The serial verb construction parameter /

This thesis investigates Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) where two or more finite verbs along with their complements occur in a single clause without any form of coordination or subordination. Two basic questions are addressed: (a) what types of SVCs are there, and how are they to be distinguished from other similar constructions? (b) what is the parameter that allows a language like Edo to have SVCs, and not English or French?It is argued that true SVCs are those in which the verbs share internal as well as external arguments. Based on a battery of syntactic tests, it is proposed that there are two kinds of SVCs with distinct syntactic structures: resultative and consequential. This is contrary to the unified approach in previous works such as Baker (1989) and Collins (1997). It is argued that resultative SVCs are constrained to two verbs, the second of which is typically unaccusative, and they assign their internal theta roles to a single object---true internal argument sharing. Consequential SVCs are less constrained, and involve sequences of transitive verbs, with internal argument sharing realized via an empty category, pro, as the object of the second verb. Both kinds of SVCs contain two functional heads: an E(vent) head that binds the events denoted by the verbs which it dominates, and a Voice head that licenses the Agent of the events expressed by those verbs.Some other constructions that have been classified as SVCs turn out to involve two separate clauses, each with their own E(vent) and Voice heads: covert coordinations, modal-aspectual verb constructions, and instrumental constructions. A syntactic structure for each of these non-SVCs is proposed.Based on Pollock's (1989) approach to verb raising and the checking theory of Chomsky (1993, 1995), it is argued that SVCs can occur in languages where Tense (or other Infl categories) does not need to be checked. The parameter is as follows: non-SVC languages are those in which Infl must check features with the verb {English, French, Igbo, Chinese etc.}, versus SVC languages where it doesn't {Edo, Yoruba, Ewe, Akan etc.