When verbs come (and) clash together: the diachrony of multiverb constructions in Juǀ'hoan and ǃXun

This is a handout of a guest presentation made to the research colloquium on African languages and linguistics at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, on November 16 2021.

Abstract

Verb serialising constructions are an areal feature of the Kalahari Basin Area (e.g., Güldemann & Fehn 2017), a Sprachbund comprising the Kx’a, Tuu, and Khoe-Kwadi language families. This presentation revisits the analysis of serial verbs in Juǀ’hoan and ǃXun (Ju, Kx’a) and focuses on formal variation observed in the analyses of asymmetric serial verbs (e.g., Heine & König 2015, Pratchett 2017). Applying a bottom-up approach and sourcing data as far as possible from natural texts, such variation can be shown to have its origins in a non-serialising multiverb construction involving a linker. The presentation concludes by illustrating the potential relevance of the Ju construction to the analysis of multiverb constructions in other Kalahari Basin Area languages.

References
Güldemann, Tom and Anne-Maria Fehn. 2017. The Kalahari Basin area as a “Sprachbund” before the Bantu expansion. In Hickey, Raymond (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of areal linguistics, 500-526. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heine, Bernd & Christa König. 2015. The !Xun language: a dialect grammar of Northern Khoisan: Cologne: Köppe.

Pratchett, Lee J. 2017. Dialectal diversity in Southeastern Ju (Kx'a) and a documentation of Groot Laagte ǂKx’aoǁ’ae. Doctoral dissertation. Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.