Our first meeting will take place this Friday, February 4th, at 3:30pm. Our first presenter is Will Johnston, who will present ongoing work, “Verb serialization as event-building: Evidence from Hmong”.
Abstract: A key property of so-called ‘serial verb constructions’ (SVCs) is the notion that an SVC describes a single event. I take that notion seriously: I argue that certain types of SVCs are in fact reflexes of event-building in the syntax, and that their properties and distribution can be derived from independently motivated constraints on event structure. I examine two types of SVC found in Hmong (Hmong-Mien), and argue that they are both formed by merging multiple verbal roots within the event-building portion of the verbal projection (modeled using the first-phase syntax of Ramchand 2008).
Don’t forget to register for the meetings using the following link (you will only need to register once):
https://mcgill.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUpdu-sqDMqGtdIk5QyjSWSmkYGFwobg0yM