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Grammaticalization processes in East and mainland South East Asian languages show remarkable areal parallels within the domain of the verb and the noun. Since language contact increases processes of reanalysis it supports grammaticalization and its cross-linguistic similarity. Grammaticalization processes are governed by attractor positions (cf. 1.1.3.) and pathways of grammaticalization (cf. 1.1..4.). The former is a good parameter for making areal distinctions, the latter is of areal relevance only within the domain of the verb. Because of attractor positions, grammaticalization processes are not necessarily slow and gradual. The distribution of attractor positions relative to each other is governed by the principles of relevance and generality (Bybee 1985).

The present article aims to give a survey of the typology of serial verb constructions (SVCs) and the criteria that are needed for defining them. For that purpose, it starts with a detailed account of Aikhenvald and Dixon (2006) and their comprehensive cross‐linguistic account of SVCs. In a critical discussion of this approach, this article will then address the following three issues. (i) The concept of single eventhood is a more general concept from which a number of Aikhenvald and Dixon's (2006) criteria can be iconically derived. The macro‐event property and time‐positional operators (Bohnemeyer et al. 2007) provide a good basis for a more coherent definition of what makes an event as far as events are independent of cultural factors. (ii) Some languages like Kalam also use the morphosyntactic expression format of serialization for discourse purposes. Because the narrative use of that construction clearly violates single eventhood, it should not be discussed as an instance of SVC. (iii) Historically, the unmarked juxtaposition of verbs can induce processes of grammaticalization and lexicalization. This article ends with the question of how far the label of ‘serial verb construction’ actually refers to a cross‐linguistically coherent phenomenon.

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' (Brown andLevinson 1987[1978]), and a principle of social solidarity defining degrees of ''empathy'' (Kuno 1987)