ARGUMENT STRUCTURE OF THE URHOBO VERB A MINIMALIST APPROACH

ARGUMENT STRUCTURE OF THE URHOBO VERB A MINIMALIST APPROACH

ABSTRACT

This research work examines the argument structure of the Urhobo Verb: using the Minimalist Approach, the various types of argument and the manner in which they are introduced in a sentence were described.  The basic assumption is that Urhobo language is a potentail source of input for the determination of the predicate argument structure. The specific objectives are: to classify Urhobo verbs into the number of arguments a verb can take, explore the role of valency, and transitivity in the predicate argument structure of Urhobo, as well as relate thematic functions to argument structure in the Urhobo language. A thorough literature was reviewed of languages whose materials were accessible at the time of this work. The method of data collection was categorized into two main sources: primary and secondary data. The primary data refers to the information that were obtained using, oral interview, the secondary source refers to documented information obtained from library, internet, and other published materials. Finally, we discover that functional arguments are lexical items, which strictly subcategorize phrases in their syntactic environment. It was also a finding that Urhobo  language is centered around the verbs, in most cases verbs are the basis  for the expansion of Urhobo words, though nouns and adjectives and other word formation process contributes to the expansions of its vocabulary, words and sentences.