Verb-verb complexes in Central and Eastern Turkic languages

This chapter discusses Verb-Verb complexes in Central Turkic, which includes Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbek, and Uyghur, and in Eastern Turkic, which includes Sakha, Tuvan, and Khakas. To provide a descriptive overview of Verb-Verb complexes in Turkic, we first examine linguistic materials from Sakha and Tuvan, most of which are examples containing delexicalized verbs that supply meaning such as aspectual, manner, modal, and benefactive, uncovering what they have in common and how they differ. We then examine the constructional status of some of the complex verb predicates that may lie on the dividing line of converb constructions and Verb-Verb complexes, as well as the status of some reduced forms to ascertain whether they are Verb-Verb complexes. In addition, some Turkic Verb-Verb complexes are examined to determine whether they are morphological compounds. Our findings revealed that Central and Eastern Turkic seem to have no verb-verb compounds, and solely employ syntactic strategies to form Verb-Verb complexes.