This dissertation investigates the syntax of verbal argument structure in Mende, an understudied Mande language spoken in Sierra Leone and Liberia. It is the first description and analysis of verbal syntax in the language, and the first comprehensive analysis of Mande verbal syntax within the Principles and Parameters / Minimalist framework. It provides cross-linguistic support for the Antisymmetry Hypothesis (Kayne 1994) in arguing that Mende is head-initial, with deviations from this order (e.g. SOV and postpositional phrases) resulting from leftward movement. Therefore, a directionality parameter is unnecessary. The analysis is couched in a Cartographic framework (Rizzi 1997), accounting for the landing spots for leftward movement in the specifier of Functional Phrases. The dissertation is also the first to systematically investigate complex predicates in Mende and the Mande languages.While Chapter 1 is an introduction that establishes the clausal spine, Chapter 2 describes and analyzes canonical OV surface order. Building on Koopman’s (1992) analysis of Bambara, I argue that Mende is underlyingly head-initial, with OV word order derived via Case-driven movement into a position to the left of the verb. Evidence of an underlying head-initial verb phrase comes from binding, stranded quantifiers, PP/CP modifiers of the internal argument, distribution of CP complements, and post-verbal coordinated direct objects.In Chapter 3 I present the first systematic description and syntactic analysis of Mende’s adpositional system. Similar to the verbal argument structure in which internal arguments can surface both pre- and post-verbally, Mende also has both postpositions and a single preposition, whose objects precede and follow them respectively. This provides important evidence for the head-initial phrase structure of the language. I argue that adpositions exist on a Lexical-Functional Cline, that includes light nouns, place postpositions, directional postpositions, and functional adpositions. I further argue that the L-F Cline corresponds to a syntactic hierarchy, in which elements that are farther left on the cline merge at lower positions in the syntax. I show how this approach lays the foundation for analyses of complex predicates, PP adverbs, and the distinction between postpositions and the preposition.Chapter 4 builds on the analyses of canonical verbs and adpositional phrases in developing an analysis of complex predicates in Mende. These types of constructions have been noted in a number of Mande languages and are strikingly similar to particle verb constructions in Germanic. While a number of different types of complex predicates are found in Mende, this analysis focuses on pre-verbal particle verbs (DP P V) and post-verbal particle verbs (V {P} DP {P}). Pre-verbal particle verb constructions consist of a canonical verb and a lexical particle, while post-verbal particle verbs consist of a different class of verbs and a functional particle, which encodes the verb’s theme in a post-verbal particle phrase. In both instances, the particles are homophonous with adpositions and behave similarly with respect to the L-F Cline, driving the word order distinction in these complex predicate types. In this chapter I explore these constructions and suggest an analysis, which provides insight into our understanding of particle verbs crosslinguistically.
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