Aspects of Verb Serialisation in Yoruba: Evidence from Ibadan Urban Speech

This study examines aspects of verb serialisation in Yoruba as evidenced in natural speech data collected from Ibadan, Oyo State, South West Nigeria. Verb serialisation, in which two or more verbs share arguments without intervening conjunctions or subordinators, is a prominent feature of Yoruba grammar that has been discussed in the comparative Bantu and Kwa linguistic literature, but its syntactic and semantic properties in contemporary urban Ibadan speech remain insufficiently described. The research adopts a descriptive syntactic methodology within the framework of Generative Grammar, specifically the Minimalist Program. Data were collected from recorded naturalistic conversations involving 30 native Yoruba speakers in three age cohorts from Ibadan metropolis, supplemented by elicited sentence completion tasks. The analysis examines the structural configurations of serial verb constructions, including the directionality, argument sharing patterns, and aspectual implications of different serialisation types. Findings reveal that resultative and instrumental serial verb constructions are the most frequent in Ibadan Yoruba, while recent trends indicate a reduction in the use of complex motion serial constructions among younger urban speakers. The study argues that contact with English and structural pressures from code-switching may be contributing to the partial erosion of certain serial verb types. The research recommends comparative investigation of serial verb usage across Yoruba dialects. Keywords: verb serialisation, Yoruba, Ibadan, generative grammar, syntax.