Complex Events in the Serial Verb Constructions in Vietnamese: A Cognitive Perspective

Abstract

This study looks at the so-called serial verb construction, which Vietnamese speakers utilize to indicate complex events in a clause with two or more verbs placed side by side without a linker (henceforth SVC). The study's findings show how different events can be expressed by different verbs in the same construction. This study also demonstrates that verbs must be serialized in a specific collocation even though they indicate several occurrences in the same construction. More crucially, by highlighting verbs' semantic and syntactic characteristics in SVC, this work explains how verbs can be combined. As a result, this research is anticipated to provide linguistic context for examining the SCV typologies in Vietnamese.