Serial Verb Constructions in Sikkanese

Serial verb construction (hereafter abbreviated as SVC) is a construction consisting of more than one verbs without any overt markers of coordinator or subordinator. SVC is a common phenomenon in isolating languages which lack morphological markers for syntactic processes. Sikka language (Sikkanese belongs to isolating language with SVO type and it does not have diathesis. This research attempts to analyse the typological characteristics of Sikkanese SVCs which cover: prosodic/phonological, morpho-syntactic, and semantic features of SVCs in Sikkanese. The theory adopted in this research is typological theory which is applied by Van Stedent and Ger Reesink (Senft, eds., 2008) in analysing SVCs in East-Nusantara languages. The prosodic characteristic shows that Sikkanese SVCs fell under one intonation contour, similar to the intonation of a single clause and without being separated by a pause; morphosyntactically SVCs in Sikkanese could be categorised into independent and some belong to co-dependent type without any morphological markers; and symantically they could be analysed into: (1) motion; (2) direction, (3) manner; (4) instrument; (5) purpose; (6) progressive; (7) modality