Moving Right Along: Motion Verb Sequences in Urdu

In this paper I survey the phenomenon of motion verb sequences (MVSs) in Urdu/Hindi, a combination of two motion verbs denoting a complex motion event. First noted by Hook (1973), the construction exhibits interesting syntactic and semantic properties and behaves unlike other complex verbal expressions found in the language. The paper shows that MVSs should be treated as complex predicates of motion, complementing the various types of complex predicates already established in Urdu/Hindi (e.g., Mohanan (1994), Butt (1995)). This paper provides a first formal analysis of the construction and accounts for the types of combinations, word orders and argument structures that are possible in the language.