Thai Serial Verb Constructions: A Corpus Based Study

Mancharee Pongsutthi

Nongnuch Ketui

Chutamanee Onsuwan

Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University, Thailand

School of Information, Computer, and Communication Technology,
Sirindhron International Institute of Technology, Thammasat University, Thailand
mancharee.p@gmail.com
Abstract
This study is an exploration of types and patterns
of Thai serial verb constructions found in a subset
of data from THAI-NEST [1], with verb phrase
annotations. The data contains 76 news articles
(more than 10,000 words) from 7 news categories
based on 16 online news publishers. The total
number of verb occurrences is 4,222 - including
1,071 single verbs and 3,151 serial verbs. The
results show that verbs that occur in serial verb
constructions could be categorized into 8 types:
compound, general, deitic, directional, causative,
instrumental,
passive
and
others.
Co-occurrences among these verbs form systematic patterns with the most basic components of
2 verbs to the most complex patterns of 7 verbs.
Keywords: serial verb, verb type, Thai, corpus
based

1 INTRODUCTION
Many studies of Thai syntactic constructions
have been conducted based on both linguists
generated and naturally occurring data (i.e. published novels). All have been extensive and provided understanding of the unique characteristics
of the Thai language. With an advancement of
modern technology, linguists pay more attention
in examining linguistic data in storage from a
large scale corpus which provides a rich source of
information for language studies. Corpus data in
western languages, especially English, have
brought practical benefits to language studies.
However, there are only a few corpus projects on
Thai language data and not many on corpus based
linguistic studies. This present study is corpus
based from a substantial amount of data of more
than 10,000 words from THAI-NEST news
corpus [1]. Unlike linguists generated and data
from published novels, the data in this study was

collected from online news articles between 2009

2011 which represents language use in the
present time in a more natural and updated way.
Based on language use across 7 different news
categories, an analysis of verbs, especially their
types and patterns, can be obtained and generalized. The organization of this paper is as follows.
Related studies of Thai serial verbs are reviewed
in section 2 and characteristics of Thai serial
verbs and definitions of serial verbs are given in
section 3. Section 4 presents findings of verb
types and patterns. Section 5 summarizes the
study with suggestions for further studies.

2 RELATED STUDIES
Serial verb constructions, not present in European languages, were first reported in African
languages [2] [3] [4]. The discovery has evoked
interest among linguists and there have been
extensive studies in many other languages including Asian, Southeast Asian and Pacific languages [5].
There have been extensive studies of verb serialization in Thai (i.e. [6] [7] [8] [9] most of which
were based on linguists generated data and published novels). The previous studies focused on
constructing the grammar of serial verbs with less
attention to frequencies and patterns of
co-occurrence. Much attention has also been paid
to the semantic and syntactic characteristics and
interpretation of event represented by the verbs
occurring in a series. However, there are two
different views on verb serializing. Some linguists consider a string of verbs occurring in a
sentence as serial verb constructions while the
others consider this as complements of the first
verb [10].
It should be noted that semantic interpretation of
serial verbs does not necessarily come from the
sum of all parts but the overall meaning of the

up to 11 verbs without grammatical and semantic

violation [6]. On the other hand, based on naturally occurring data, the number of verbs in a
serial verb construction can occur up to 6 verbs.
Most of the studies agree that co-occurrences of
these verbs have systematic patterns rather than
random combinations between verbs [8]. Verbs
in serial verbs constructions based on semantic
property are classified into 8 types i.e. motion,
posture, take, use, open, give, causative and resultative [9].

verb phrase [7]. Apart from its literal meaning,

when occur in series, semantic property
represented by each verb is added on to the interpretation of events. Events represented by
serial verbs indicate simultaneous actions or sequential actions. Thai serial verbs that indicate
simultaneous actions are those of posture verbs
(i.e. sit, stand, lay down) or motion verbs (i.e. run,
walk) co-occurring with action verbs (i.e. read,
eat, watch) for example, He sat
and simultaneously read newspaper
He walked and simultaneously ate ice-cream.
Sequential actions indicated by serial verb
phrases are formed with co-occurrences of action
verbs (i.e. He grilled fish and ate it.
He lit the cigarette and smoked it.
The murderer killed the police and the
police died. He washed the car (and
it is) clean. [11]. Based on linguists generated
sentences, it is found that the number of verbs
that occur in one serial verb construction can be

3 CHARACTERISTICS OF THAI
SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS
The serial verb phrases indicate complex events.
In this study, serial verb constructions refer to
constructions that consist of two or more verbs in
series without intervention of any conjunctions,
except object nouns of the preceding verb. All
verb elements are full verbs, excluding grammaticalized verbs such as (waste) in

Table 1. Distribution of news data across news

categories and news publishers.
Online news
publishers

Bangkok
Business

News categories
Foreign
Affairs

Politics

Entertainment

Economics

Total

Education
and
Technology

Sports

Crimes

Daily News

11

I.N.N

Khaosod

Khomchadluek

1
1

Matichon

1
2

MCOT
Manager
Daily

NBT

3
3
1

2
1

Naewna

Prachachat

3
1

10

2
2

Thairath
Thaipost
7

4
3

Manager
Online

Total

Manager
Weekly

Post Today

10

15

11

12

2
14

76

(Eat!) or those without literal meaning such as

(go) in (He died). Importantly, a compound verb, which looks like a 2-verb serial verb,
is counted as one verb element (not a 2-verb
serial verb) due to the integrated meaning of the 2
verbs of similar or close semantic property. For
example, (search + find = search for)
(examine + test = investigate).

4 RESULTS
This study is a corpus based research. The data is
taken from 76 news articles (more than 10,000
words) from 7 news categories based on 16 online news publishers. The 7 news categories include foreign affairs, politics, entertainment,
economics, education and technology, sports and
crimes as shown in Table 1.
To this date, the number of verbs analyzed is
4,222 including 1,071 (25.37%) single verbs and
3,151 (74.63%) serial verbs composing of 2-7
verbs in one string.
Number of verbs in series found in each serial
verb construction and the frequencies are shown
in Table 2.
Table 2. Number of verbs found in each serial
verb construction and the frequencies of occurrences
Number of verbs
in series

Freq.

% (Out of total
frequencies)

742

60.18

355

28.79

98

7.95

23

1.87

10

0.81

0.41

Total

1,233

100.00

From table 2, serial verb constructions composing of 2 verbs are the most common with the
frequency of 742 (60.18%) out of total occurrences of serial verb constructions (1,233) found
in this study. The co-occurrences of 2 verbs
constitute basic serial verb patterns for other
serial verb constructions with 3-7 verb elements.
These patterns are discussed in detail in section
4.1 and 4.2.

4.1 VERB TYPES

Verb elements in serial verbs found in the corpus
can be categorized into 8 groups based on their
semantic property.
(1) Compound verb (Vcomp) which is the most
interesting verb type, referring to a combination of two or more verb forms of similar
or close semantic meaning. It is one of the
processes of new word formation in Thai.
The meaning of a compound verb does not
necessarily come from the verbs literal
meaning. Rather, the meaning of a verb
compound can be the integrated meaning of
those verbs (i.e. search + find = search
for); the central meaning is on the first verb
( catch + hold = arrest); or the central
meaning is on the second verb ( close +
encircle = encircle). Not only are they a
combination of two verb elements (or more),
compound verbs (in this study) also refer to
a combination of a verb and a preposition or
a noun and function as a verb. Compound
verbs composed of a verb and a noun are, for
example, (lose + grip = lose control)
(open + scene = start). Compound
verbs composed of a verb and a preposition
are, for example, (enter + to = access)
(enter + into = approach). Based on
their meaning, compound verbs can either
have literal or figurative meaning for example, (catch (v.) + eye (n.) = to keep
an eye on). Compound verbs are taken to be
a special case in the analysis since they are
not serial verbs but a single verb which can
be
problematic
for
computational
processing.
(2) General verb (V) is the verb that expresses
actions, states or feelings such as (eat);
(think).
(3) Deitic verb (Vrefer) is the verb that indicates
movement in reference to the speaker i.e.
(go); (come).
(4) Directional verb (Vmove) is a verb that indicates directions i.e. (ascend); (descend); (enter); (exit); (return).
(5) Causative verb (Vcause) is a verb with
causative meaning i.e. (make); (have)
and (cause).

(6) Instrumental verb (Vtake) is a verb indicating a use of an instrument to perform an action i.e. (use); (take); (bring).
(7) Passive verb (Vpassive) is a verb with passive meaning such as , , . These
verbs can be analyzed as passive markers in
the traditional grammar. However, they have
their own meaning with a connotation of a
passive role/state of the subject.
(8) Other verb (Vother) is a verb that does not
fall into any of the above i.e. verbs with
meaning in comparison to the previous state
of its subject such as (ascend) in
(increase + ascend = increase to) or
(descend) in (lower + descend = descend to). It is noteworthy that these two
verbs are the same as those of the directional
type and , but here their meaning lacks
literal/physical movement.
A verb from these 8 verb types when
co-occurring with one or more verbs forms a
serial verb construction. The patterns of serial
verbs found in this study are presented in section
4.2.

4.2 VERB PATTERNS

Verbs in serial verb constructions do not randomly but rather systematically occur with other
verbs. It is found, in this study, that a serial verb
construction can be composed of up to 7 verbs
without an intervention of a conjunction.
Moreover, the patterns show some specific orders
and restrictions depending on different verb types.
For example, in a basic serial verb pattern which
is a series of 2 verbs, verbs from direction type
(Vmove) cannot occur in the initial position with
verbs from general type (V). Therefore, only
(run (v) + return (Vmove)) is found, but never
* (return (Vmove) + run (V)).
Table 3 shows 23 basic verb patterns (composed
of verbs from 8 types) found in serial verb construction. The most frequent pattern is of general
type (V+V). The second most frequent is formed
by verbs from general type (V) and compound
verbs (Vcomp). The least frequent pattern is the
co-occurrence between a compound verb
(Vcomp) and a causative verb (Vcause).
The patterns exhibit systematic co-occurrences of
verbs from different types. In fact, the patterns of
verbs from the same type only occur with verbs in

general type (V+V) and those in compound verb

type (Vcomp+Vcomp). Out of the 23 patterns, 12
are switched orders of the first and second verb
elements i.e. co-occurrences of V+Vcomp (and
vice versa) and V+Vmove (and vice versa),
V+Vrefer (and vice versa), Vcomp+Vrefer (and
vice versa), Vcomp+Vmove (and vice versa).
Table 3. Twenty-three patterns found in serial
verb construction with 2 verb elements
Freq.

255

34.37

V+Vcomp

68

9.16

+ (consider+select), + (frisk)

Vcause+V

56

7.55

V+Vmove

45

6.06

+ (cause+negociate) ,
+ (cause+happen),
+ (leap+assend), +
(run+return),

Vrefer+V

43

5.80

+ (come+tighten), +
(go+do), + (come+stop)

V+Vrefer

42

5.66

+ (pass+come), +
(affect+go)

Vcomp+V

28

3.77

+ (follow+watch), +
(operate+help)

Vpass+
Vcomp

25

3.37

+ (get+arrest), +
(get+dismiss)

Vpass+V

25

3.37

Vcomp+
Vcomp

22

2.96

+ (get+pay), +
(get+shoot)
+ (follow+arrest),
+ (report+petition)

Vtake+V

17

2.29

+ (take+send)

Vcomp+
Vrefer

16

2.16

+ (broadcast+go),
+ (appoint+go)

Vrefer+
Vcomp

16

2.16

+ (come+encircle), +
(come+split)

Vcause+
Vcomp

15

2.02

+ (cause+keep an eye
on), + (cause+support)

Vmove+
Vrefer

15

2.02

+ (return+come), +
(enter+come)

Vmove+
Vcomp

12

1.62

+ (enter+arrest), +
(exit+reveal)

Vtake+
Vrefer
Vmove+V

11

1.48

+ (take+go)

10

1.35

+ (exit+inspect), +
(enter+meet)

V+Vother

1.21

+ (lower+dessend), +
(increase+assend)

Vcomp+
Vmove
Vtake+
Vcomp
Vcause+
Vrefer
Vtake+
Vmove
Total

0.54

+ (travel+return)

0.40

+ (use+communicate)

0.40

.+ (cause senator+come)

0.27

+ (take money+enter)

742

100.00

Patterns
V+V

Examples and Translations

+ (tell+warn ) ,
+ (lecture+summarize,

However, switching of verb elements often leads

to change of meaning and sometimes may result
in
ungrammaticality.
For
example,
a
co-occurrence between verbs in V+Vcomp is not
equivalent to Vcomp+V such as (consider)
(V) + (select) (Vcomp) is grammatical and
meaningful while * (select) (Vcomp) +
(consider) (V) is ungrammatical and meaningless. A co-occurrence between Vcomp and
Vrefer when switched leads to change of meaning. For example, (broadcast) (V) + (go)
(Vrefer) means differently from (go) (Vrefer)
+ (broadcast) (V). Even co-occurrences
between verbs from the same type do not have the

same meaning when their order is switched. For

example, the verbs in (lecture) (V) +
(summarize) (V) or (follow) (Vcomp) +
(arrest) (Vcomp)when switched leads to semantic
unacceptability or ungrammaticality. It is safe to
say that these verb patterns and co-occurrences
are systematic. There are rules, restrictions and
subtype-restrictions behind these patterns. The
systematic combination of 2 verbs constitutes
basic serial verb constructions. When these basic
patterns co-occur with other verbs, they create
complex serial verb constructions.
Complex serial verbs are formed either from a
basic serial verb and a single verb (resulting in
a serial verb of 3 verb elements), or from a basic

Table 4. Some patterns found in complex serial

verb construction with 3-7 verb elements
(V3-V7)

Types

Basic Patterns
(V1+V2)
V1

V2

Examples

Complex Patterns
V3

V4

V5

V6

V7

Thai examples

English Translations

1)

flip+turn over+fall

2)

submit+plead+promote

Vrefer

3)

ride a motorbike+pass+come

Vmove

4)

open+receive member+entrance

5)

wait+hand a request+ask for+send

6)

V
Vcomp

Vrefer

Vcause

Vcomp

7)

feel+sad+follow+go
ask for+entrust+have Bank of Thailand+take
care of

8)

help+government+go forward+work

Vrefer

9)

try+associate+go

Vmove

10)

11)

try+run away+exit
find clue+go after the criminal
+come+prosecute

Vcomp

Vcomp

Vrefer
Vcause
3

Vcause

Vcomp
V

Vrefer
Vmove

Vrefer

have the accused+bailed out+go

send work+enter+contest

16)

move+exit+go

17)

invade+enter+go+slaughter

Vrefer

Vcomp

18)

summon+exit+come+clarify

Vrefer

19)

go back+return+enter+come

20)

go (royal term)+go+become

Vcomp

21)

loan+money+come+invest

Vcause

22)

15)

Vrefer

Vmove

14)

13)

ask for+demand+have minister+suggest+government+propose

have National Health Commission
+consider+support

12)

Vrefer

No.

23)

Vcause

Vcomp

Vcomp

24)

have someone+bring+come+send+
sell+give+customer+sell

command+have someone+ride+motorbike+go+take+come+send

*
25)
Vcause

Vtake

Vr

Vcause

Vcause

Vcomp

Vcause

Vrefer

Vcomp

send+come+have it+present
bring Somkiat+go+ask for+the court+put in
jail
coordinate+come+have+someone+help+go
after+arrest

**
26)

serial verb with other basic serial verbs (resulting

in a complex serial verb of 4-7 verb elements).
The examples of complex serial verbs are shown
in Table 4 below. The underlined verbs are verbs
from basic serial verb patterns.
In table 4, serial verb examples 1) - 24) show
serial verbs of 3-6 verb elements formed by 5
most frequent basic patterns namely, V+V,
V+Vcomp, Vcause+V, V+Vmove, Vrefer+V
(Table 3, types 1 5). Examples 25) 26) are
serial verbs of 7 verb elements.
For Type 1, the most frequent basic verb pattern
of V+V, the third verb (V3) in the series can be V
(as in ex. 1)), Vcomp (in ex. 2)), Vrefer (in ex. 3))
or Vmove (in ex. 4)). Third verbs of V type
co-occur with verbs of V (in ex. 5)) and Vrefer
types (in ex. 6)), as well as Vcause co-occur with
Vcomp (in ex. 7)), forming 4-verb serial verbs.
The second most frequent basic pattern, Type 2,
is V+Vcomp co-occurring with Vcomp (in ex. 8)),
Vrefer (in ex. 9)), Vmove (in ex. 10)) in the third
verb position to form 3-verb serial verbs. Then,
the 3-verb serial verb construction of
V+Vcomp+Vrefer co-occurs with Vcomp forming 4-verb serial verbs (in ex. 11)). The basic
pattern of V+Vcomp can form a complex serial
verb of 5 verb elements by co-occurring with
Vcause, V and V in the third, fourth and fifth verb
positions respectively.
For Type 3, 4-verb serial verbs are formed by the
basic pattern Vcause+V which co-occurs with V
and Vrefer in the third verb position as in ex. 13)
and ex. 14).
As for Type 4, V+Vmove, forms serial verb of up
to 4 verb in a string by occurring with V, Vrefer
and Vmove in the third verb position and V,
Vcomp and Vrefer as in examples 15) 19).
Basic serial verb pattern Type 5 (V+Vrefer) can
co-occur with other verbs and form long serial
verb strings of 6 verbs as in example 24).
The last two constructions are the longest serial
verb examples consisting of 7 verb elements as in
examples 25) and 26). By looking at the verb
order in the constructions, the first and the second
verbs are not from any type of the 23 basic patterns.
However, the second and the third verbs are from
types 14 and 17 (Table 3) which then co-occur
with other verbs and form a serial verb construction of 7 verb elements.
This suggests that another verb can precede basic
serial verbs to form complex serial verbs.

6. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

FOR FURTHER STUDIES
This study presents verb types and patterns in
Thai serial verb constructions based on a subset
of data from THAI-NEST news corpus. The total
number of verb occurrences is 4,222 - including
1,071 single verbs and 3,151 serial verbs. The
verb elements in serial verbs are categorized into
8 types; compound, general, deitic, directional,
causative, instrumental, passive and other type.
Co-occurrences of 2 verbs constitute basic serial
verb constructions. For the basic serial verb constructions, 23 verb patterns are found in this study.
These patterns are systematic with restrictions
and specific order of elements. The most frequent
pattern is the co-occurrence between verbs from
general verb type (34.37%).
These basic patterns when co-occur with a single
verb or other basic serial verbs form complex
serial verb constructions. It is found in this study
that serial verbs can be composed of up to 7 verb
elements.
THAI-NEST news corpus provides convenient
access to a large number of language data. Also,
the database of news collected between 2009 2011, and soon-to-be developed/added, provides
a rich resource for language studies. Not only the
wide range of language data from THAI-NEST
news corpus but also from other corpora provide
language studies with natural and updated data,
and an extensive resource of different genres.
Researchers can greatly benefit from this stored
and ready-to-use data for studies of semantic and
syntactic properties as well as language use.

Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center,
Thailand. The authors would like to acknowledge
the role and guidance of Dr. Krit Kosawat and
Monthika Boriboon. This study is related to the
first authors Master's thesis, to be completed at
Thammasat University.

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