Serial verbs versus syntactic complexity

Since the most recent post I've been coming to a series of realizations about Koa syntax, in equal parts exciting and disquieting. Exciting because these realizations -- realizations about serial verbs, I should say -- open a path to a much clearer and simpler structure for a variety of types of expression that have endlessly puzzled or frustrated me. They're simultaneously disquieting, though, because I seem to have missed or failed adequately to understand a critical part of Koa grammar which happens to be least similar to the European languages of my close acquaintance. I feel rather embarrassed about the extent of that blind spot.

To be clear, this isn't a question of "correct" versus "incorrect:": it's more akin to a statement like "I went home in order that I might take a nap" being used in everyday conversation. There is nothing grammatically incorrect about that sentence, but it is heavy, wordy, extremely syntactically complex, and conspicuously out of register. Something like the following would clearly be preferable on all those variables:

I went home to take a nap
I went home and took a nap
I went home, took a nap (conversational)

So it is with Koa, in which I now realize that I've been white-knuckling it through syntactic structures that have made a lot of my writing sound like I was trying to craft a legal contract. I wince to look back at Are You My Mother? (Okay whew: I did just look, and it's not as bad as I feared. The main offenders are, appropriately, purpose clauses.)

I'm working on laying out a more encyclopedic taxonomy of Koa serial verbs and usages, but in the mean time, I wanted to document broadly some of the chief areas of usage where I think properly employed serial verbs will have the greatest effect on the "feel" of Koa.

1. Embedded Clauses

Here a SVC elegantly replaces what would otherwise be a nominal or adverbial clause.

1.1 Modal & Auxiliary Verbs (want, start, can)

ni-halu i súsose
1SG-want SV kiss.you
"I want to kiss you"

ta-ama i lalu i aki
3SG-start SV sing SV sudden
"he suddenly started singing"

ni-voi i suo po kaca
1SG-able SV eat UNIV glass
"I can eat glass" (tanavakánuni -- it doesn't hurt me)

These usages share some characteristics of section 3 (conjoined clauses), in which a single complex event is represented by multiple constituent verbs. In fact, SVC's tend to blur the lines between a lot of construction types in syntactically fussier languages.

1.2 Causatives

ka sua i mei nipaa i eha
DEF sun MAIN.CL cause my.head SV hurt
"the sun made my head hurt"
(incidentally a translation of an example sentence from my Bislama grammar: San i mekem hed blong mi i soa)

In terms of register I'm not sure how much there is to choose between the SVC as above and a version with a nominal clause, ka sua i mei nipaa ko eha: they're of exactly equal length, the significant syntactic (but not semantic) difference being determined by the choice of a single particle. The same could be said of "I want to kiss you," also possible as nihalu ko súsose. We'll have to think about this one.

Anyway, though, the usual way to express this specific example would obviously be with the causative particle mu: ka sua i mueha nipaa.

1.3 Purpose Clauses

ka amenene i luvu i meti
DEF baby.bird MAIN.CL stop SV think
"the baby bird stopped to think"

...or "stopped and thought," but the distinction is usually hardly material, and this amount of ambiguity seems to be taken in stride in serial verb languages.

2. Adjuncts & Adverbials

To my relief, these structures have been in use for a very long time! A lot of concepts that would universally be considered adverbial in European languages, and have their own dedicated words, show up as serial verbs in Koa:

ni-lóha-se i poli
1SG-love-2SG SV much
"I love you very much"

Ø-pane ka moli i lai
IMP-put DEF candle SV return
"put the candle back"

láe.va-ta i tasi, Sami
play-3SG SV repeat, Sam
"play it again, Sam"

ta-lolo ka neu i sisu i itu hoi
3SG-grasp DEF pig SV tenacious SV use foot
"she held the pig tightly and tenaciously with her feet"

In this last example, an instrumental cihoi "by means of feet" would be perfectly fine too and probably much more common -- just illustrating the possibilities.

3. Conjoined Clauses and Complex Events

It turns out that a lot of ands between verbs and clauses are most fluently translated by SVC's in Koa:

ni-mi.eki ne-masa i suo ámu.suote
1SG-INCH-sit LOC-table SV eat breakfast
"I sat down at the table and ate breakfast"

We can also use clusters of verbs to express events with very complex internal structure:

le_Kéoni i aia auto i luo puu i tui i mua
John MAIN.CL drive car SV hit tree SV smash SV die
"John crashed his car into a tree, killing it"
OR "John crashed his car into a tree and died"

I'm sure there there are many other usages that are still escaping my notice, and there's a ton more to say even about the above types: coming soon.

I have to say, it's rather fascinating to see how frustrated my rigid European linguistic mindset gets with a lot of the forms above; I seem desperately to want to imprison everything in labeled, nested hierarchic trees. This is all going to take some getting used to.