Verb Movement, Objects, and Serialization
Mark C. Baker, Osamuyimen Thompson Stewart · 1999
In this paper, we analyze a certain process of Verb to Infl raising in the Edo language of Nigeria. Verb raising has not been recognized in previous work on Edoid languages, such as Agheyisi 1990. From a theoretical perspective, its primary interest comes from the fact that it takes place only in one tense. As a result, it is easy to form minimal pairs with and without verb raising in the same language, thereby shedding light on certain theoretical issues surrounding verb movement. In particular, verb raising interacts with transitivity in Edo in a way that has implications for the mechanisms of accusative Case checking. Verb raising is also incompatible with Serial Verb Constructions, which are otherwise common in Edo. This can be explained by a certain refinement in Chomsky’s definition of Attract. As a fall-out of the proposal, we can explain why some Serial Verb Constructions in Edo correspond to verb-verb compounds in languages like Igbo and Chinese, while others do not. We can also explain why the order of morphemes in these verb-verb compounds is not what one would expect, when compared to other verb movement constructions. 1. Basic Properties of Verb Movement in Edo.