Title: The structure of the verb complex in Niuean
Abstract:The goal of this paper is to provide a formal structural account of the Niuean verb complex and verb movement within the GB framework. The verb in initial position sententially may be preceded by a pa...The goal of this paper is to provide a formal structural account of the Niuean verb complex and verb movement within the GB framework. The verb in initial position sententially may be preceded by a particle indicating tense or aspect, and a negative marker, and/or an auxiliary verb, and may be followed by a manner adverb, a directional marker, and 'clitics'. The term clitic was used by Seiter( 1980) as a term grouping several different types of elements together, including what he has classified as sentence adverbs, emphatic particles, applicative markers, and question markers. This paper will show that previous categorizations of the verbal particles, such as 'clitic', fail to capture the nature and function of these particles in the verb complex. It is shown that there are three types of verbal particles in Niuean; (1) particles which are adjoined to Vo within the VP, (2) particles which are adjoined to Vo through head movement and (3) those particles which dominate VP but are not targets for Vo head movement.Read More
Publication Year: 1995
Publication Date: 1995-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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