In the Chinese recording of Simon’s cat, I found three types of SVC:
Type 1 V1+V2 (dao)
苍蝇飞到茶杯上。
“The fly settles on a cup.”
| cāngying |
| cāngying |
| flySBJAGT |
| Ncomm |
| chábēi |
| chábēi |
| teacupOBJGOAL |
| Ncomm |
| shàng |
| shàng |
| surfcaeOBJGOAL |
| N |
小猫又扑到台灯上。
“The little cat jumps onto the lamp, too.”
| táidēng |
| táidēng |
| lampOBJGOAL |
| Ncomm |
| shàng |
| shàng |
| surfaceOBJGOAL |
| N |
再把苍蝇放到主人的胸口。
“Then (it) puts the fly on the chest of its master.”
| cāngying |
| cāngying |
| flyOBJBEN |
| Ncomm |
| zhǔrén |
| zhǔrén |
| master |
| Ncomm |
| xiōngkǒu |
| xiōngkǒu |
| chestOBJGOAL |
| Ncomm |
Type 2 V1+V2(+V3)
然后突然有一只苍蝇飞过来。
“Then, suddenly, there flies a fly.”
| ránhòu |
| ránhòu |
| then |
| ADVtemp |
| cāngying |
| cāngying |
| flySBJTH |
| Ncomm |
然后小猫就扑上去
“Then the little cat jumps onto it.”
| ránhòu |
| ránhòu |
| then |
| ADVtemp |
小猫就扑过去。
“Then the little cat rushes to it.”
(它)就大胆地走过来，
“(it) then comes here boldly.”
In type 1 the second verb is dao “arrive” indicating the direction of the action expressed by the first verb fei “fly”, tiao “jump”, pu “jump”, cang “hide”, fang “put” or tun “swallow”, and some linguists called the second verb as co-verb, which means the verb has the function of the preposition. But I think the second verb dao can be considered as V2 which shares the same subject with V1. And type 2 is similar to type I because the following two verbs also have the function of preposition. The difference is that the second verb of the serial verbs usually indicates the path of the first verb, and the third verb indicates the direction. For instance, in examples 2, 16 and 23, V1 is the main action of the whole event, V2 indicates the path of the main action and V3 expresses the final direction of V1. By the way, the three verbs also share the same subject. If the clause pu shang qu is divided into two parts: pu shang “jump on” and shang qu “up go”, the shang in the first part is a locative preposition “on”, while the shang in the second part is directional preposition “up”. We can also assume that the clause shang qu functions as a compound verb indicating the direction of the first verb pu. In this case, the example 4 contains only two serial verbs.
Type 3 Resultive SVC (V1+V2)
但茶杯被它撞倒了。
“But the tee cup is knocked down”
| chábēi |
| chábēi |
| teecupSBJ |
| Ncomm |
| zhuàng |
| zhuàng |
| hitPASSPRED |
| V1 |
它把窗帘抓破了
“It (the cat) has scratched the curtain”
| chuānglián |
| chuānglián |
| curtainOBJ |
| Ncomm |
| zhuā |
| zhuā |
| scratchACTVPRED |
| V1 |
主人这时候被呛醒了。
“At this moment, the master wakes up because of being stocked.”
| zhǔrén |
| zhǔrén |
| masterSBJ |
| Ncomm |
In type 3, there are two adjacent predicates in a single clause, in which the first predicate is the reason of the second one, and the second one is the result of the first one. They indicate two different events, namely, the first one expresses the action “hit”, and the second one describes the result “fell down”. Yet they have different subjects.