Introduction

Baker and Harvey (this volume) claim a fundamental distinction between two types of complex predicate constructions: coverb constructions, typically those involving a light verb, and serial verb constructions (henceforth SVCs) in terms of their respective expression of eventhood. They argue that while both coverb constructions and SVCs are monoclausal, they contrast in their event structure: coverb constructions express a single simple event, albeit one that may be semantically complex, while SVCs express multiple events. In this latter claim they disagree with an often stated view about SVCs, as summarised by Aikhenvald (2006: 1):

While this chapter will ultimately support Baker and Harvey's claim about SVCs in contrast to Aikhenvald's, in our view not much progress can be made in understanding SVCs while one proceeds in any analysis with unexamined, vague, and undefined concepts like event, simple and multiple, and monoclausality. We will show that SVCs are in no sense a unified phenomenon, but manifest both different structural realisations and express diverse types of event structures, some as simple as a coverb construction and some much more complex. To describe such cross-linguistic variation, we will need both more precise structural notions than clausehood and more sophisticated semantic notions than a simple contrast between single and multiple events.