SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN CHRAMBO (BAMBALANG): A BANTOID LANGUAGE OF NORTH-WEST CAMEROON

The present article attempts to describe the syntactic structure of Chrambo multiple verb constructions using the Chomskyan generative theory and a descriptive-analytical approach. Analyses of data from secondary sources indicate that Chrambo exhibits a variety of serial verb constructions: instrumental, aspectual, sequential and directional. The paper reveals that Chrambo exhibits consecutivisation among processes of serial verb constructions. It is demonstrated that when they occur in series, all the verbs do not always count as one verb in this Bantoid language; however, the grammatical features and negation apply to the entire sentence. Also, the present paper demonstrates that SVCs, in this language, play a number of roles such as TAMs marking, verb valency indication, motion expression, direction indication, etc.

 

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