Yoruba Clause Structure
Oduntan Bode
This dissertation addresses two major questions, both of which pertain to clause architecture. One, do all languages have the same inventory of categories, or do they vary with respect to the set of categories they instantiated? Two, does the order of occurrence of these categories in the structural representation of sentences vary from language to language? Although this study is in most part descriptive, its major goal is to contribute to an on-going debate on the architecture of the clause and the role UG plays in its determination.
In answering these questions, I examine various aspects of the syntax of Yoruba with one major objective in mind, viz.; to tie together the properties exhibited by different structures, and show how they interact to determine the basic clause structure of the Yoruba language. Phenomena discussed include negation, word order, simple verbs, splitting verbs, complex verbs, ní-object constructions, adverbs, morphemes marking functional categories, and lexical categories.
The analyses presented in this dissertation invalidate the existence of an invariant universal clause structure or a universal inventory of categories for all languages. On the question of categories, I argue that the inventory of lexical categories in Yoruba includes Verb, Noun, Adjective, and Adverb. I also arguethat preposition does not exist in Yoruba as a separate category. As for the nonsubstantive categories, I demonstrate that Tense, Negation, and Aspects are independent functional categories in Yoruba. I also argue that there is no evidence for Agr in Yoruba clause structure.
With evidence from the interaction of Negation, Tense, Aspect, Adverbs, the subject, and tones, I propose two projections of Tense in Yoruba. The higher T-projection, TP1, dominates NegP, while the lower T-projection, TP2, is selected by Neg.
Further, this dissertation highlights the correlation between the syntax and the semantics of verbs. I argue that the salient properties of verbs, which account for their syntactic structure, are agentivity and causativity. Finally, I provide evidence to show that the VP-internal Aspect projection is dominated by another functional projection, viz., TopP, which is only projected in structures containing agent, experiencer, and theme.
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Revised January 17, 2001.