Serial verbs in English: An RRG analysis of catenative verb constructions

Serial verb constructions (SVCs) are found in Creole languages and in the languages of West Africa, Southeast Asia, Amazonia, Oceania, and New Guinea. In this article we examine catenative verb constructions (CVCs) in English from a Role and Reference Grammar perspective and compare them with SVCs. More specifically, based on the set of syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs proposed by Kroeger (2004: 229–230), it will be demonstrated that CVCs in English have all of the characteristic syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs.