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A coverb is a word or prefix that resembles a verb or co-operates with a verb. In languages that have the
serial verb construction The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause.Tallerman, M. (1998). ''Understanding Syntax''. London: ...
, coverbs are a type of word that shares features of verbs and prepositions. A coverb takes an object or
complement A complement is something that completes something else. Complement may refer specifically to: The arts * Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave ** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-class ...
and forms a phrase that appears in sequence with another verb phrase in accordance with the serial construction. A coverb appears to be subordinate to a main verb and fulfills a function similar to that of a preposition. Some words that may be classed as coverbs can also function as independent verbs, but that is not always the case. Coverbs in that sense are found in
Asian languages A wide variety of languages are spoken throughout Asia, comprising different language families and some unrelated isolates. The major language families include Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Tur ...
such as
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
and Vietnamese, and, for example, West African languages such as
Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
. are given below. The term ''coverb'' (like '' preverb'') is also sometimes used to denote the first element in a
compound verb In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi- word compound that functions as a single verb. One component of the compound is a '' light verb'' or ''vector'', which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspec ...
or complex predicate. There, the coverb supplies significant semantic information, and the second element (a '' light verb'') is
inflected In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and de ...
to convey mainly grammatical information. The term is used in this way in relation to, for instance, North
Australian languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...
. In relation to Hungarian, ''coverb'' is sometimes used to denote a verb prefix. They are elements that express meanings such as direction or completion and so have a function corresponding to that of certain types of
adverbs An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering que ...
.


Common proverb Adpositions

To approximate a coverb in English (after a noun), start with the verb/coverb, then append one of the
Adposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s below, then append the coverb/verb with the suffix "-ing" or "-ingly" In many languages, the adposition fuses with a verb to a coverb composite. Korean has a higher variety of adpositional coverbs.


In Chinese

The following examples demonstrate the usage of coverbs in Standard Chinese. They illustrate the first—probably most common—of the three above meanings for the term. The above sentence represents a typical Chinese
serial verb construction The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause.Tallerman, M. (1998). ''Understanding Syntax''. London: ...
, with two consecutive
verb phrase In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quickly put the money into the box'', the words ''qu ...
s meaning "help you" and "find him", sharing the same subject ("I"), and essentially referring to the same action. The meaning of the "help you" phrase, however, is closer in this context to the English
prepositional phrase An adpositional phrase, in linguistics, is a syntactic category that includes ''prepositional phrases'', ''postpositional phrases'', and ''circumpositional phrases''. Adpositional phrases contain an adposition (preposition, postposition, or cir ...
"for you". Thus, the word ''bāng'', while it may be analyzed as a verb meaning "help", actually has a function closer to that of a preposition meaning "for". It is words like ''bāng'', as used in the above sentence, that are referred to as coverbs in descriptions of Chinese (and of other languages, like Vietnamese and
Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
, which have analogous structures). In the above example, there are three coverbs: '' zuò'' (here having the prepositional meaning "by (a transportation medium)"), '' cóng'' (meaning "from"), and '' dào'' (here meaning "to"), with 去 ''qù'' ("to go") at the end as the main verb. The three coverbs are also used as main verbs in other contexts, namely as "sit", "follow" and "arrive" respectively. Not all Chinese coverbs can be used as main verbs, however, especially disyllabic ones such as 根据 ''gēnjù'' ("according to"), which on the other hand can be a noun meaning "the basis, foundation (of something said)". One important aspect about Chinese coverbs is the use of temporal order, so e.g. coverbs expressing the source of movement must appear before the coverb expressing the destination in the
clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb w ...
. Since coverbs precede their
complement A complement is something that completes something else. Complement may refer specifically to: The arts * Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave ** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-class ...
(object) and perform essentially a prepositional function, some linguists simply refer to them as prepositions. In Chinese, they are called ''jiècí'' (), a term which generally corresponds to "preposition" (or more generally, "
adposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
"). The situation is complicated somewhat by the fact that Chinese has location markers that appear after a noun that are often called postpositions. The meaning of an English locational preposition is often, but not always, conveyed by a coverb and a location marker in combination, as in ''zài zhuōzi shàng'', meaning "on the table" but literally "be.at table on".


References

{{lexical categories, state=collapsed Parts of speech Chinese grammar