A Unification-based Grammar of Serial Verb Constructions

In m any languages o f W est A frica and also in the A frican-C arribean C reo les there ex ists a un ique and p roductive gram m atical phenom enon involv ing an in trica te in terp lay o f a series o f v e rb s and th e ir argum ents w ith in the borders o f w hat seem s to be a m onoclausal construction . V arious n am es have been used to designate th is phenom enon. A m ong them are serial verbs, v e rb seria lisation , consecutive verbs, sequential verbs and serial v erb constructions W e. here , adop t the term seria l verb constructions (hereafter, SV Cs). SV C s p resen t a n um ber o f p rob lem s w ith regard to in fo rm ation ca tego risa tion and are therefo re the subject o f in tense debate in cu rren t g ram m atical theories. T h e m ajo r issues a re sum m arised in section 1.2. In section 1 .3 ,1 g ive a b r ie f p resen tation o f rep resen ta tive approaches cu rren tly be ing suggested w ith in the various gram m atical theo ries and form alism s. M y hypo thesis in th is p ap e r lies w ith in a com putational lingu istic fram ew ork w here I regard SV C s as com plex pred icates derived from the conceptual o r a rgum ent s truc tu re o f tw o o r m o re v erbs , first by the form al p rocess o f un ification and then by PS ru les o f the language in q u e s tio a I tak e it that un ification operates at all levels o f the g ram m ar, itK luding th e lex icon , th e m orphosyn tac tic level and the gesta lt level (to be defined in section 2 .4). In section 2 .0 , w e b rie fly in troduce unification , a concep t popu larly em ployed w ith in co m pu ter science and lingu istics as an in fo rm a­ tion com bining opera tion on feature structures. In subsequen t sections w e then b eg in to dem onstra te the un ification form alism w ith SV C s as they o ccu r in D agaare and o th e r V o ltaic lan g u ag es a t the various gram m atical levels.