Abstract: This chapter examines the take NP and construction to show how a close study of the distribution of a construction in discourse leads to a view of grammar as something fluid and unstable, that is, as emergent from, and inseparable from, its discourse environment. Verb serialization, in this view, would then be one part of an entire range of possible uses of the first verb, some of which have become grammaticalized, and which are in turn part of a general process whereby a word with a wide range of meanings projects subsequent stretches of discourse, ‘captures’ them, and hauls them into its scope. Verb serialization is thus, to the extent that it is not a borrowed feature, an emergent process.

Keywords: serialization, verb, take, hendiadic take NP, construction,