Verb Constructions in the Kazakh Language: Complex, Analytical or Serial?

The article proposes a new point of view on the grammatical status of analytical verb constructions in the Kazakh language, which is an agglutinative language. Traditionally, Kazakh language specialists qualified them as analytical constructions, and later they began to be defined as “compound verbs”. In our opinion, a significant portion of these constructions should be classified as serial verb constructions (SVCs). The theory of serial verb sequences was developed by D. Westermann in the early 20th century, based on the material of African languages. As arguments for this interpretation, their semantics are presented – denoting multiple actions as a “single event”, the absence of subordination or coordination between the verbs within the construction, a unified syntactic function, etc. In the Kazakh language, considering the semantic characteristics of the verbs within the construction, symmetric and asymmetric verb constructions are distinguished. In symmetric SVCs, the verbs are characterized by semantic and grammatical unrestriction. The sequence of verbs in them conveys the real temporal sequence of actions that constitute a single event. An asymmetric SVC consists of two verbs: one with a broad meaning and one with a narrow meaning. Additionally, we believe that mixed symmetric-asymmetric constructions also function in the Kazakh language. The status of serial verb constructions is reflected in the semantic and syntactic features of verb chains in the Kazakh language. Thus, in agglutinative languages, serial verb constructions function as a natural part of the grammatical system, demonstrating a syncretism of meaning within a segmented sequence of verb forms.