The Grammar of Igbo Serial Verb Constructions: A Minimalist and Cartographic Analysis

This dissertation offers a comprehensive minimalist and cartographic syntactic analysis of Igbo serial verb constructions, proposing an original formal account that resolves the persistent theoretical debate between mono-clausal and bi-clausal analyses of SVCs while accommodating the empirical complexity of Igbo serial verb data. Serial verb constructions are one of the most typologically notable features of Igbo grammar and have featured prominently in theoretical discussions of African and creole language syntax, yet existing formal analyses are incomplete, contradictory, and inadequately grounded in comprehensive empirical data. The study builds an Igbo SVC corpus of three thousand tokens drawn from natural spoken data across three dialect zones, supplemented by controlled acceptability judgment experiments with ninety native speakers. The corpus documents twelve functional and structural subtypes of Igbo SVCs, including resultative, directional, instrumental, purposive, benefactive, and comitative constructions. Minimalist derivational structures are proposed for each subtype, with cartographic left-periphery representations accounting for information structural interactions with SVC argument distribution. The analysis demonstrates that all Igbo SVCs are derived through a unified monoclausal vP-coordination mechanism rather than through clausal subordination, with surface structural diversity resulting from differential functional head selection and movement operations. The dissertation makes original theoretical contributions to SVC typology and formal African language syntax. Keywords: Igbo serial verbs, minimalism, cartography, formal syntax, SVC typology.