The phenomenon of serial verbs, verb serialization or serial verb constructions (SVCs) is not restricted to Sinitic languages, it is an areal phenomenon of East and mainland Southeast Asian languages (cf. Areal Typology; Bisang 1991, 1992) and it is also widely attested in the languages of West Africa (Déchaine 1993; Collins 1997), in Pidgins and Creoles (Muysken and Veenstra 1997:289–301), in Amazonia (Aikhenvald 1999), in Oceania (Crowley 2002; Brill and Ozanne-Rivière 2004), and in New Guinea. For each of these areas, there are detailed descripti…