Serial Verbs in Ibibio

Abstract

Notice that there are two verbs in the constructions above. The first two verbs combine to form complex verb which means ‘arrive’ in English. The second example forms a complex predicate meaning ‘cook and eat’. Both verbs share the same subject and same object. The constructions looked at in this paper typically surface as V 1 V 2 (Obj) or V 1 (Obj) V 2. The ultimate goal in this paper is to detail the morpho-syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs in Ibibio by using criteria for SVCs established for other languages. In section 2, I provide some background information on the typology and syntax of Ibibio that is relevant for the discussion of serial verbs. Section 3 defines and describes the property of light verbs in the literature. This includes discussion of SVCs in general, the syntactic properties, the semantic properties. The purpose of this section is to show that the constructions in Ibibio are truly SVCs across both syntactic and semantic grounds and also to fit Ibibio in with the typological literature on SVCs. 2. Ibibio background Ibibio is a Lower Cross language of the East Benue-Congo branch in the Niger-Congo language phylum, which is spoken in the southern part of Nigeria by roughly 2 million speakers. The data in this section is primarily novel data, but was informed by prior descriptions of the language (Essien 1990; Kaufman 1968).