₦airaland Forum

ChinenyeN:
My theory, we had an SOV word order and developed serialization in the SOV context. We later developed compounding from the SOV serialization, then (due to YEAI pressures) we switched to an SVO word order.

Now, I am not claiming this is the actual case. It is just that the fact that our verb compounding is highly developed, highly productive and creates only a singular object that is shared by the compound, suggests that only and SOV word order would allow us the chance to develop such serialization.

Once we had it, “ka”, “hi” and “gba” became closely linked. The “hi” and “gba” verbs govern no objects, so they can be treated as a single lexical unit with the main verb “ka”.

The motivation for shifting

{i} {hwe nne ahu} {ka hi gba} to our modern syntax

Requires far less linguistic effort than shifting

{i} {ka hwe} {hi nne} {gba ahu}

So, long story short. To answer your question, Probz, I think Igbo would have to have been an SOV language for serial verb construction to be more of a thing and develop into the modern compounding we have now.

Sorry for the very late reply but this is an interesting post.

Yes, what you're saying makes sense. This change is attested in the Germanic languages, where V2 inversion is very common (English is a black sheep in that sense). There are other languages in Africa where such a change would have taken place, like in Bambara, which places its auxiliary verbs between subject and object, and the main verb appears in typical object position. So here at some point the speakers treated the verbal sequence as (or rather, that the language was such that the verbal sequence appeared to the speakers as) tightly bound together before this movement took place, since the V2 inversion thing seems to be a very common historical alternative.

This isn't surprising in Igbo where these verbal sequences are capable of full nominalization with prefixes. If the prefixes were allowed to apply to verbal sequences even before this word order shift happened, then that would be a contributing factor. It also makes sense that a language that was undergoing phonological reduction of roots to monosyllables (https://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Niger-Congo/VN/Igboid/Comparative%20Igboid%20complete.pdf) would have a greater change at treating these verbs as tightly bound because the phonological reductions, leading to a host of new homophones, would lead to the meaning of words depending more on the surrounding syntactic context. Moreover, since a typical word length barrier doesn't apply, the degree of compounding will increase, but I think my former reason is primary. Chinese underwent the same situation and in its modern form can be analyzed as a combination of these compounds and what looks like the Igboid inherent verb complement (IVC) construction. Igbo's development of its version of IVCs was likely because of features existing in Bantu combining with that word order change talked about. Other YEAI languages developed their own strategies. One other possibility is to lean far more heavily into IVCs and leave the matter of compounding alone entirely. I think this describes Yoruboid. At some point predicting why one thing happens and not another becomes impossible at our scope of observation.

Anyway it's interesting because although I knew about the compounding and its origins as previous SVCs, and I had read somewhere that Igbo was presumably verb final at some point, I didn't know that Ngwa has cross-serial dependencies. Since this is the first place I am seeing it, I will have to do some more reading to see where else I can spot it. Though most grammars of Izugbe Igbo I have read do not say anything about it.

Jennyclay:
You that have started talking before Christ was born, don’t you know police collect bribe?

Keep supporting evil till it get your turn

I blame the wife for trusting the police with this case. She should have just prepared soup then the wicked husband can go collect Eba in hellfire quietly

I feel so irritated by this news

You are probably right but everyone in the comment is too misogynistic to care.

walterjnr:
Who has built a sports betting prediction website before, and which API did you use?

API for what? You should say what you want to use the API for.