Chapter 7. The eventive functional sequence

Abstract

The Kwa languages (Niger-Congo) of West Africa are well-known for displaying Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs). The literature on SVCs contains various definitions of the phenomenon and recapitulates the general observation that these constructions express fine-grained information about a complex event and the participants involved therein. This paper seeks to shed light on the structure that underlies Take and Give SVCs in Gungbe, a Gbe (Kwa) language spoken in Benin and Nigeria. The examples discussed in the paper demonstrate how Gungbe is able to employ SVCs to encode specific details about the eventive structure. The proposed analysis further sheds light on elements which were classified in the Kwa literature as ‘verbid’ (cf. Ansre 1966) for their ambiguous status between adpositions and lexical verbs. It is argued that the ambiguity reduces to the nature of roots and their functions in Gungbe: the same root can occupy different grammatical functions.