Serial Verbs in Naro

Abstract

This paper examines various aspects of compounds in Naro to show that the distribution of the word order is the same for both verbal compounds and serial verbs; that is, the order of the verbs cannot be reversed for either of the two.However, while there is constraint in languages with verbal compounds, in that the verbs are always adjacent to each other, in Naro there is no such constraints where person, gender and number markers, particle, past tense, and direct object can intervene between the verbs. This is what made me conclude that Naro has serial verbs and not verbal compounds. The analysis adopted in this paper leans on the Minimalist Appraoch (Chomsky 1995) where categories move for feature checking. A Multiple Verb Movement Analysis of verbal compounds, an important topic in current syntax resarch, is used and shows that all verbs must raise overtly and adjoin to v'light verb'. Moreover, it is shown that V1 raises and adjoins to firt since it is closer to v than V2.