-outgo

gofromabl:from

detthat

haushouse

‘both left from the house’ RK

The same holds true for the much less common version of SVCs with the other general verb oflocomotion kam ‘come’ as minor verb (in 10% of SVCs in the FMD and 6% in the CMD) as inexample (8) from a route description and (9) from a frog story narration. For encoding motionevents, only the two most basic verbs of motion kam and go, and their combinations with adverbialsu�xes, allows for all semantic types of major verbs, including non-motion verbs.

3

(8) yu2sg

kam-at

come-outkipgon,keep.going

yu2sg

gotainstr

pas-impass-tr

‘you come out and continue, you have to pass, ’ RK

(9) mugmugowl

binaux.pst

seisay

lato

lidlboilittle.boy

‘dondo+not

kam-ap

come-upsing-in-at’call-prog-out

‘and the owl said to the boy: “don’t come up calling out!”’ WK

When serial verbs are constructed with open minor verbs these can encode an additional element ofpath to denote continuous (as opposed to singular) movement as in (5) and (6) above. In other SVCconstructions, path and motion are encoded in the minor verb . Such constructions are interpretedas involving movement just before the major action as in (1). If the major verb is a stative verb,the SVC encodes a telic motion event with a clear and definite endpoint (1). The same is true if themajor verb is a telic verb such as kam-at ‘come out’ in example (10) below where the SVC denotescontinuous movement that comes to an end when a destination is reached. The example is takenfrom a traditional narrative about two men traveling over long distances, reaching several hills andridges before deciding on a final place to set up camp. In fact, the same SVC is repeated by thespeaker just a few phrases later to describe reaching another temporary destination, but when thefinal destination is reached, a di↵erent VP encoding telic motion gijimap is used (in example (11).A clear distinction of discourse usage of SVCs and transitive motion verbs such as gijimap cantherefore be observed.

(10) dubala3du

binaux.pst

go

gokam-at

come-outlaall.to

sen-hilsand-hill

‘So they went to the next sand ridge’ RK (Sandefur, 1982)

(11) Hularrantop

jatthat

dubala3du

binaux.pst

gongo

tiluntil

dubala3du

binaux.pst

gijimap

reachdatthat

pleisplace

‘They kept going until they came to the spring called Hularra’ RK (Sandefur, 1982)

Finally, open minor verb SVCs as in example (12) from a frog story narration may encode a motionevent as ‘moving with purpose’.

(12) imin3sg:aux.pst

go

gosingat-singatrdp-call+out

blafor

detthat

frogfrog

fromabl:from

detthat

windouwindow

‘the boy opened the window and called out for the frog from the window’ RK

All other minor verbs are more restricted when it comes to SVCs in motion event descriptions.Then non-locomotion minor verbs trai ‘try’ (14) , meikim ‘cause’ (4), and stat ‘start’ (13) allrequire motion verbs as major verbs to encode a motion event. While this is not surprising, theother minor verb denoting manner ran ‘run’ also only occurred with motion verbs as major verbsas in (2) and then encodes speed acting as a modifier. Such SVCs with closed minor verbs are rare.They only account for about 15% of all SVCs in the CMD and 30% in the FMD.

(13) ai1sg

binaux.pst

stat

startgu-wei

go-awaynanow

jinik-iwei-inik-iweirdp-sneakaway

yunoyou.know

gugo

werkwork

najableisnajableisrdp-another.place

‘I started to go away now, sneaking away again and again, you know, to go working at otherplaces’ RK (Munro, 2005, 88)

(14) dei3pl:subj

binaux.pst

trai

try+togoin

go+inlaall:to

jatthat+one

wodawater

‘they tried going into the water to get the fire.’ RK (Sandefur, 1982)

4

3 Conclusions

Asymmetrical serial verb constructions in Kriol are rare in discourse. They only encode specializedmotion event descriptions such as motion coming to a (temporary) standstill or cause of motion.With regards to motion event encodings, a distinction can be drawn between open and closed minorverbs, with the latter being restricted to take verbs of motion as major verbs and being exceedinglyuncommon. Some discourse environments such as route descriptions appear to trigger extendeduses of SVCs. However, individual speaker variation also plays a role as well as the variety of Kriolspoken. SVCs are mostly found in the Roper Kriol variety, very rarely in Westside Kriol, and arevirtually absent from the Daly River variety.

References

Aikhenvald, A. (2006). Serial verb constructions in typological perspective. In Dixon, R. M. W.and Aikhenvald, A., editors, Serial Verb constructions: A cross-linguistic typology, pages 1–68.Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Ho↵mann, D. (2012). Descriptions of Motion and Travel in Jaminjung and Kriol. PhD thesis,University of Manchester, Manchester.

Ho↵mann, D. (2013). Kiol recordings. Collected between 2010 and 2013.

Mayer, M., Ormond, J., Murray, S., Templeton, G., and Osborn, S. (1969). Frog, where are you?

Dial Press, New York.

McWhorter, J. H. (1998). Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Lan-

guage, 74(4):788–818.

Meakins, F. (2010). The development of asymmetrical serial verb constructions in an australianmixed language. Linguistic Typology, 14:1–38.

Munro, J. (2005). Substrate Influence in Kriol: The application of transfer constraints in language

contact in Northern Australia. PhD thesis, University of New England.

Sandefur, J. (1982). An Introduction to conversational Kriol. SIL, Darwin.

5

ASYMM

ETRICAL SERIAL VERB CO

NSTRU

CTION

S IN KRIO

L

Dorothea H

offmann SPLC

, January 9th 2015

INTRO

DU

CTION

!1" K

riol: The language and its speakers

!2" A

symm

etrical Serial Verb C

onstructions

!a" Sem

antic constraints

!b" O

bservations on discourse frequencies

!c" K

riol varieties and substrate influence

!3" C

onclusions and Outlook

Ngukurr

Katherine

Woolianna

Darw

in

Broom

e

Tennant Creek

Kriol C

ountry

Kununurra

THE LAN

GUAG

E AND

ITS SPEAKERS

English-lexified Creole

ca. 20,000 speakers

lingua franca among A

boriginal A

ustralians across northern A

ustralia

different varieties showing lexical,

phonological, and morphological

variation

ORIG

IN AN

D D

EVELOPM

ENT

Kriol originates in the English-based pidgin used betw

een the first colonizers and the indigenous inhabitants of the Sydney area (Troy 1993; Tryon &

Charpentier

2004, Simpson 1996, 2000)

creolization process of Kriol disputed:

1. abrupt creolization: early in the 20th century at an Anglican m

ission at Ngukurr

(Roper R

iver) for comm

unication purposes in a mission school am

ong children (H

arris 1986, Munro 2000)

2. gradual creolization at Roper R

iver (Munro 2005)

3. employm

ent of Aboriginal people on cattle stations fostered use of K

riol as L1 and L2 gradually replacing traditional m

ultilingualism (Schultze-Berndt et al.

2013)

LANG

UAGE FEATU

RESno suffixed inflectional system

in nouns: number-m

arking with quantifiers and

determiners, e.g. tubala/detlot kaw

u ‘two/these cow

s’; case expressed by prepositions, e.g. blanga stik ‘w

ith a stick’

Noun (and pronoun) gender not m

arked: im go langa taun ‘he/she goes to tow

n’

basic word order: SVO

with no m

arking on subject or object, e.g. imin givitbat beg

‘he gave (him) the bag’

In many aspects of w

ord ordering Creole languages seem

to often follow the

superstrate patterns; however:

LANG

UAGE FEATU

RES

morphological and syntactic features:

nouns are derived from adjectives w

ith suffixes: -wan and -bala: e.g. lidl-w

an = ‘the

little thing/person’; wanbala =

‘one thing/person’

past tense marking: bin precedes the verb

Lexical aspect expressed either by the suffixes –bat or –in or by reduplication of the verb

Other suffixes attaching to the verb are the transitive m

arker –im: im

get-im-bat buk

‘he gets a book’

adverbial suffixes, e.g. -ap in kaminap

ASYMM

ETRICAL SERIAL VERB

CON

STRUCTIO

NS

serial verb constructions (SVC

s), are a com

mon feature of C

reole languages (M

cWhorter 1998)

Kriol’s SV

Cs form

prosodic units and are asym

metrical (M

eakins 2010)

denote single events only

this study: focus on motion event

descriptions only

EXAMPLES O

F SVCS IN KRIO

L

DEFIN

ITION

Aikhenvald 2006:

A serial verb construction is a

sequence of verbs which act together

as a single predicate, without any overt

marker of coordination, subordination,

or syntactic dependency of any other sort. Serial verb constructions describe w

hat is conceptualized as a single event. T

hey are monoclausal; their

intonational properties are the same as

those of a monoverbal clause, and they

have just one tense, aspect and polarity value (A

ikhenvald, 2006, 1).

DEFIN

ITION

S

• symm

etrical serial verb constructions: consist of two or m

ore verbs

each chosen

from

a sem

antically and

gramm

atically unrestricted class

• asymm

etrical serial verb constructions: include a verb from a

gramm

atically or semantically restricted class (e.g. a m

otion, or a posture verb)

(Aikhenvald 2006, 3)

MAJO

R AND

M

INO

R VERBS IN

KRIOL

Meakins (2010, 20): three m

inor verb forms in K

riol:

1. go marking path

2. jidan/sitdan ‘sit’ for continuative aspect

3. meikim

‘cause’ for causative constructions

OTH

ER MIN

OR VERBS

DISCO

URSE FREQ

UEN

CIES

SVC

s are very rare in Kriol

discourse:

only 8.5% in C

MD

, 4% in FM

D,

and 7.5% in corpus of route

descriptions

•maxim

ally two verbs in single

SVC

•preferred option to express a telic m

otion event

MIN

OR

V

ERB

FMD

CM

D

go/go+adverbial

suffix60%

79%

kam/kam

+adverbial suffix

10%6%

closed m

inor verbs

30%15%

Functions of SVC

s with open m

inor verbs:

encode an additional element of path to denote continuous (as

opposed to singular) movem

ent as in (5) and (6)

Functions of SVC

s with open m

inor verbs:

deixis

Functions of open minor verbs:

telic motion in com

bination with stative verb such as stap

or with a deictic m

otion verb:

Functions of open minor verbs:

purposeful motion:

FUN

CTION

S OF

OTH

ER MIN

OR

VERBS

restricted to use of major verbs of m

otion:

but not

* ran filimap =

‘quickly fill up’

THE U

SE OF SVCS IN

DIFFEREN

T VARIETIES O

F KRIOLR

oper Kriol

Westside K

riol

Daly R

iver Kriol

ROPER AN

D W

ESTSIDE KRIO

L

(Roper) K

riol

Jaminjung

DALY RIVER KRIO

L

SVC

s are relatively rare

DALY RIVER KRIO

L

the telic motion event description has an equivalent in D

aly River

Kriol’s substrate language M

alakMalak, w

here serial coverb constructions are very com

mon and w

here telic motion events are

often expressed in a lexicalized construction

more elaborate serial verb constructions suggesting substrate influences

from M

alakMalak

DALY RIVER KRIO

L

CON

CLUSIO

NS

rare in discourse

specialized motion event descriptions

distinction between open and closed

minor verbs

SVC

use is dependent

on discourse environment,

individual speaker variation

variety of Kriol spoken

OU

TLOO

K

expand study to non-motion SV

Cs

investigate substrate influences:

from N

gandi, Alaw

a, Warndarrang,

Mangarrayi, and M

arra for Roper

Kriol,

from N

garinyman on W

estside K

riol,

from M

atngele, Kam

u and other D

aly languages such as N

gang’ityemerri on D

aly River K

riol

SUPPO

RT GRATEFU

LLY ACKNO

WLED

GED

FROM

IPF 0189: Endangered Languages D

ocumentation Program

me (ELD

P)

Am

erican Philosophical Society: Franklin R

esearch Grant

BCS 1360800: N

ational Science Foundation (D

ocumenting Endangered

Languages)

Volksw

agen Foundation (Docum

entation of Endangered Languages)

Australian Linguistic Society (G

erhard Laves Scholarship)

Thank you!