Serial Verb Construction without Constructions

This paper investigates the syntactic properties of Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) consisting of two transitive verbs that seem to share a single direct object, as found in Edo, Nupe, and Yoruba. We claim these structures arise when one vP is adjoined to another vP and is predicated of it. This predication relationship is permitted if and only if the object of the second vP is a null pronominal linked to the object of the first vP, given the principles of predication that have been developed for relative clauses. This type of SVC contrasts systematically with two other kinds of SVC that are found in the same languages and look superficially similar: resultative SVCs, and purposive SVCs. We show that independently motivated principles permit these three types of SVC but no other variants. Thus, there is no need for construction-specific rules to define what types of SVC are possible and what are not. 1. Why so many? Why so few? One of the strongest and most distinctive claims of Chomskian syntax for the last 25 years is that the notion of a syntactic construction has no theoretical status. Grammars of particular languages do not make positive statements of the form “such and such arrangement of categories is permitted.” Rather, the idea has been that every kind of arrangement is in principle possible in every language, unless it happens to fail to satisfy some general filter or condition—as most arrangements do, in fact. Thus, the particular constructions that one observes in a given language are just those that manage to satisfy simultaneously the various requirements of the general grammatical conditions. From this theoretical perspective, each new “construction” in the traditional descriptive sense that comes to light provides a new set of challenges. On the one hand, one must be able to show how this particular arrangement of syntactic elements satisfies all the known syntactic conditions. At the same