THE ARGUMENT STRUCTURE OF SEQUENTIAL SVC IN ẸDO

Abstract

This study investigated the sequential serialization of Ẹdo verbs and their argument structures. The study was motivated by the need to account for possible argument sharing that occurred between the serial verbs in an Ẹdo sequential serial verb construction. The study focused on the various internal compositions of SSVCs. The data for this research was derived from native speaker intuition and previous work done on the Ẹdo SVC from Agharuwa (2014:67). The aim of the study was to investigate the argument structure of the Ẹdo sequential verbs serialization. The theoretical framework adopted for this research was the Principles and Parameters Approach (Chomsky 1981 and 1982). The objectives were to outline the syntactic structures of Ẹdo serial verb constructions, showing the number of verbs occurring in the constructions, the number of theta roles that are participatory and their order of occurrence. It examined if the SSVC are shared by the verbs. It examined the constraints of argument sharing by the serial verbs. It outlined and explained the characteristics of the sequential SVCs in Ẹdo. The establishment of argument structure of SSVCs in Ẹdo is tested against the theta criterion which led to the derivation of the sequential SVCs in Ẹdo as well as its characteristics. The study found out that intransitive verbs can occur in a sequential SVC. There can be more than two transitive verbs in the Ẹdo sequential SVC. Sequential SVC in Ẹdo have more than two arguments. The subject is always shared by the verbs but not necessarily the object. The presence of an intransitive verb in the Ẹdo sequential SVC showed that the objects are not shared. The study concluded that where intransitives are participatory the transitive and intransitive verbs share the subject but not the object because an intransitive verb obligatorily has no object. Furthermore, the object of the instrumental verb in data entries is not shared by any of the verbs in the construction.