Abstract:
This study aims at investigating the syntactic and semantic properties of serial verb constructions (SVC) in Thai and determining the clause hood of the constructions. It is found that SVC's can be classified into two groups: the basic SVC, consisting of only two verbs, and the complex SVC, consisting of more than two verbs. It is also found that there are some co-occurring restrictions between verbs in the basic SVC. This basic SVC can co-occur with another verb or another SVC to form a complex. SVCs The basic SVC's are classified into 14 patterns according to the semantic properties and the position of the verb in the construction. Four syntactic and semantic properties are found to indicate the compactness within the SVCs. They are sharing the same subject, having the same time reference, having the same aspect and not allowing the negative word to occur in between. The SVC's that have all the four properties are considered to have the highest degree of compactness or unity. Such kinds of SVC's are considered to be mono-clausal. It is found that there are 10 mono-clausal SVC patterns. The SVC's that have only some of the four properties are considered to have lesser degrees of compactness. It follows that they do not have unity and are not mono-clausal. The semantic properties of SVC's are analyzed in terms of the kinds of event expressed by each verb in the SVC's and the temporal relations between the events in the SVC's. It is found that there are systematic relationships between the clausal structure and the semantic properties of SVC's. The temporal relations proposed in the mono-clausal SVC's are different from those proposed in the non-mono clausal SVC's.