A fieldworker’s guide

Abstract

These guidelines are intended for linguists working on a comprehensive grammar of a language. They provide orientation to the questions to be addressed in order to establish a complete picture of serial verb constructions. Ideally, the analysis of serial verb constructions ought to deal with as many as possible of the topics listed below. These points will be useful for linguists working on previously undescribed or insufficiently documented languages, and for those who work on better-known languages, concentrating on subtle details of use which have not been accounted for before. This is by no means a questionnaire. It is a checklist of features which need to be described, analysed, and illustrated, for an indepth view of serial verbs in a given language. Relevant sections of this book are indicated in parentheses....