Constraints of Compound Verb in Urhobo

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the constraints of compound verbs in Urhobo. The argument-linking principle is the theoretical framework adopted for this work. The Argument Linking Principle (ALP) explains the patterns of compounding so as to correctly delimit the set of possible compounds in a language. The principle states that any element of a compound must be able to link all its obligatory internal arguments. The study reveals that, for a pair of verbs to be compounded in Urhobo, the verbs must be arranged in a linear order to fulfil the well-formed condition. In other words, the compound verb form must express sub-events that are coherently linked to the argument of the compound. The study also reveals that no compound verb in Urhobo can switch the positions of the participating verbs and still generate a meaningful utterance or form a compound verb. This shows that compound verbs in Urhobo maintain strict positional constraints. The compound verbs are ordered according to the sequence of events represented in the compound. It equally reveals that compound verbs must pass the essential meaningful relationship necessary for collocating as a compound; this means that, for verbs to be compounded, there must be some level of cohesion among pairs of verbs in order to form a meaningful compound. In other words, there must be some level of orderliness so that the verbs do not combine arbitrarily. The study also reveals that pairs of verbs fail to become compound when participating lexical items have some related meanings. All these show that, for verbs to be compounded in Urhobo, they must maintain a specific relationship or well-formed condition. This means that components of compound verbs (v1+v2) cannot switch places and still result in meaningful compound verbs. In other words, if the components of the compound form switch their positions, the internal relationship of the argument will be highly affected. The paper finally reveals two types of constraints, namely: Semantics and syntactic constraints

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