Barayin Morphosyntax

This book contains a Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) analysis of Barayin morphosyntax, with a particular focus on serial verb constructions. Barayin is a Chadic language spoken by about 5000 people in the Guera region of Chad. The core chapters of the book provide analyses of the basic clause, noun phrases, verb phrases, and serial verb constructions. The version of LFG assumed includes two recent innovations. The first is minimal c-structure which results in simpler phrase structure representations. The second is the assumption that glue semantics accounts for argument selection, rejecting the need for a level of a-structure or for Completeness and Coherence in f-structure. This allows argument sharing in serial verb constructions to be modeled in a connected s-structure. This method of modeling semantic composition in complex predicates is extended to directional and associated motion complex predicates in Choctaw and Wambaya, removing the need to appeal to a special mechanism to unite semantic forms in such constructions.