1.4. On Inherent Complement Verbs (ICVs)
Also referred to as obligatory complement verbs (Essegbey
1999, 2003 and 2010), an Inherent-Complement Verb has been defined by Nwachukwu
(1987) as a verb whose citation form is obligatorily followed by a
meaning-specifying noun complement. In other words, it can be described as a
verb which requires a complement in their citation form of which includes a
nominal element that may or may not be cognate with the verb. Let us consider
the following examples:
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(12) a. N?ì j?^ go?? «to be
painful»
b. N?ì j?^ ?èm «to
dream»
c. N?ì j?^ gw?ì « to
menstruate»
The meaning of the verbs in (12) changes depending on the
following nominal element gó? «pain», ?ùm
«dream» and ?wé «moon». As Nwachuku
(1985) remarks, the root and its nominal complement form one semantic unit. The
meaning of the verb is tied to the meaning of the inherent complement. To put
things differently, the inherent complement is a part of the meaning of the
verb and it is impossible to dissociate the meaning of the verb from the
meaning of its inherent complement. This semantic unicity creates divergences
in the glossing of the verb unit of ICVS.
Essegbey (1999) decides to gloss the verb as ICV since it is
semantically underspecified such that it requires its IC to make its meaning in
any particular construction more precise as shown below:
(13) a. Kofi Éuì tsi
Kofi ICV water
« Kofi swam»
b. Kofi Éuì k?ì Amiì
Kofi ICV fist Ami
«Kofi knocked Ami» (Ewe, Essegbey 1999:2)
Aboh (2015) glosses the verbal part of ICVs as «Vx»
in which x encodes an approximate meaning as illustrated below:
(14) a. Feìleì tuìn taìn
Fele
VRELEASE saliva «Fele spat»
b. Feìleì nyiÌn ciÌn Fele VTHROW
atishoo
«Fele sneezed» (Gungbe, Aboh 2015:11)
Following (Aboh 2015), the approximate meaning of the verb will
be given.
As far as the derivation of ICVs is concerned, Ihionu (1992)
analyses Igbo ICVs in terms of abstract incorporation. In fact, the author
argues that the structure of ICVs is similar to the one of denominal verbs in
English. This is motivated by the fact that the only difference between an ICV
verb and a lexical one, according to Ihionu, resides in their selectional
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properties. This indicates that, as for lexical verbs, the
pure merged position of ICV verbs is V°. However, unlike a lexical verb,
an ICV verb selects a bare NP as complement which is not a semantic argument
because it doesn't receive a semantic role. Morphological incorporation is
attested in English and denominal verbs are derived via NP-incorporation to V
in the sense of Baker (1988). Denominal verbs are verbs that are derived from
nouns and have the same form as the nouns. Their derivation has been argued to
be a syntactic process. They are formed by means of incorporation, this the
reason why they are said to be true intransitive verbs since their complements
incorporate to the verb and loss their semantic role (see Hale and Keyser 1993
for more details on denominal verbs). Following this rationale, Ihionu proposes
that Igbo ICVs are derived via abstract incorporation at the LF interface since
the surface order observed in Igbo ICV's such as gbaì
uìkwuì `to kick' does not reflect structural adjacency as shown
below:
(15) a. VP
Spec V'
V NP [English, to butter]
butter V butter
b. VP
Spec V'
V NP
gbaì uìkwuì [Igbo, to kick]
(Adapted from Aboh 2015: 18)
The view that ICV verbs are generated under V° and take a
bare NP as complement is also adopted by Essegbey (2010). Unlike Ihionu (1992),
Essegbey, on the basis of data from Gbe languages, argues that the
configuration in which V selects a bare NP would license N-to-V incorporation
(Baker 1988). The complex VICV-N would latter move to ? as in (16), a
representation of the Gungbe verb tuìn taìn «to
spit».
(16)
?P
Spec ?'
? VP
? V Spec V'
tuìn taìn V NP
tuìn taìn
taìn
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N-to-V incorporation
V + N moves to ?
Aboh (2015) considers ICV verbs as functional verbs and
proposes an analysis in which they are bare roots that first merge in ?. The ?
selects a VP headed by an abstract V as complement. The VP takes the NP as
complement which is headed by the IC and the head noun (IC) raises to V; it is
left-adjoined to V.
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