Akaninyene’s scientific contributions

This dissertation examines argument movement in Ùdá syntax. The theoretical framework adopted for the analysis of this work is the Government and Binding (GB) with special focus on X-bar, government, case, and theta sub-theories of GB. Data were elicited from the translation of the Ibadan four hundred and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) wordlists into Ùdá. In addition to the elicitation from the wordlists, samples of sentences relating to the research subject matter were also collected from informants. The results of the findings reveal that, ergative and middle constructions in Ùdá display evidence of argument movement to argument position. Interrogative, topicalised, left-dislocated and cleft structures show evidence of non-argument position in Ùdá. Interrogative words in Ùdá can be base-generated or optionally moved into an empty slot in the SPEC-Cˈ at the left periphery of the sentence. When they are moved, they are obligatorily followed by the kí focus marker. It is observed that topicalisation does not show overt trace but exhibits a typical movement property of leaving a gap at the extraction of the rule. It has also been observed that, left dislocation is characterised by an overt trace in the form of a resumptive pronoun which also creates a case and theta chain link with the dislocated constituents in Ùdá. It is also revealed that, clefting in Ùdá utilises the kí focus marker which narrows down the referential range of the constituent it is associated with. The kí focus marker is used as a relativiser to introduce the next clause which modifies the clefted NP.