N+V complex predicates in Guinean Kpelle:. Nominal boundedness and bracketing structure

doi:10.4000/14h2e

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Numéro 72

N+V complex predicates in Guinean Kpelle:

Nominal boundedness and bracketing structure

Prédicats complexes N+V en kpelle guinéen : Autonomie nominale et structure des constituants

Мария Коношенко, Мария Уварова. Комплексные предикаты с именным компонентом в гвинейском кпелле: автономность имен и структура составляющих

Maria Konoshenko et Maria Uvarova

p. 81-128

https://doi.org/10.4000/14h2e

Résumés

English Français Русский язык

L'article porte sur les prédicats complexes à base nominale (NVCPs) en kpelle guinéen (ou guerzé, code iso 639-3 [gkp], groupe mandé sud-ouest). Nous explorons le degré d’autonomie nominale ainsi que la structuration des prédicats complexes en examinant les schémas phonologiques, morphologiques, sémantiques et syntaxiques des noms au sein des NVCPs, à partir de données d’élicitation fournies par trois locuteurs. Nous soutenons que les noms en question forment une hiérarchie d’autonomie : noms non spatiaux > noms de parties du corps > noms préverbaux ; cependant, en raison d’une variabilité propre à chaque prédicat, une analyse syntaxique globale reste impossible. Nous proposons une description détaillée du fonctionnement des NVCPs en kpelle guinéen dans les constructions dites « à prédicat scindé », qui présentent un décalage systématique entre leur structure syntaxique et leur interprétation sémantique. Nos résultats suggèrent que certaines caractéristiques des NVCPs en kpelle guinéen – comme l’existence de types distincts de NVCPs à base nominale – correspondent davantage aux schémas observés dans d’autres langues de la branche mandée occidentale, à laquelle le kpelle guinéen est affilié génétiquement. Toutefois, d’autres traits – tels que la forte autonomie des éléments nominaux au sein des NVCPs – indiquent des affinités avec les langues mandé-sud, reflétant la proximité géographique du kpelle guinéen avec ce groupe.

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Entrées d’index

Plan

1. Introduction

2. Background on Guinean Kpelle phonology and morphosyntax

2.1. Tone melodies

2.2. Tone rules

2.3. Initial consonant alternation

2.4. Polyfunctional pronominals

2.5. Word order and lability

2.6. Autosemantic and relational nouns

2.7. General spatial nouns vs. preverbal spatial nouns

3. Elements of NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle

3.1. Nouns in NVCPs

3.2. Verbs in NVCPs

4. Argument structure of NVCPs

4.1. Preverbal arguments and the ambiguous bracketing

4.2. Argument assignment in NVCPs

4.3. Postverbal arguments

5. The properties of nouns within NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle

5.1. Phonological properties

5.1.1. Lexical tones

5.1.2. Tonal rule ordering

5.2. Morphological properties

5.3. Distributional and semantic properties

5.3.1. Occurrence outside of NVCPs

5.3.2. Nouns and verbs

5.3.3. Nouns and external arguments

5.4. Syntactic properties of NVCP nouns in VP-internal position

5.4.1. Coordination

5.4.2. Modification

5.4.3. Pronominalisation

5.5. NVCP nouns in VP-external position: ‘split predicate’ constructions

5.5.1. Intransitive structures

5.5.2. Focalisation

5.5.3. Relativisation

5.5.4. Topicalisation: tail-head linkage

6. Discussion

6.1. How many different NVCP types are there in Guinean Kpelle?

6.2. NVCP types in other Mande languages

7. Conclusions

Abbreviations

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1. Introduction

1The paper studies N+V, or noun-based, complex predicates (NVCP) in Guinean Kpelle (iso 639-3 [gkp]), a Southwestern Mande language spoken by ca. 460 000 people in Southeastern Guinea. As in many other Mande languages, nominal stems often combine with verbs forming lexically fixed expressions in Guinean Kpelle. Examples (1ab) feature non-spatial nouns hɛ́lâa ‘sacrifice’ and líiɓâ ‘pleasure’; líi ‘heart’ denotes a body part in (1c), and hǔ ‘interior’ is classified as a so-called preverbal noun (1d).

(1a) hɛ́lâa ‘sacrifice’ + kǔlo ‘take out’	=	hɛ́lâa kǔlo ‘make a sacrifice’
(1b) líiɓâ ‘pleasure’ + kɛ́ ‘do’	=	líiɓâ kɛ́ ‘please’
(1c) líi ‘heart’ + láa ‘lie down’	=	líi láa ‘calm down’
(1d) hǔ ‘interior’ + kǔlo ‘go out’	=	hǔ kǔlo ‘explain’

1 Within the Mandeist literature, Khachaturyan (2017) uses the term bound N+V combinations; Aplonova (...)

2In this paper, we use the term N+V complex predicates (Aplonova et al. 2024; Haig 2002) to refer to lexicalised constructions containing nominal and verbal stems, whereby the combination of the nominal and verbal stem is distributionally restricted and / or has a low degree of compositionality. This rather broad term thus includes constructions with desemantised verbs, e.g., kɛ́ ‘do’, ɓó ‘implement’, tɔ̌ɔ ‘stand’, hěɣe ‘take’, which are often analysed under the term of light verb constructions (Butt 2010; Miyamoto 2000; Nagy, Rácz & Vincze 2020; Pompei & Piunno 2023); as well as NV combinations including highly abstract and bound spatial nouns, e.g., mǎa ‘side surface’, hǔ ‘interior’, which are more reminiscent of verbal particles, e.g., in Germanic (McIntyre 2015; Müller 2003), or preverbs (Craig & Hale 1988; Vydrin 2009). However, in Guinean Kpelle, as indeed in some other Mande languages, there is no a priori reason to study such constructions separately, since various types of items can appear in the nominal and verbal slots of NVCPs. Also while light verb constructions are usually seen as involving predicative nouns denoting actions or states (Pompei & Piunno 2023), here we do not exclude combinations with non-action nouns, e.g., tíi ‘field’ and tóu ‘oil palm nut’. Based on the broad definition given above, here we study all such combinations together and we refer to them with one single umbrella term, N+V complex predicates, which is not loaded theoretically.1

3NVCPs have been frequently approached as involving compounding (Lieber & Štekauer 2011) or nominal (pseudo)-incorporation (Borik & Gehrke 2017; Li & Thompson 1981; Mohanan 1995; Scalise & Vogel 2010), focussing on the properties of nouns and the degree of their boundedness within the N+V combinations, cf. also Khachaturyan (2017) on Mano and Aplonova (2019) on Goo, both Southern Mande languages; this is also the approach taken in this paper. The goals of this paper are thus (a) to describe the properties of different noun types assessing the degree of noun-verb integration within NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle, and (b) to interpret them within the genetic and areal context of Mande family. To the best of our knowledge, NVCPs have not been discussed in detail for any Southwestern Mande language.

4In this study, we explore the degree of boundedness of nouns within Guinean Kpelle NVCPs and the possible constituent structure of NVCPs, by looking at the phonological, morphological and semantic behaviour of nouns within NVCPs, as well as their syntactic properties in two types of structures: those where a noun surfaces inside the verb phrase (VP-internal position) and the so-called ‘split predicate’ constructions, where the noun belonging to NVCP appears outside of the verb phrase. We show that nouns within NVCPs form a hierarchy of boundedness: non-spatial nouns > body part names > preverbal nouns, suggesting a different degree of noun-verb integration within specific NVCP types, which makes Guinean Kpelle NVCPs an intermediate case between what has been reported for other branches of Western Mande (Creissels 2013; Keïta 1989; McPherson 2020; Shluinsky 2014) as opposed to Southern Mande (Aplonova 2019; Khachaturyan 2017; Kuznecova 2013). We also show that different structures call for different bracketings in Guinean Kpelle.

5The data for this study were collected mostly through elicitation by one of the co-authors during a field trip to Guinea in January 2022 as well as during several Zoom and WhatsApp sessions with three language consultants in 2022–2024.

6The paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, we provide the relevant information on tonology and morphosyntax in Guinean Kpelle; Section 3 describes the kinds of nouns and verbs occurring within NVCPs. Section 4 focusses on argument structure issues related to NVCPs. We look at the different properties of nouns within NVCPs in Section 5, and discuss our findings in Section 6. Section 7 concludes the paper.

2. Background on Guinean Kpelle phonology and morphosyntax

2.1. Tone melodies

7Guinean Kpelle is a tone language featuring a binary L vs. H contrast. The tonal elements make up fixed melodies, e.g., the most common are /H/, /L^H/, /HL/, /LHL/, /L/, and /LH/ is marginal, as shown in Table 1.

Lexical melody	Nouns	Verbs
/H/	ɓɛ́laa ‘sheep’; láa ‘name’	téɣe ‘cut’, káa ‘see’
/L^H/	yǎla ‘lion’, hǔyo ‘meet’	pɛ̌lɛ ‘stretch’, pǎa ‘kill’
/HL/	yílê ‘dog’, gwîi ‘banana’	hɛ́lɛ̂ŋ ‘hang’
/LHL/	yɔ̀wâ ‘axe’, kpɛ̀ŋâ ‘razor’	kwènîŋ ‘scratch’
/L/	ɲàalee ‘cat’
/LH/	mànáŋ ‘manioc’, gòhó cribble’

8Table 1. Major tone melodies in Guinean Kpelle

2 In isolation, many speakers neutralise the surface contrast between /H/ and /HL/ on the stems havin (...)

9Verbs and relational nouns cannot have lexical /L/ or /LH/ melodies; most of them carry /H/ and /L^H/ lexical melodies. These melodies can be specified lexically and grammatically, or appear as a result of surface rule application. Items having /L^H/ melody end with a phonological floating ^H; orthographically they are represented with a caron on the first vowel: yǎla ‘lion’, pǎa ‘kill’. On the surface, this melody is realised as flat low [L^o] before pause, as opposed to /L/ surfacing as low falling tone before pause. The /HL/ melody is realised as falling [HL] on CVV, e.g., kɛ̂ɛ ‘percussion type’, and as [H.HL] on CVCV, e.g., yílê ‘dog’.2

3 In the underlying representations, prefixal grammatical tones accompanying initial consonant altern (...)

10There are replacive grammatical tones, e.g., {L} marking the verb in some TAM constructions; on a par with additive tonal prefixes, e.g., High tone pronominal prefix marking 1sg and Low tone prefix for 3sg discussed in Section 2.4, as well as complex phonological rules (Konoshenko 2014). In the examples below, both surface and underlying tone representations are given.3

2.2. Tone rules

11In Guinean Kpelle, there is a High spread rule operating in possessive NPs (inalienable possession constructions), as well as between verbs and direct objects. Thus, a verb with lexical /L^H/ melody surfaces with [H] following a direct object ending with a H tone (1).

12(1a) ɓówa ‘knife’+ hěɣe ‘take’ → [ɓówa héɣe] ‘take a goat’

13(1b) ɓɛ́laa ‘sheep’ + pǎa ‘kill’ → [ɓɛ́laa páa] ‘kill a sheep’

14The High spread rule involves floating ^H as well, since /L^H/-toned direct objects also trigger a surface [H] on verbs with lexical /L^H/ (2):

15(2a) yǎla ‘lion’ + pǎa ‘kill’ → [yàla páa] ‘kill a lion’

16(2b) hǔyo ‘meat’ + hěɣe ‘take’→ [hùyo héɣe] ‘take (some) meat’

17When preceded by a falling HL contour, a verb with lexical /L^H/ melody faithfully surfaces as flat [L^O]; while the contour is realised as [H] due to the Contour simplification rule (3):

18(3a) gbɛ́â ‘machete’ + hěɣe ‘take’ → [gbɛ́a hèɣe^o] ‘take a machete’

19(3b) yílê ‘dog’ + pǎa ‘kill’ → [yíle pàa^o] ‘kill a dog’

20Another type of Contour simplification applies when a direct object ending with a falling [HL] contour is followed by a verb with initial H tone. Then the [HL] contour is also simplified surfacing as [H], but, crucially, the H of the verb gets downstepped, marked as ^↓ (4):

21(4a) gbɛ́â ‘machete’ + yá ‘buy’ → [gbɛ́a ^↓yá] ‘buy a machete’

22(4b) ɲìlê ‘the dog’ + kwɛ́li ‘look for’ → [ɲìlé ^↓kwɛ́li] ‘look for the dog’

23Example (4) shows how the downstep affects verbs with lexical /H/ tone, but the same is true for, e.g., lexical /HL/, as in (5).

24(5) gbɛ́â ‘machete’ + hɛ́lɛ̂ŋ ‘hang’ → [gbɛ́a ^↓hɛ́lɛ̂ŋ] ‘hang a machete’

25Unlike High spread, which is domain-specific, Contour simplification is a late rule applying at any prosodic boundaries within an utterance. The two rules are summarised in Table 2; for other tone rules in Guinean Kpelle, cf. Konoshenko (2014).

Rule

Phonological effect

High spread

H_DO + L^H_V→ H_DO + H_V

L^H_DO + L^H_V→ L_DO + H_V

Contour simplification

HL + L^H → H + L^O

HL + H → H + ^↓H

26Table 2. Relevant tone rules in Guinean Kpelle

2.3. Initial consonant alternation

27Initial consonant alternation voices underlyingly voiceless consonants; it nasalises sonorants and the implosive /ɓ/. It is triggered by a word-final -ŋ segment: /péneŋ káa/ → [péne gáa] ‘to see a mirror’; and it is also a morphological operation employed in definiteness marking (héle ‘elephant’ → zèlé ‘the elephant’) and for polyfunctional pronominals, cf. Section 2.4. Table 3 shows the inventory of consonant alternations.

4 In some dialects, the /z/ phoneme corresponds to [dʒ] represented here as j following the Africanis (...)

p → b	t → d	k → g	kw → gw	kp → gb	hw → v	h → z (j)4
ɓ → m	l → n	y → ɲ	w → ŋw

28Table 3. Initial consonant alternations

2.4. Polyfunctional pronominals

5 Typically for Southwestern Mande, the same pronominal prefixes are also used to encode non-nominati (...)

29Pronominal prefixes mark anaphoric inalienable possessors (including general spatial nouns, see Section 2.7) and direct objects; in 1sg and 3sg, they are realised via consonant alternation with High (1sg) and Low (3sg) prefixal tones, for more details see Konoshenko (2019), cf. Table 4.5

	Possessor	Direct object
Lexical form	kálâ ‘uncle’	káa ‘see’
1sg	gálâ ‘my uncle’	gáa ‘see me’
2sg	é-kálâ ‘your uncle’	é-káa ‘see you’
3sg	gàlâ ‘his/her uncle’	gàá ‘see him/her’

30Table 4. Polyfunctional pronominals

311sg polyfunctional pronoun is thus encoded by a consonant alternation and a H prefixal tone. The prefixal tone modifies the lexical tone of the host noun as shown for nouns (6a) and verbs (6b):

32(6a) lěe ‘mother’ → nêe ‘my mother’; hǐle ‘husband’ → zílê ‘my husband’

33(6b) pǎa ‘kill’ → báa ‘kill me’; hǎɣa ‘wound’ → záɣa ‘wound me’

34Examples (6ab) suggest that, when attaching to a noun with lexical /L^H/ melody, the resulting 1sg form surfaces with [HL] tone as in (6a); but a similar verb form surfaces with [H] melody (6b).

2.5. Word order and lability

6 Note that not all TAM constructions involve an AUX marker in Guinean Kpelle. Thus, a Resultative-St (...)

35Guinean Kpelle has a rigid SAuxOVX word order, whereby Aux stands for auxiliary expressing TAMP categories and indexing the subject’s person and number,6 while the lexical subject NP is optional (7ab).

(7a)	Hɛ́ni	àa	ɓówa	yá.
	/Hɛ́ni	ǎa	ɓówa	yá/
	PN	3sg.prf	knife	buy

36‘Heni bought a knife.’

(7b)	Àa	ɓówa	yá.
	/ǎa	ɓówa	yá/
	3sg.prf	knife	buy

37‘She bought a knife.’

7 In (8), we label postverbal arguments as AdP, since they have the same syntactic function as adposi (...)

38In the SAuxOVX structure, X stands for all indirect objects and adjuncts, which are encoded by postverbal phrases headed by general spatial nouns (8a), cf. Section 2.7 for details, or locative noun forms (8b).7

(8a)	[Ŋàa_I	[wáli	tɛ̀ɣɛ]_VP]_IP	[Hɛ́ni	pɔ́]_AdP.
	/ŋǎa	wálî	tɛ̌ɣɛ	Hɛ́ni	pɔ́/
	1sg.prf	money	give	PN	to

39‘I gave money to Heni.’

(8b)	[Àa_I	[lɔ́]_VP]_IP	[bɛ̀lɛ̂-ŋ]_AdP.
	/ǎa	lɔ́	bɛ̀lɛ̂-ŋ/
	3sg.prf	enter	def\house-loc

40‘(S)he entered the house.’

41The verb phrase in Guinean Kpelle includes the verb with its direct object if any, e.g., [wáli_NP tɛ̀ɣɛ_V]_VP in (8a) and [lɔ́_V]_VP in (8b); while the postverbal phrase, e.g., [Hɛ́ni_NP pɔ́_Ad]_AdP in (8a) attaches at a higher syntactic level (Konoshenko 2014), cf. also Nikitina (2009; 2019) on Wan.

42As in many other Mande languages, verbs are productively P-labile in Guinean Kpelle; the interpretation of the intransitive structure can be passive (9b) or decausative (10b) depending on the verb semantics.

(9a)	Ŋàa	ɓɛ́laa	yá.
	/ŋǎa	ɓɛ́laa	yá/
	1sg.prf	sheep	Buy

43‘I bought a sheep.’

(9b)	Ɓɛ́laa	àa	yá.
	/ɓɛ́laa	ǎa	yá/
	sheep	3sg.prf	buy

44‘A sheep was bought.’

(10a)	Ŋàa	wúlo	pú	zù.
	/ŋǎa	wúlo	pú	^Lhù/
	1sg.prf	oil	pour	3sg\in

45‘I poured some oil into it.’

(10b)	Wúlo	àa	pú.
	/wúlo	ǎa	pú/
	oil	3sg.prf	pour

46‘Oil has been spilled.’

47In NVCPs, nouns typically surface inside of the verb phrase in transitive constructions (VP-internal position); but it is not uncommon for nouns within NVCPs to surface before the Aux and outside of the verb phrase, e.g., in intransitive structures; we refer to such structures as ‘split predicate constructions’, cf. Sections 4.1 and 5.5.

2.6. Autosemantic and relational nouns

48In Guinean Kpelle, as in other Mande languages, nouns are generally classified as autosemantic, i.e., alienably possessed, and relational, i.e., inalienably possessed. In the alienable possession construction, alienable possessive markers indexing the possessor’s person and number are used (11a). Unlike in most other Mande languages, in Guinean Kpelle, there is a split in inalienable possession constructions. Body parts and relational nouns denoting abstract notions, e.g., wɛ́li ‘love (for sb)’, hɔ̌ŋ ‘(sb’s) character’, hǔɣu ‘(sb’s) clan’, wóo ‘(sb’s) speech’, form possessive constructions with lexical possessors via juxtaposition (11b). In possessive constructions featuring lexical possessors and kinship terms or similar relational nouns denoting humans (yóɣô ‘ennemi’, hèeyɔ́ɣɔ ‘neighbour’ etc.) as possessees, the possessed noun attaches a pronominal prefix indexing the possessor’s person and number (11c).

(11a)	Hɛ́ni	ŋwɔ̀ɔ	ɓówa
	/Hɛ́ni	ŋwɔ̀ɔ	ɓówa/
	PN	3sg.poss	knife

49‘Heni’s knife’

(11b)	Hɛ́ni	kɔ́ɣɔ
	/Hɛ́ni	kɔ́ɣɔ/
	PN	leg

50‘Heni’s leg’

(11c)	Hɛ́ni	něe
	/Hɛ́ni	^Llěe/
	PN	3sg\mother

51‘Heni’s mother’

2.7. General spatial nouns vs. preverbal spatial nouns

52Most spatial meanings and structural functions, typically encoded by adpositions in world languages, are encoded by a subclass of relational nouns that we label general spatial nouns. Such nouns can appear in any syntactic function, e.g., as subjects (12a), objects or having the adpositional function (12b) after the verb:

(12a)	[Bɛ̀lɛ́	ɓâ]_NP	[lìɓɛ́-ɛ́-ì]_VP.
	/^Lpɛ́lɛ	ɓà	lǐɓi-ɛ-ì/
	def\house	side	be_dirty-stat-pred

53‘The wall is dirty’, lit. ‘the side of the house is dirty’

(12b)	[Bìlí]_VP	[nɔ̀i	ɓâ]_AdP.
	/^Lpǐli	^Llɔ̌i	ɓà/
	3sg\throw	def\ground	side

54‘Throw this on the ground.’

55Examples (12ab) feature a spatial noun ɓà ‘side’/‘on’ denoting a side surface of an object, most often corresponding to the English preposition on or French sur. Example (12b) shows a typical adpositional context, where the postverbal group has a locative meaning ‘on the ground’, but in (12a) the same element is used in the subject position. Because of its broad syntactic distribution, we interpret the noun ɓà ‘side’ as a general spatial noun, rather than an adposition; although we tentatively label the postverbal groups as AdP. Yet it has been highly grammaticalised and introduces the postverbal argument of many predicates, e.g., lɛ̌nɛ ‘refuse’, hwáa ‘scold’, hwɛ̌li ‘plead’, including NVCPs, cf. Appendix 1. Moreover, the fusion of polyfunctional pronominals with the general spatial noun ɓà ‘side’ has yielded a pronominal paradigm shown in Table 5.

Lexical form	1sg	2sg	3sg	1incl.pl	1excl.pl	2pl	3pl
ɓà ‘side’	mâa ~ mîi	yɛ̂	mà	gùô	kúô	kâa	dìɛ̂

56Table 5. Person-number forms of the general spatial noun ɓà ‘side’

57Some, but not all general spatial nouns have cognate spatial nominal elements used as preverbs in noun-based complex predicates as shown in Table 6; note the segmental and/or tonal difference, cf. (Craig & Hale 1988) for typological parallels. In this study, we refer to the latter nouns as preverbal spatial nouns, cf. 3.1 for more detail.

General spatial nouns	Preverbal spatial nouns
ɓà ‘side (surface)’ / ‘on’	mǎa ‘side surface’
hù ‘interior’ / ‘in’	hǔ ‘interior’
mù ‘space under’ / ‘under’	mǔ ‘space under’
ɲá ~ ɲɛ́ ‘top surface (flat and large)’ / on	ɲáa ‘upper surface’
púlû ‘back’ / ‘behind’	púlû ‘back’
lá ‘mouth (of a container)’ / ‘on’	láa ‘opening’, ‘mouth’
kwɛ̌lɛ ‘near’	–
lɔ̀wǎi ‘between’	–
pɔ́ ‘trace’ / ‘to’	–
tɔ̌ɣɔ ‘front’ / ‘in front’	–
pèlè ‘towards’	–
mɛ̌i ‘top’	–

58Table 6. General spatial nouns and preverbal spatial nouns

59In Guinean Kpelle, there is also a preposition à, which is used in comitative and instrumental contexts, as well as in identification constructions.

3. Elements of NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle

3.1. Nouns in NVCPs

60Bound N+V combinations feature four main lexico-semantic types of nominal elements illustrated in (13):

61(13) i. non-spatial autosemantic nouns, mostly denoting actions (lɛ́ɛ ‘lie’ + kɛ́ ‘do’ = ‘lie’; pélê ‘conversation’ + ɓó ‘do’ = ‘chat’; kpǎlu ‘miracle’ + kǔlo ‘go out’ = ‘make a miracle’) but also more concrete entities (tíi ‘rice field’ + kɛ́ ‘do’ = ‘make a rice field’; tóu ‘oil palm nut’ + kɛ́ ‘do’ = ‘extract palm oil’);

62ii. non-spatial relational nouns mostly denoting actions or states (háli ‘medicine’ + kɛ́ ‘do’ = ‘treat’; líiɓâ ‘pleasure’ + kɛ́ ‘do’ = ‘please’; hɛ́lɛ̂ ‘greeting’ + ɓó ‘implement’ = ‘greet’);

63iii. spatial relational nouns denoting body parts: ɲɛ́i ‘face’ + kǔlo ‘go out’ = ‘solve (a problem)’; líi ‘heart’ + hǒŋ ‘catch’ = ‘like’; kɔ́ɣɔ ‘leg’ + tɔ̌ɔ ‘stand’ = ‘start’);

64iv. preverbal spatial nouns with abstract locative meanings (ɲáa ‘upper surface’ + tɛ́ ‘raise’ = ‘start (an engine)’; mǎa ‘side surface’ + kpɔ̌ŋ ‘unite’ = ‘wait’; hǔ ‘interior’ + nɛ̌ɛ ‘be tasty’ = ‘bring chance’).

65The four main types of nouns within NVCPs are further summarised in Table 7 below.

Non-spatial

Spatial relational

(i) autosemantic

(ii) relational

(iii) body parts

(iv) preverbal spatial nouns

lúɣô ‘benediction’

lɛ́ɛ ‘lie’

tíi ‘field’

hɛ́lɛ̂ ‘greeting’

líiɓâ ‘pleasure’

líi ‘heart’

ɲɛ́i ‘face’

yée ‘hand’

mǎa ‘side surface’

hǔ ‘interior’

66Table 7. Noun types in NVCPs

67The four subtypes make up two larger groupings, i.e., non-spatial nouns including autosemantic and relational action nouns; as well as spatial nouns denoting body parts and preverbal spatial nouns (as opposed to general spatial nouns, cf. 2.7). In the latter group, all nouns are relational. In what follows, we show that NVCPs featuring different types of nouns form a scale of N boundedness predicted by the lexico-semantic type of the noun. Overall, non-spatial nouns are less bound, and spatial ones are more bound.

68As a word of caution, we should note that the boundary between body part names (iii) and preverbal spatial nouns (iv) is rather subtle. It may be argued that they all belong to the same macrodomain of spatial nouns, but preverbal spatial nouns are more grammaticalised due to their more abstract semantics, while body parts are less grammaticalised. More specifically, prototypical preverbal spatial nouns only appear within NVCPs; they have cognates among general spatial nouns (Table 6), and they can co-occur with body parts, while prototypical body parts are used both in NVCPs and elsewhere, they do not have cognates among general spatial nouns, and they do not co-occur with other body parts. Thus, items like láa ‘opening’ also meaning ‘mouth’ and púlû ‘back’ could be classified as body parts on pure semantic grounds. However, we interpret láa ‘opening’ as a preverbal noun, since it has a corresponding general spatial noun lá ‘opening’, cf. Table 4, and it can co-occur with other body part names. We classify púlû ‘back’ as a preverbal noun since it has a (phonologically identical) analogue among general spatial nouns, cf. Table 4, which is not typical for prototypical body parts. We further discuss this in Section 6.1.

69Overall, the boundary between free syntactic NP+V combinations, as opposed to NVCPs which contain (more) bound nominals, is also rather fuzzy. As we demonstrate in Section 5 below, most nouns, especially non-spatial ones, retain a considerable degree of phonological, syntactic and semantic autonomy within NVCPs. The main definitional difference between free syntactic combinations and NVCPs containing non-spatial nouns is that non-spatial nouns only combine with a specific verb in NVCPs, e.g., hɛ́lɛ̂ ‘Kpelle greeting’+ ɓó ‘do’= ‘greet, líiɓâ ‘pleasure’ + kɛ́ ‘do’ = ‘please’, *hɛ́lɛ̂ kɛ́, *líiɓâ ɓó.

70It is also worth noting that kinship terms only rarely form NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle. In such cases, they are used non-relationally and receive a special tonal marking; cf. also Section 4.2:

71(14a) nɛ́a ‘wife’ + hěɣe ‘take’ = nɛ̌a hěɣe ‘get married (about a man)’

72(14b) hǐle ‘male’ + hěɣe ‘take’ = hǐle hěɣe ‘get married (about a woman)’

73Finally, NVCPs involving more than one nominal element are also possible. In such structures, the second nominal element can be a general spatial noun (15a) or a preverbal spatial noun (15b).

(15a)	Gáa	[gíli	ɲá	hìéì ]	Hɛ́ni	ɓâ.
	^Hgáa	^Hkíli	ɲá	hǐe-ì	Hɛ́ni	ɓà
	1sg\exi	spirit	surface	walk-inf	PN	on

74‘I am thinking about Heni.’

(15b)	Pépèe	lóŋ	àá	[nìí	ɲáa	ŋwána].
	/Pépèe	lóŋ	ǎa	^Llíi	ɲáa	ŋwána/
	PN	child	3sg.prf	3sg\heart	upper_surface	hurt

75‘Pepee’s son irritated him.’

76Because general spatial nouns clearly form a syntactic constituent with the previous NP functioning as the larger NP head as discussed in Section 2.7, we assume that the constituent structure in (15a) is [[gíli ɲá]_NP hìéì_V]. The structure of NVCPs with preverbal spatial nouns (15b) is more controversial, we turn to this in Section 4.1.

3.2. Verbs in NVCPs

77Within NVCPs, verbs tend to have rather general semantics, e.g., kɛ́ ‘do’, ɓó ‘say’ / ‘implement’, including motion and position verbs lɔ́ ‘enter’, kǔlo ‘go out’, tɔ̌ɔ ‘stand’, hěe ‘sit’, láa ‘lie’, hěɣe ‘take’ etc., but more specific predicates are also attested: pú ‘pour’, hɔ̌ɔ ‘sting’, téɣe ‘cut’, wǐe ‘be heavy’, láɣi ‘be cold’. Overall, it seems that in NVCPs with non-spatial nouns there are more verbs with more general semantics, while verbs with more specific semantics are more typical for combinations with spatial nouns, cf. Appendix 1. A more rigorous quantitative verification of this observation is a task for the future.

4. Argument structure of NVCPs

4.1. Preverbal arguments and the ambiguous bracketing

78The NVCP may occur with no arguments other than its own nominal component, if it is an autosemantic noun, e.g., kólô ‘work’ in (16) or a relational noun used non-relationally, cf. 4.2 below. Alternatively, there may be an argument preceding NVCP (17). This argument may also be syntactically complex as in (15) above.

(16)	Àa	kólo	^↓kɛ́.
	/ǎa	kólô	kɛ́/
	3sg.prf	work	do

79‘(S)he has worked.’

(17)	Àa	Hɛ́ni	ɲɛ́i	kwɛ́li.
	/ǎa	Hɛ́ni	ɲɛ́i	kwɛ́li/
	3sg.prf	PN	face	look_for
a.	Aux	[[NP_POSS	N]_DO	V]]_VP
b.	Aux	[[NP_DO	[N	V]_ComplexPr]]_VP

80‘He seduced Heni.’

8 In this paper, we use the term ‘external argument’ precisely to refer to NPs immediately preceding (...)

81Example (17) consists of a verbal stem kwɛ́li ‘look for’, a spatial body part noun ɲɛ́i ‘face’ and a NP Hɛ́ni which we label ‘external argument’ following Khachaturyan (2017).8 Two syntactic interpretations are possible in (17): in the first one (a), the spatial noun functions as a head of a possessive noun phrase containing the external NP as a possessor, lit. ‘Heni’s face’; and the larger NP is a direct object of the verb. In (b), the external argument is a direct object of the larger complex predicate consisting of a spatial noun and the verb (Haig 2002). Both bracketings are theoretically possible whenever both external NP and the preverbal noun surface inside the VP, i.e., in a transitive construction (17). However, due to productive P-lability outlined earlier in Section 2.5, all transitive verbs can also be used intransitively as a result of argument structure alternation, e.g., via passivisation (18) or decausativisation (19b) and, furthermore, some complex predicates are lexically intransitive, e.g., hǔ ‘interior’ + kwéâ ‘be long’ = hǔ kwéâ ‘to happen a while ago’ (20).

(18)	Ŋwɔ́ɔ	yíle-i	hǔ	àá	tɔ̌ɔ.
	/Ŋwɔ́ɔ	yílê-i	hǔ	ǎa	tɔ̌ɔ/
	1sg.poss	dog-art	interior	3sg.prf	stand
	[	NP_POSS	N]_Sbj	Aux	V

82‘My dog has been trained.’

(19a)	Àa	Níi	láa.
	/ǎa	^Hlíi	láa/
	3sg.prf	1sg\heart	lie_down

83‘He calmed me down.’

(19b)	Níi	Àa	láa.
	^Hlíi	ǎa	láa/
	1sg\heart	3sg.prf	lie_down
	[NP N]_Sbj	Aux	V

84‘My heart is calm.’

(20)	Zǔ	àa	kwéâ.
	/^Lhǔ	ǎa	kwéâ/
	3sg\interior	3sg.prf	be_long
	[NP N]_Sbj	Aux	V

85‘It’s been a while ago.’

86In intransitive structures (18, 19b, 20), the preverbal noun is always adjacent to the external argument, both appearing before the AUX if there is one, cf. footnote 5. The only possible interpretation of such structures is the one where the external NP and the preverbal noun form a larger NP surfacing as a subject of the intransitive construction. In Section 5.5.1, we discuss further evidence in favour of one or the other bracketing.

4.2. Argument assignment in NVCPs

87Similarly to the syntactic bracketing mismatch, there may be two potential interpretations of how the external argument is semantically assigned by complex predicates. First, the argument sharing approach suggests that, within a complex predicate, the verb and the noun can assign their own arguments independently (Mohanan 1997). Second, the holistic or noun incorporation approach presupposes that the complex predicate licenses external arguments as a whole (Haig 2002). None of the two interpretations necessarily accounts for all NVCPs within a single language as suggested by Haig (2002), cf. also the discussion in Khachaturyan (2017) for Mano.

88In Guinean Kpelle, the argument structure of the (internal) noun most often corresponds to that of the total NVCP, i.e., autosemantic nouns are used without an external argument in NVCPs, cf. (16) above, while relational nouns co-occur with an external argument when used in NVCPs as in (17). Such cases are compatible with both argument assignment analyses.

89However, some nouns that behave as relational outside of NVCPs, may be used in NVCP without an external argument. While this is by no means unique for Mande languages, cf. a similar discussion of Mano data by Khachaturya (2017), Guinean Kpelle has a tonal operation replacing the lexical tone of a relational noun to {L^H} when it is used non-referentially without a possessor (21b).

(21a)	Yɛ́	ɓé	ŋà	pɛ́li	mà	ŋé	lɛ́ɛ
	/yɛ́	ɓé	ŋǎ	pɛ́li^L	^Lɓà	ŋé	lɛ̌ɛ /
	2sg.aut	cop	1sg.ipfv	can\l	3sg.on	1sg.conj	stay

é-yêì	à	é-nɛ́a.
/é-yêi	à	é-nɛ́a/
2sg-hand.loc	with	2sg-wife

90‘You are the one with whom I can stay as your wife.’

(21b)	Àá	nɛ̀a	héɣe.
	/àǎ	nɛ́a^LH	hěɣe/
	3sg.prf	wife\L^H	take

91‘He got married.’

9 Note that the {L} head marking is orthogonal to the non-referential {L^H} marking of relational noun (...)

92Thus in (21a), nɛ́a ‘wife’ is used as a relational noun with 2sg pronominal possessor é-; while (21b) features a non-referential use of the same noun within NVCP, where it is then marked by a replacive {L^H} tone. A similar process affects the first element in nominal compounds, having their head nouns marked by a replacive {L} melody (Green & Konoshenko 2022), which may be further modified by surface tone rules, e.g., H spread; cf. Section 5.1.2. When the non-head noun of a compound is relational, e.g., the noun líê ‘elder sibling’ having a lexical /HL/ melody, it receives {L^H} if used non-referentially in a compound in (22):9

(22)	lìe-wôo	‘advice’
	/líê^{LH}-wóo^{L}/
	elder.sibling\l^H-speech\l

93Such non-referential uses with NVCPs and NN compounds are prone to two interpretations. First, one may argue that a noun is independently marked with grammatical tone when used non-relationally, and so it also happens to be marked within NVCPs and the compounds; hence the NVCP argument structure inherits the modified valency of the noun. Alternatively, one could say that the noun becomes non-referential as a result of incorporation within NVCP, given that weak referentiality is cross-linguistically a property of incorporated nouns (Borik & Gehrke 2017; Johns 2017); and the non-referential incorporated use is morphologically marked by a grammatical tone in Guinean Kpelle. The former interpretation would thus be compatible with the argument sharing approach, and the latter one follows the holistic noun incorporation approach. Since no other cases of {L^H} marking have been attested outside NVCPs and compounds in Guinean Kpelle, the simplest solution is to interpret {L^H} as a marker of incorporation thus opting for the holistic approach in such cases.

94Furthermore, there are other NVCP constructions lending themselves better to the holistic argument assignment interpretation. Some non-spatial nouns only appear within NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle (23).

(23)	É-káa	é-hwálaŋ	^↓mó-i	^↓mâa.
	/é-káa	é-hwálâŋ	mô-i	mâa/
	2sg-exi	2sg-avoidance	do-inf	1sg.on

95‘You are avoiding me.’

96In (23), the NVCP hwálâŋ ɓó ‘avoid’ is used with the external 2sg argument encoded by the polyfunctional pronoun é-. The argument sharing interpretation here would be unnecessarily circular (claiming that hwálâŋ independently licenses an argument based on the only evidence from its use within NVCP), cf. a similar discussion in Khachaturyan (2017) for Mano. Since no external uses of hwálâŋ are available, the most euristically straightforward interpretation of such structures would be to claim that the external argument is licensed by the whole predicate.

4.3. Postverbal arguments

97A NVCP can be also used with a postverbal argument introduced by a general spatial noun or its fused form (24), cf. Section 2.7.

(24a)	Àá	lɛ́ɛ	kɛ́	yɛ̂.
	/ǎa	lɛ́ɛ	kɛ́	yɛ̂/
	3sg.prf	lie	do	2sg.on

98‘(S)he lied to you.’

(24b)	Àá	hwùlu	kɛ́.
	/ǎá	hwǔlu	kɛ́/
	3sg.prf	lie	do

99‘(S)he made a deception’

(25)	É-ɲɛ́i	lɔ́-ɔ-i	zù.
	/é-ɲɛ́i	lɔ́-ɔ-ì	^Lhù/
	2sg-face	enter-stat-pred	3sg\in

100‘You have an annoyed look.’

(26)	Ŋàa	lɔ́	pɛ́lɛ	tà	mù.
	/ŋǎa	lɔ́	pɛ́lɛ	tǎ	mù/
	1sg.prf	enter	house	some	under

101‘I entered some house.’

102Example (24a) features a transitive NVCP with the verb kɛ́ ‘do’ licensing the addressee introduced by the general spatial noun ɓà ‘side’, in the fused pronominal form, cf. Section 2.7. However, in (24b), an NVCP with the same verb does not license a postverbal argument. In (25), an intransitive predicate requires a postverbal argument headed by a general spatial noun hù ‘in’, which invariably surfaces with a 3sg pronominal and is semantically empty. Yet, when motion and position verbs are used in the literal sense and co-occur with locative postverbal arguments (26), they do not subcategorise for a specific locative argument, but the choice of a spatial noun (e.g., mù in 26) rather depends on the spatial semantics and individual lexical preferences of the dependent noun serving as the landmark, cf. also Nikitina (2009) on a similar phenomenon in Wan. Since the NVCP’s postverbal argument selection is not predictable from the verb itself as outlined here, we assume that the postverbal arguments are licensed by the whole NVCP.

5. The properties of nouns within NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle

103Various properties of NVCPs have been discussed in the literature on noun (pseudo)-incorporation (Borik & Gehrke 2017) and compounding (Lieber & Štekauer 2011) as well as in the existing studies of NVCPs in specific Mande languages (Aplonova 2019; Kastenholz 2000; Keïta 1989; Khachaturyan 2017; Makeeva 2013; Vydrin 2009). The most crucial variation is attested in the properties of nouns within NVCPs, and the criteria discussed tackle two phenomena: (i) the degree of boundedness of a noun within NVCP, which is more general, and (ii) the bracketing structure of NVCPs used with an external argument, a more specific one. The two properties are clearly interrelated, since the more independent a preverbal noun is, the more likely it is to license its own argument and function as a head of a possessive NP as per interpretation (a) in (17). The opposite is also true: the more bound the noun is, the more likely it is to function as a single lexico-syntactic item with the verb as per interpretation (b) in (17). And yet, some tests only address bracketing, e.g., the sandhi phenomena, and others tackle boundedness, e.g., the degree of prosodic independence of the preverbal noun.

104In this section, we explore various properties of nouns within NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle: phonological (lexical tones; tonal sandhi) in 5.1, morphological (grammatical tones) in 5.2, semantic (distribution and compositionality) in 5.3, and syntactic, which we divide into constructions with VP-internal noun position (5.4) and the so-called ‘split predicate’ constructions with VP-external nouns in 5.5.

5.1. Phonological properties

5.1.1. Lexical tones

105This criterion assesses the degree of prosodic boundedness of nouns within NVCPs. One might expect that more bound nouns within NVCPs may prosodically attach to the verbs and behave as proclitics (Craig & Hale 1988), e.g., not being specified for tone. However, in Guinean Kpelle, all nominals attested in NVCPs behave as prosodically independent words: they have their own lexical tone melodies, which are similar to those on nouns used outside of NVCPs discussed in Section 2.1. Table 8 summarises the lexical tone melodies attested on nouns within NVCPs. Note that, with some exceptions discussed in Section 4.2, nouns used in NVCPs can also appear elsewhere, in non-NVCP contexts.

Lexical melody type	Nouns attested in NVCPs
/H/	lóno ‘speech’; tíi ‘rice field’; ɲáa ‘upper surface’, ɲɛ́i ‘face’
/L^H/	hwǔlu ‘lie’, mǎa ‘side surface’, hǔ ‘interior’
/HL/	gílê ‘run’, hwɛ́lî ‘music’; púlû ‘back’
/LHL/	tìhôo ‘sneezing’; wɛ̀lâa ‘urine’; tɛ̀ân ‘truth’

106Table 8. Lexical tones on nouns within and outside NVCPs

5.1.2. Tonal rule ordering

107Tonal rule ordering concerns the bracketing within NVCPs and it suggests that at least in some NVCPs with preverbal spatial nouns, the preverbal noun forms an immediate prosodic constituent with the verb, rather than the external NP, thus supporting interpretation (b) in (17). This argument is based on how tone rules introduced in Sections 2.2 and 2.4 – High prefixal tone marking 1sg, High spread rule and Contour simplification – interact in some specific NVCP combinations as opposed to other word sequences.

108Tables 9 and 10 below show the tonal derivation of a free direct object NP and V sequence surfacing as [née hɔ̀ɔ^o] in (27) and [née ^↓kwɛ́li] in (28).

(27)	Àa	née	hɔ̀ɔ^o.
	/ǎa	^Hlěe	hɔ̌ɔ/
	3sg.prf	1sg\mother	hit

109‘(S)he hit my mother.’

Underlying representation	/^Hlěe hɔ̌ɔ/
H prefix (on /L^H/ noun)	nêe hɔ̌ɔ
Contour simplification (before L)	née hɔ̌ɔ
Surface representation	[née hɔ̀ɔ^o]

110Table 9. The tonal derivation of NP+V structure in (27)

(28)	Àa	née	^↓kwɛ́li.
	/ǎa	^Hlěe	kwɛ́li/
	3sg.prf	1sg\mother	look_for

111‘(S)he has looked for my mother.’

Underlying representation	/^Hlěe kwɛ́li/
H prefix (on /L^H/ noun)	nêe kwɛ́li
Contour simplification (before H)	née ^↓kwɛ́li
Surface representation	[née ^↓kwɛ́li]

112Table 10. The tonal derivation of NP+V structure in (28)

113In both (27) and (28), the H tone prefix attaches to the noun first, and then it creates a context for Contour simplification to apply – either merely deleting the L of contour in (27), or via both deleting L and downstepping the following H in (28), similarly to (4). The tonal interaction between the prefixal H and Contour simplification creates a totally expected prosodic bracketing [[^Hlěe]_DO hɔ̌ɔ_V]_VP and [[^Hlěe]_DO kwɛ́li_V]_VP. Now consider a NVCP structure with a spatial preverbal noun mǎa ‘side surface’ in (29).

(29)	Àa	máa	^↓kpɔ́ŋ.
	/ǎa	^Hmǎa	kpɔ̌ŋ/
	1sg.prf	side_surface	help

114‘(S)he has waited for me.’

115Underlyingly, example (29) has the same tone sequence as in (27), i.e., a ^H prefix attached to a /L^H/ noun followed by a /L^H/ verb. However, its surface tone realisation is not identical to that in (27). Two potential rule orderings are given in Tables 11 and 12.

Underlying representation	/^Hlěe hɔ̌ɔ/	/^Hmǎa kpɔ̌ŋ/
H prefix (on /L^H/ noun)	nêe hɔ̌ɔ	mâa kpɔ̌ŋ
H spread (on /L^H/ verb)	NA	NA
Contour simplification	née hɔ̌ɔ	máa kpɔ̌ŋ
Surface representation	[née hɔ̀ɔ^o]	[*máa kpɔ̀ŋ^o]

116Table 11. First suggested rule ordering ^Hlěe hɔ̌ɔ and ^Hmǎa kpɔ̌ŋ

Underlying representation	/^Hlěe hɔ̌ɔ/	/^Hmǎa kpɔ̌ŋ/
H spread (on /L^H/ verb)	^Hlěe hɔ́ɔ	^Hmǎa kpɔ́ŋ
H prefix (on /L^H/ noun)	nêe hɔ́ɔ	mâa kpɔ́ŋ
Contour simplification	née ^↓hɔ́ɔ	máa ^↓kpɔ́ŋ
Surface representation	[*née ^↓hɔ́ɔ]	[máa ^↓kpɔ́ŋ]

117Table 12. Second suggested rule ordering ^Hlěe hɔ̌ɔ and ^Hmǎa kpɔ̌ŋ

118As mentioned in Section 2.2, Contour simplification is a late rule applying at any boundaries within an utterance. However, the two H tone rules are more domain-specific and it is their respective ordering that is crucial for the tonal outcome in free NP+V combinations and in NVCPs. In the first derivation (Table 11), H prefix modifies the tone of the noun first and then contour simplification applies, yielding /^Hlěe hɔ̌ɔ/ → nêe hɔ̌ɔ → [née hɔ̀ɔ^o] ‘hit my mother’ for the free NP+V combination. However, this ordering yields incorrect result for NVCP /^Hmǎa kpɔ̌ŋ/ ‘waited for me’, which does not surface as [*máa kpɔ̀ŋ^o], but rather as [máa ^↓kpɔ́ŋ].

119To account for the tonal derivation of NVCP /^Hmǎa kpɔ̌ŋ/→[máa ^↓kpɔ́ŋ], we need to opt for the second ordering (Table 12) assuming that, first, the tone of the /L^H/ verb is raised to [H] due to H spread triggered by the floating ^H of mǎa: /^Hmǎa kpɔ̌ŋ/ ^{H spread} → ^Hmǎa kpɔ́ŋ, cf. (2) for a parallel process in NP+V combinations. Only after that does the H prefix attach to the noun changing its tone to HL: /^Hmǎa kpɔ̌ŋ/ →^H spread ^Hmǎa kpɔ́ŋ →^{H prefix} mâa kpɔ́ŋ. Finally, this intermediate representation is subject to Contour simplification yielding [máa ^↓kpɔ́ŋ] as shown in Table 12. Crucially, this rule ordering presupposes the following prosodic bracketing: [^H_NP[mǎa kpɔ̌ŋ]_CP]_VP. Unlike in free NP+V combinations having [[NP N]_DO V]_VP prosodic structure, the bracketing in this NVCP suggests that the preverbal noun forms a prosodic phrase with the verb first (H spread), and then the prefixal H attaches to the whole complex predicate: [NP_DO [N V]_CP]_VP.

120So far, we have found a couple of similar examples for NVCPs containing a body part noun, e.g., kǒo ‘stomach’ + tɔ̌ɔ ‘stand’ → ‘impregnate’, e.g., [àa góo ^↓tɔ́ɔ] ‘he impregnated me’; cf. also (70). It is unclear how such derivation will be realised on non-spatial relational nouns; although given their higher autonomy, one might expect that they will behave similarly to free NP+V combinations.

121To sum up, while the lexical tone criterion suggests that, generally, nouns are prosodically non-bound within NVCPs, tone rule ordering provides evidence that at least in some NVCPs, the preverbal noun forms an immediate prosodic constituent with the verb, rather than the external NP; pointing towards [NP_DO [N V]_CP]_VP prosodic bracketing.

5.2. Morphological properties

122In Guinean Kpelle, the only morphological criterion capturing the boundedness of nominals within NVCPs is the replacive {L^H} tone marking non-referential use of relational nouns, as discussed in Section 4.2, e.g., nɛ́a ‘wife’ + hěɣe ‘take’ = nɛ̌a^LH hěɣe ‘get married (about a man)’. We interpret this tone as the morphological marker of noun incorporation; although it is only applicable to a small set of nouns.

123No other morphological phenomena seem to clarify the bracketing structure of NVCPs with external arguments in Guinean Kpelle.

5.3. Distributional and semantic properties

124Here we focus on the distributional properties of nouns within NVCPs and the semantic transparency of NVCPs as constructions.

5.3.1. Occurrence outside of NVCPs

125Nouns appearing within NVCPs can be used in other contexts as well, with some occasional exceptions in non-spatial nouns, cf. 4.2. However, preverbal spatial nouns have very limited distribution outside of NVCPs in that they are only otherwise used in nominal compounds (Section 4.2), which are often related to the NVCPs, e.g., mǎa ‘side surface’ + wǐe ‘be heavy’ = ‘respect’ (a verb), but mǎa wíê^L is ‘respect’ as a noun. Some сompounds do not have a corresponding NVCP, e.g., mǎa ‘side surface’ + nú ‘person’ = mǎa nû^L ‘person in question’; this is a topic for a separate study. Note that such compounds may pattern as free nouns requiring no nominal arguments, e.g., mǎa nû^L, or function as relational nouns, e.g., mǎa ‘side surface’ + nìnîŋ ‘shadow’ = mǎa nínîŋ^L ‘sb’s photo.’

5.3.2. Nouns and verbs

126When it comes to the combinations of specific nouns with verbs, NVCPs clearly split into two types. In Type 1, the noun tends to be used with just one or a couple of verbs having rather abstract semantics; and the noun itself strongly predicts the meaning of the NVCP, as in the following constructions (30):

127(30a) hwúlu ‘marriage’ + lɔ́ ‘enter’ = hwúlu lɔ́ ‘get married’

128(30b) kèémàanî ‘question’ + kɛ́ ‘do’ = kèémàanî kɛ́ ‘ask’

129(30c) hɛ́lâa ‘sacrifice’ + kǔlo ‘take out’ = hɛ́lâa kǔlo ‘make a sacrifice’

130(30d) kíti ‘judgment’ + téɣe ‘cut’ = kíti téɣe ‘judge’

131(30e) hɛ́lî ‘party’+ pú ‘pour’ = hɛ́lî pú ‘throw a party’

132(30f) hɔ́ŋ ‘parable’ + hɔ̌ɔ ‘sting’ = hɔ́ŋ hɔ̌ɔ ‘tell a parable’

133(30g) ɓáɣa ‘rice porridge’ + tɔ̌ɔ ‘stand’ = ɓáɣa tɔ̌ɔ ‘cook rice porridge’

134Type 1 consists of constructions with non-spatial nouns (30); and it is most reminiscent of what is referred to as light verb constructions in the literature (Butt 2010; Pompei, Mereu & Piunno 2023); although, as discussed in the introduction, here we include non-action autosemantic nouns.

135Unlike in Type 1, in constructions with spatial nouns (Type 2), a single noun co-occurs with different verbs, and the resulting combinations usually have less predictable meanings. Example (31) shows some attested NVCPs with a body part item líi ‘heart’, and NVCPs with a preverbal spatial noun hǔ ‘interior’ are given in (32).

136(31a) líi ‘heart’ + kǔlo ‘take out’ = líi kǔlo ‘frighten’

137(31b) líi ‘heart’ + láa ‘lie down’ = líi láa ‘calm down’

138(31c) líi ‘heart’ + hólu ‘sting’ = líi hólu ‘annoy’

139(31d) líi ‘heart’ + hǒŋ ‘catch’ = líi hǒŋ ‘please’

140(31e) líi ‘heart’ + hɛ́lɛ̂ŋ ‘hang’ = líi hɛ́lɛ̂ŋ ‘be worried’

141(32a) hǔ ‘interior’ + káa ‘see’ = hǔ káa ‘inspect’

142(32b) hǔ ‘interior’ + téɣe ‘сut’ = hǔ téɣe ‘cut into small pieces’

143(32c) hǔ ‘interior’ + kǔlo ‘take out’ = hǔ kǔlo ‘explain’

144(32d) hǔ ‘interior’ + tɔ̌ɔ ‘stand’ = hǔ tɔ̌ɔ ‘train’

145(32e) hǔ ‘interior’ + nɛ̌ɛ ‘be good’ = hǔ nɛ̌ɛ ‘bring chance’

146Note that, unlike preverbal nouns, body part names tend to at least partly preserve their meaning in NVCPs, although often in a metaphorical sense. Thus, constructions with líi ‘heart’ in (31) refer to various emotions. In (33), constructions with yée ‘hand / arm’ either denote an action physically performed by hands (33ab), or refer to various types of social interaction (33cde), hence their meaning is not totally unpredictable.

147(33a) yée ‘hand’ + lɔ́ɠâ ‘beat’ = yée lɔ́ɠâ ‘appload’

148(33b) yée ‘hand’ + hǐe ‘walk’ = yée hǐe ‘caress’

149(33c) yée ‘hand’ + tǒo ‘drop’ = yée tǒo ‘contribute’

150(33d) yée ‘hand’ + ɓó ‘implement’ = yée ɓó ‘leave’, ‘let go’

151(33e) yée ‘hand’ + kɛ́ ‘do’ = yée kɛ́ ‘look after’

5.3.3. Nouns and external arguments

152The majority of non-spatial relational nouns, e.g., hɛ́lɛ̂ ‘greeting’, mɔ́nɔ ‘suffering’, hwǎŋa ‘force’, require human NPs as external arguments in NVCPs. Body part names require human external arguments in most cases as well (or they are coreferential with the subject), with a known exception of ɲɛ́i ‘face’, cf. ɲɛ́i ‘face’ + kǔlo ‘take out’ = ‘solve’ (a problem), although other known expressions with ɲɛ́i are indeed used with human external arguments. In contrast, preverbal nouns are equally used with human, animate and inanimate NPs, although this is not unexpected given their more abstract semantics.

153Overall, the semantics of spatial nouns seems usually quite bleached in NVCPs, while non-spatial nouns are more transparent mainly contributing to the meaning of the NVCP. Further issues in the semantic interpretation of NVCPs particularly in split predicate constructions are further discussed in 5.5.

5.4. Syntactic properties of NVCP nouns in VP-internal position

10 In this and the following subsection, glossed examples are provided with surface tones only.

154Here we discuss the properties of nouns within NVCPs in transitive constructions, where the noun surfaces in the same lower syntactic domain as the verb, i.e., in the verb phrase, cf. Section 2.5. To assess the degree of noun boundedness in such constructions, we look at the possibility of noun coordination, pronominalisation and modification. Overall, there seems to be a lot of NVCP-specific variation, especially for NVCPs with non-spatial nouns and body parts, but some general patterns can still be discerned. Unfortunately, we have not tested all these properties for all the specific NVCPs we had in this study, hence the tendencies we formulate here should be treated with caution.10

5.4.1. Coordination

155Unlike regular syntactic noun + verb combinations (34), noun coordination is totally ungrammatical in constructions with preverbal spatial nouns (35a) and it is generally dispreferred in other NVCPs (35b–e). There may be individual variation in whether specific examples would be seen as acceptable or not.

(34)	Àa	[[ɓɛ́laa	dà	ɓòlu]	dì	káa]_VP.
	3sg.prf	sheep	3.and	goat	3pl	see

156‘He saw a sheep and a goat.’

157*(35a) [[Mǔ dà zù] kúlo]_VP

1583sg\space_under 3.and 3sg\interior take_out

159Exp. ‘Answer and explain!’

*(35b)	Dì-káá	[[hwáá	dà	kɔ́]	dì	kɛ́-ì]_VP.
	3pl-exi	argument	3.and	fight	3pl	do-inf

160Exp. ‘They are arguing and fighting.’

*(35c)	Àá	[[ɲìní	dà	ŋwèlí]	tɔ́ɔ]_VP.
	3sg.prf	3sg\breast	3.and	3sg\ear	Stand

161Exp. ‘She breastfed and listened attentively.’

^?(35d)	Àá	[[lɛ̀ɛ́	Dà	hwùlu]	kɛ́]_VP.
	3sg.prf	lie	3.and	deception	do

162‘He told a lie and deceived (people).’

^?(35e)	È	[[ɲèé	dà	ɲɛ̀í]	kɛ́]_VP	ŋwɔ̀ɔ	ordinateur	ɓà.
	3sg.b	3sg\hand	3.and	3sg\face	do	3sg.poss	computer	on

163‘He kept and maintained his computer.’

5.4.2. Modification

164Non-spatial nouns can generally be modified in NVCPs if the resulting structure is semantically well-formed. Further examples illustrate the modification of an autosemantic nominal hɛ́lî ‘party’ in a NVCPs hɛ́lî pú ‘have/throw a party’ (36) and líiɓâ kɛ́ ‘please (sb)’ with a relational noun (37).

(36a)	Dàá	[[hɛ́li	hwèèlɛ̀]_NP	pú]_VP.
	3pl.prf	Party	two	Pour

165‘They threw two parties.’

(36b)	Dàá	[[hɛ́li	^↓kɛ́nɛ]_NP	pú]_VP.
	3pl.prf	party	big	pour

166‘They threw a big party.’

(37a)	Àá	[Máría	[^↓líiɓá	^↓kéléé]]_NP	kɛ́]_VP.
	3sg.prf	PN	pleasure	all	do

167‘He satisfied all Maria’s desires.’

(37b)	Ŋàa	[ká	[hwàŋa	tá]]_NP	lɔ́]_VP.
	1sg.prf	2pl	encouragement	some	Enter

168‘I have encouraged you a little bit.’

169In contrast, the modification of body part names within NVCPs is usually ungrammatical; the modifier is only allowed between the external argument and the noun denoting the body part (38–39).

(38a)	Àá	[[mɛ̀ni	tà]_NP	ɲɛ́i	kúlo]_VP.
	3sg.prf	Problem	certain	face	take_out

170‘He has solved a certain problem.’

171(38b) * àá mɛ̀ni ɲɛ́i tà kúlo

(39a)	Àá	[[nɛ̀álɛ̀a	támaa]_NP	ɲɛ́i	kwɛ́li]_VP.
	3sg.prf	girl.pl	many	face	look_for

172‘He has seduced many girls.’

173(39b) *àá nɛ̀álɛ̀à ɲɛ́i támáá kwɛ́li

174However, sometimes nominal modification is acceptable in NVCPs with body parts (40):

(40)	Àa	[níi	kélee]_NP	hóŋ]_VP.
	3sg.prf	1sg\heart	all	catch

175‘I like him very much’, lit. ‘He has taken all my heart.’

176In NVCPs with preverbal spatial nouns, separating the spatial noun and the verb with any modifier is totally ungrammatical. Nominal modifiers can only be inserted between the external argument and the spatial noun (41–42).

(41a)	Ŋàá	[[mɔ̀ɓílii	hwèèlɛ̀]_NP	ɲáá	tɛ́]_VP.
	1sg.prf	car	two	upper_surface	go_up

177‘I’ve started two cars.’

178(41b) *ŋàá mɔ̀ɓílii ɲáá hwèèlɛ̀ tɛ́

(42a)	Ŋé	[[ŋwɔ́ɔ	yíle=ɣàà]_NP	hù	tɔ́ɔ̀]_VP.
	1sg.b	1sg.poss	dog=pl	interior	stand\l

179‘I trained my dogs.’

180*(42b) *ŋé ŋwɔ́ yíle hù=ɣàà tɔ̀ɔ

5.4.3. Pronominalisation

181Non-spatial nouns can be pronominalised in NVCPs as shown in (43) for constructions with autosemantic nouns tóu kɛ́ ‘extract palm oil’, lúɣô tǒo ‘bless’, hɔ́ŋ hɔ̌ɔ ‘tell a parable’, as well as in (44) for NVCPs with relational nouns hɛ́lɛ ɓó ‘greet sb’, líiɓâ kɛ́ ‘please sb’.

(43a)	Àa	tóu	kɛ́?	èè,	àá	[gɛ̀]_VP	o.
	3sg.prf	oil_palm_nut	do	yes	3sg.prf	3sg\make	emph

182‘Did he extract palm oil? Yes, he did it.’

(43b)	Àa	lúɣó	tǒo?	èè,	àá	[dǒo]_VP.
	3sg.prf	benediction	drop	yes	3sg.prf	3sg\drop

183‘Did he make a benediction? Yes, he did.’

(43c)	Àa	hɔ́ŋ	jɔ̌ɔ?	èe,	àá	[jɔ̌ɔ]_VP.
	3sg.prf	parable	strike	yes	3sg.prf	3sg\strike

184‘Did he tell a parable? Yes, he did.’

(44a)	Àá	zɛ̀lɛ́	ɓó?	èè,	àá	[mǒ]_VP.
	3sg.prf	3sg\greeting	implement	yes	3sg.prf	3sg\implement

185‘Did he greet him? Yes, he did.’

(44b)	Kàá	nìíɓá	^↓kɛ́?	èè,	kwàá	[gɛ̀	o]_VP.
	2pl.prf	3sg\pleasure	make	yes	1pl.excl	3sg\make	emph

186‘Did you please him? Yes, we really did (it).’

187Non-spatial nouns can also be pronominalised in NVCPs with postverbal arguments (45).

(45)	Àá	tɛ̀án	^↓ɓó	máa?	èè,	Àá	[mò]_VP	yɛ̂.
	3sg.prf	truth	say	1sg.on	yes	3sg.prf	3sg\say	2sg.on

188‘Did he tell me the truth? Yes, he told you (it).’

189However, in NVCPs with spatial nouns, the pronominalisation of the nominal element is dispreferred. In constructions with body parts, the shorter (pronominalised) version has been judged as incomplete and therefore pragmatically marked, as if the speaker wants to hide some information or s/he is angry, as shown in (46–47).

(46a)	Àa	é-líi	hóŋ?	Ee,	àa	[níi	hóŋ]_VP.
	3sg.prf	2sg heart	catch	yes	3sg.prf	1sg\heart	catch

190‘Do you like him? Yes, I do.’

191^?(46b) àa jǒŋ

(47a)	Àa	éwɔ́	mɛ̀ni-í	tíi	ɲɛ́i	kúlo?
	3sg.prf	2sg.poss	problem-art	dem	face	take_out

Èè,	Àá	[ɲɛ̀i	kúlo]_VP.
yes	3sg.prf	3sg\face	take_out

192‘Did he solve your problem? Yes, he solved it.’

193^?(47b) àá gùlo

194In constructions with preverbal spatial nouns, the pronominalisation of the spatial noun is ungrammatical (48–49).

(48a)	Àa	éwɔ́	kɛ̀ɛ́màaní	mù	kúlo?
	3sg.prf	2sg.poss	question	under	take_out

èè,	Àá	[mù	kúlo]_VP.
yes	3sg.prf	3sg\space_under	take_out

195‘Did he answer your question? Yes, he answered it.’

196*(48b) èè, àá gùlo.

(49a)	Yàá	mɔ̀ɓílii	!ɲáa	tɛ́?	èè,	ŋàá	[ɲàa	tɛ́]]_VP.
	2sg.prf	def\car	surface	go_up	yes	1sg.prf	3sg\surface	go_up

197‘Did you start the car? Yes, I started it.’

198*(49b) èè, àá dɛ̀

199To summarise, in VP-internal position, non-spatial nouns retain a considerable degree of syntactic autonomy, since they can be modified and pronominalised, sometimes also coordinated. On the contrary, spatial nouns appear as quite bound, generally dispreferring coordination, modification and pronominalisation.

5.5. NVCP nouns in VP-external position: ‘split predicate’ constructions

200In this section, we focus on the constructions where the NVCP noun is realised outside of the verb phrase (VP-external position), to which we refer as ‘split predicate’ constructions. Such constructions include intransitivisation, focalisation, relativisation and, to a lesser extent, topicalisation under tail-head linkage. The noun may surface in the subject position within the same clause, at the left periphery of the clause, or in a preceding clause within a biclausal structure.

5.5.1. Intransitive structures

11 Postverbal arguments do not belong to VP in Guinean Kpelle (Konoshenko 2014), as has been demonstra (...)

201As discussed in 4.1, due to productive P-lability, all NVCPs can be used intransitively. In such cases, the noun within NVCP is realised in the subject position, before the auxiliary, and the construction often has a passive interpretation unless lexically intransitive. Example (50) features NVCPs with non-spatial nouns. If the NVCP contains an external argument, both the external argument and the NVCP noun surface in the subject position (50c).11

(50a)	[Kpàlú]_S	àá	[kǔlo]_VP.
	miracle	3sg.prf	take_out

202‘A miracle was made.’

(50b)	[Tɛ́â]_S	àa	[ɓó]_VP	mîi.
	truth	3sg.prf	make	1sg.on

203‘Truth was told to me.’

(50c)	[Hɛ́ni	líiɓâ]_S	àa	[kɛ́]_VP.
	PN	pleasure	3sg.prf	do

204‘Heni was pleased (her wishes were fulfilled).’

205Despite their highly bound status in VP-internal position within transitive constructions, spatial nouns can also be separated from the verb by Aux in intransitive constructions. Thus, (51a) shows a transitive NVCP with a spatial preverbal noun allowing no modifiers to be inserted between máa and wíe, no pronominalisation or coordination, but in (51b), the preverbal spatial noun is obligatorily separated from the verb by a conjunctive Aux.

(51a)	Dàa	[Hɛ́ni	máa	^↓wíe]_VP.
	3pl.prf	PN	side_surface	be_heavy

206‘They respect Heni.’

(51b)	[Hɛ́ni	màa]_S	ě	[wíe]_VP.
	PN	side_surface	3sg.conj	be_heavy

207‘May Heni be respected.’

208Such intransitive structures feature a non-trivial discrepancy between the semantic and syntactic levels of representation. At the semantic level, the actual participant in (51b) is the external argument, and the TAMP semantics scopes over the whole NVCP, not only the verb stem, hence no literal meaning *‘may your side be heavy’ is possible in (51b). However, at the syntactic level, the only plausible bracketing in (51b) is that the noun mǎa ‘side surface’ belonging to the NVCP mǎa wǐe ‘respect’ forms a syntactic constituent with the external argument Hɛ́ni, surfacing as NP in the subject position.

209Example (52) shows a similar structure for NVCP ɲɛ́i kǔlo ‘solve’ with a body part noun.

(52)	[Ŋwɔ́	mɛ̀ni-i	ɲɛ́i]_S	àá	[kǔlo]_VP.
	1sg.poss	problem-art	face	3sg.prf	take_out

210‘My problem has been solved.’

211As we are showing below, similar syntax-semantics discrepancies are attested in other constructions involving syntactic splits of NVCPs.

5.5.2. Focalisation

212In Guinean Kpelle, focalisation is realised through a biclausal construction, whereby the focalised constituent is realised in a mini-clause containing a copula, and it is then repeated by a pronominal element in the main clause. Example (53b) shows the focalisation of a direct object.

(53a)	[Ŋé	[Pépèe	kàa]_VP]_IP.
	1sg.b	PN	see\l

213‘I saw Pepe.’

(53b)	[Pépèe	ɓé]_IP	[ŋé	gàa]_IP.
	Pepe	cop	1sg.b	3sg\see\l

214‘I saw PEPE’, ‘It’s Pepe that I saw.’

215This is equally possible for NVCPs for constructions with no external argument:

(54a)	[Kpàlu	ɓé]_IP	[è	gùlo]_IP.
	miracle	cop	3sg.b	3sg\take_out\l

216‘It was a miracle that he made.’

(54b)	[Tɛ̀án	^↓ká	tíí]_IP	[è	mò	mîi]_IP.
	truth	cop	that	3sg.b	3sg\make\l	1sg.on

217‘It was truth he told me.’

218For the NVCPs containing an external argument, there are two options under focalisation. First, just the external argument may be realised outside of the main clause with the whole NVCP surfacing within the main clause (55a, 56a), or both the external argument and the noun of NVCP can be fronted (55b, 56b). Note that the 1sg external argument is taken up by a 1sg pronominal marker on the nouns màanínîŋ ‘photo’ (which is itself a compound, 55a) and hɛ́lɛ̂ ‘greeting’ (56a); while the whole subject NP is taken by 3sg pronominals on the verbs in (55b, 56b).

(55a)	[Ɲáa	ɓé]_IP	[è	máa^↓nínîŋ	zèɣe]_IP.
	1sg.aut	cop	3sg.b	1sg\photo	take\l

219‘It’s me whom he photographed.’

(55b)	[Máa^↓níniŋ	ɓé]_IP	[è	zèɣe]_IP.
	1sg\photo	cop	3sg.b	3sg\take\l

220‘It’s my photo he took.’

(56a)	[Ɲáa	ɓé]_IP	[è	zɛ́lɛ̂	ɓò]_IP.
	1sg.aut	cop	3sg.b	1sg\greeting	make\l

221‘It’s me that he greeted.’

(56b)	[Zɛ́lɛ̂	ɓé]_IP	[è	mò]_IP.
	1sg\greeting	cop	3sg.b	3sg\make\l

222‘He GREETED me.’

223Overall, the semantic/pragmatic interpretation of examples like (55b, 56b) when the NVPC is split between the focus clause and the main clause depends on the degree of semantic independence between the noun and the verb within an NVCP or, conversely, its semantic unity. Thus in (55b), the focus is rather on the photo, or picture, that was taken, while (56b) arguably contains predicate focus. It can be uttered if a greeting as such is an unexpected behavior, e.g., when a child greets an older person, which is considered impolite. We should note that our understanding of such utterances may also be influenced by the semantic equivalents in European languages, French (during elicitation) and English (when presenting our findings in this paper), that we use to translate such constructions.

224Similar focus splits are also possible for NVCPs with spatial nouns, despite their generally more bound status, cf. also Section 5.5.1. Examples (57ab) further illustrate a NVCP ɲɛ́i kwɛ́li ‘seduce’ and a focus construction, where the external argument of NVPC surfaces in the focus clause meaning ‘It was Heni that I seduced’.

(57a)	[Ŋé	[Hɛ́ni	ɲɛ́i	kwɛ́lî]_VP]_IP.
	1sg.b	PN	face	look_for\l

225‘I seduced Heni.’

(57b)	[Hɛ́ni	ɓé]_IP	[ŋé	ɲɛ̀í	kwɛ́lî]_IP.
	PN	cop	1sg.b	3sg\face	look_for\l

226‘I seduced HENI.’

227Most importantly, it is possible to realise both the external argument and the nominal part of NVCP in the focus clause as shown in (58).

(58)	[Hɛ́ni	ɲɛ́i	ɓé]_IP	[ŋé	gwɛ̀li]_IP.
	PN	face	cop	1sg.b	3sg\look_for\l

228‘I SEDUCED Heni.’

229Crucially, the utterance in (58) is interpreted as having a predicate, rather than an argument, focus suggesting that, again, while structurally it is the subject NP that surfaces before the copula, semantically it is the whole predicate that the focus interpretation scopes over. In such constructions, focus scoping over the whole predicate was systematically attested in NVCPs with body part names as in (58), as well as in those with preverbal spatial nouns (59).

(59a)	[Gáa	[Hɛ́ni	màá	kpɔ̀-zî]_VP]_VP.
	1sg.exi	PN	side_surface	help-inf

230‘I am waiting for Heni.’

(59b)	[Hɛ́ni	ɓé]_IP	[gáa	màá	kpɔ̀-zî]_IP.
	PN	cop	1sg.exi	3sg\side_surface	help-inf

231‘It is Heni I am waiting for.’

(59c)	[Hɛ́ni	màa	ɓé	lɔ́]_IP	[gáa	gbɔ̀-zî]_IP.
	PN	side_surface	cop	only	1sg.exi	3sg\help-inf

232‘I am just WAITING for Heni.’

5.5.3. Relativisation

233Guinean Kpelle uses a correlative relativisation strategy, whereby the full-fledged head noun phrase precedes the relative clause, and it is then taken up by a pronominal element in the relative clause and in the main clause (Nikitina 2012; Khachaturyan 2023). This is shown in (60ab), where (60a) is a transitive clause with a VP-internal direct object mɔ̀ɓílîi tíi ‘that car’ and the verb yá ‘buy’, while (60b) features a relative clause with a relativised direct object. In the relative clause, the verb attaches an anaphoric object marker realised through initial consonant alternation and a low prefixal tone.

(60a)	É	[[mɔ̀ɓílii	^↓tíi]_DO	yâ]_VP.
	2sg.b	def\car.art	dem	buy\l

234‘You bought that car.’

(60b)	[Mɔ̀ɓílii_i	^↓tíi]_head	[é	_iɲà]_relative	[àá_i	kǎla]_main.
	def\car.art	dem	2sg.b	3sg\buy\l	3sg.prf	break

235‘The car you bought got broken.’

236Example (61) shows a relativised non-spatial autosemantic noun within a NVCP hɛ́li pú ‘throw a party’.

(61)	[Zɛ̀lí-i_i	ɲɛ́i]_head	[dàá	_ibǔ]_relative	[_igɛ̀nɛ́-ì]_main.
	def\party-art	dem	3pl.prf	3sg\pour	3sg\be_big-pred

237‘The party they’ve thrown is big.’

238Now consider similar examples (62ab) with a preverbal spatial noun within an NVCP ɲáa tɛ́ ‘start (an engine)’.

(62a)	É	[mɔ̀ɓílii	^↓tíi	ɲáa	tɛ̂]_VP.
	2sg.b	def\car.art	dem	upper_surface	go_up\l

239‘You started that car.’

(62b)	[Mɔ̀ɓílii_i	^↓tíi]_head	[é	_iɲàa	tɛ́]_relative
	def\car.art	dem	2sg.b	3sg\upper_surface	go_up\l

[_iàá	kǎla]_main.
3sg.prf	break

240‘The car you started got broken.’

241Example (62a) shows a transitive preverb construction ɲáa ‘upper surface’ + tɛ́ ‘go_up’ = ‘start (a car)’, the noun mɔ̀ɓílii ‘car’ being modified by a demonstrative. Example (62b) is a relative clause construction, where the external object mɔ̀ɓílii ^↓tíi is relativised, and the whole NVCP surfaces in the relative clause. Yet, example (63) is equally possible, but with a slightly different meaning.

(63)	[Mɔ̀ɓílii	^↓ɲáa-i	tíi]_head	[é	dɛ̀]_relative	[àá	gǎla]_main.
	def\car	upper_surface-art	dem	2sg.b	3sg\go_up	3sg.prf	3sg\break

242‘The way you started the car, broke it.’

243Structurally, in (63), it is the whole group mɔ̀ɓílii ɲáa that is relativised and surfaces at the left periphery, while in the relative clause, there is only the verb tɛ́ with the anaphoric object marker. While appearing in the head of the relative clause, the spatial noun ɲáa even attaches modifiers, i.e., a restrictive suffix -í and a demonstrative tíi. However, at the semantic level, what is relativised is the way of starting the car, rather than the car itself. Here, again, we observe a syntactic-semantic mismatch between the syntactic structure, e.g., spatial noun surfacing at the left periphery forming a constituent with the external argument, and its semantic interpretation, whereby the relativisation scopes over the whole predicate, rather than its nominal part.

244Similar examples were attested with body parts, e.g., in ɲɛ́i kǔlo ‘solve (a problem)’. Thus in (64), it was not the problem itself that made the hypothetical speaker happy, but the fact of solving the problem.

(64)	[Mɛ̀ni	ɲɛ́i		^↓tíi]_head	[é	gùlo]_relative	[àa
	problem	face.art		dem	2sg.b	3sg\take_out\l	3sg.prf
gwéi			nɛ̌ɛ]_main.
1sg\stomach.loc			be_nice

245‘I was happy that you solved the problem.’

246However, we should note that there was some variation in how acceptable such split relative structures were for other NVCPs in our data, hence they may not be fully productive. The main point here is that, whenever acceptable, a recurrent semantic-syntactic split is likely to be attested.

5.5.4. Topicalisation: tail-head linkage

247In this section, we look at tail-head constructions, in which utterances are linked together via partial repetition (Martínez 2023), the repeated part becoming the topic for the following utterance, contributing to the discourse coherence. In Guinean Kpelle, a typical tail-head linkage involves the repetition of a predicate from the previous utterance. The repeated predicate is realised at the left periphery of the next clause having an optional article and/or demonstrative (and an obligatory direct object if it is transitive). It is followed by a full clause usually containing the verb ɓó ‘implement’ with an anaphoric 3sg object referring to the topicalised predicate, also attaching clause linker -í; followed by the main clause. This is illustrated by fragments from Kpelle folktales. In (65a), an intransitive verb pá ‘come’ is repeated in the following clause, literally meaning ‘coming he made it’; while (65b) features the repetition of the transitive verb with a direct object.

(65a)	Nìní	è	pà;	[pá-i	tíi	kɛ̀â]	[è	mò-í],
	otter	3sg.b	come\l	come-art	dem	now	3sg	3sg\implement-lnk

ɲɛ̀í	è	kúló	ǹókòlòí	pɔ́.
3sg\face	3sg.conj	go_out	def\child-art	to

248‘The otter came. When he came, he craved the child’.

(65b)	É	gbòŋ̂	náa	yáli!	[gbòŋ̂	náá	yáli-i]
	2sg.b	def\door	opening	break	def\door	opening	break-art

[dǐ	mò-í],	kà	pá	ká	kɛ̀ɛ	káa!
3pl	3sg\implement\l-lnk	2pl.imp	come	2pl.conj	space	see

249‘Break the door! When they broke the door… Come look!’

250Example (66) further illustrates tail-head linkage of a NVCP with a preverbal spatial noun láa yɛ̌ɛ ‘give birth’. Here the whole predicate is realised at the left periphery, before the demonstrative:

(66)	È	lɛ́ɛ	kɛ̀á	làa,	è	nàa	yɛ́ɛ;	[nàá
	3sg.conj	stay	now	there,	3sg.conj	opening	go_down	3sg\opening

yɛ̀ɛ	tíi	kɛ̀á]	[è	mò],	nòŋ́	à	nɛ̀ɛnû.
go_down	dem	now	3sg.b	3sg\implement	3sg\child	with	girl

251‘She stayed there and she gave birth. As she gave birth, her child was a girl.’

252Elicitation suggests that realising the whole NVCP at the left periphery is the only acceptable strategy in (66). However, we have a natural example featuring an NVCP wɛ́li lá kɛ́ ‘love (in a non-romantic way)’, where the NVCP has been split in tail-head linkage and there is no ɓó verb in the second part of the linkage construction (67):

(67)	Mais	nɛ̀ápɛ̀lɛɛ	dìɛ́ŋ,	dǐ	dì-nâŋ	wɛ́li	lá	kɛ́.
	but	def\child.pl	3pl.contr	3pl.conj	3pl-father	love	mouth	do

[Dì-nâŋ	wɛ́li	lá-i	tíi]	[dǐ	gɛ̀-í],	yà	ɓé	kɛ̀â…
3pl-father	love	mouth-art	dem	3pl.b	3sg\do\l-lnk	3sg.aut	cop	now

253‘But the kids, in turn, loved their father. As they loved their father, that is…’

254Similar structures featuring NVCP splits involving spatial nouns were also generated in elicitation for backgrounding, but not requiring repetition; e.g., in (68) having NVCP ɲɛ́i tɔ̌ɔ ‘meet someone out of nostalgia’ (68).

(68)	[Ɲɛ̀í]	[è	dɔ̀ɔ̀	mà],	è	ɲàá
	3sg\face	3sg.b	3sg\stand\l	3sg.on	3sg.b	3sg\upper_surface

káa	yɛ̀		gwèi	hó	kɛ́	nɛ̀ɛ	lí.
see	3sg.quot		3sg\stomach.loc	neg	retr	be_nice	stat

255‘When he met her, he realised that she wasn’t happy.’

256The degree of acceptability of such structures and their pragmatic interpretation is still to be studied in the future, preferably on naturalistic data. The crucial observation here is that it is possible to split a predicate containing a spatial noun for backgrounding.

257Appendix 2 summarises what different phonological, morphological and syntactic phenomena reveal about (i) the degree of noun boundedness and (ii) the bracketing of NNV sequences in NVCPs.

6. Discussion

6.1. How many different NVCP types are there in Guinean Kpelle?

258In Section 3, we tentatively divided the nouns within NVCPs into four groups, based on their straightforward syntactic and semantic properties: autosemantic non-spatial nouns, relational non-spatial nouns, body parts and preverbal spatial nouns. In Section 4, we focussed on the argument structure of NVCPs showing that the main peculiarity of NVCPs with autosemantic nouns is that they require no external argument; while other NVCPs are used with an external argument (except for some kinship terms used non-relationally with a special marking, cf. Section 4.2). In the latter case, two syntactic bracketings are potentially possible: [N[NV]] or [[NN]V]. In Section 5, we have explored phonological, morphological, semantic-distributional and syntactic properties of nouns within NVCPs, capturing, first, the degree of their boundedness, and second, the potential bracketing, cf. the summary of those properties in Appendix 2.

259The properties discussed in Section 5 show that, when it comes to boundedness, all nouns used within NVCPs are rather autonomous phonologically as they have lexical tones just like other nouns (5.1.1). Further differentiating criteria reveal little difference between autosemantic and relational non-spatial nouns. They tend to be used with one or two verbs, with rather predictable meanings (5.3); they also tend to retain a considerable degree of syntactic autonomy, except for conjunction, which is dispreferred in both groups of nouns (5.4). Based on this evidence, and modulo a clear difference in their argument structure, we argue that NVCPs containing non-spatial nouns form a single type in Guinean Kpelle, roughly corresponding to light verb constructions in other languages (Butt 2010).

260At the same time, the evidence is quite consistent that spatial nouns ‒ body part names and preverbal spatial nouns ‒ are relatively more bound in Guinean Kpelle, e.g., having less predictable semantics within NVCPs (5.3), dispreferring or banning pronominalisation and modification (5.4). There is a further asymmetry between the two noun types, in that preverbal spatial nouns have the highest degree of boundedness. Unlike body part names, preverbal spatial nouns have restricted occurrence outside of NVCPs only appearing in nominal compounds (5.3.1), they combine with any semantic types of external arguments ‒ human or non-human (5.3.3), and, finally, preverbal spatial nouns can co-occur with body parts within NVCPs. In such structures, preverbal spatial nouns are consistently closer to the verb than body parts as shown in (69–70), cf. also Section 3.1. In the examples below, NVCPs involve both a body part, i.e., ɲɛ́i ‘face’ (69) and ŋwǔŋ ‘head’ (70), and a preverbal spatial noun, i.e., láa ‘opening’ (69) and mǎa ‘side surface’ (70). In both (69–70), preverbal spatial nouns are linearly adjacent to the verb.

(69)	Gáa	ɲɛ́i	láa	hìé-ì.
	1sg.cop	1sg\face	opening	walk-inf

261‘I am observing the space’ (by looking at different parts of it)

(70)	Pépèe	àá	Hèhèe	ŋwùŋ	máa	^↓ɓó.
	PN	3sg.prf	PN	head	side_surface	implement

262‘Pepee saved Hehee.’

263Therefore, preverbal spatial nouns are not paradigmatically opposed to body parts, their syntactic and distributional properties suggesting that they form the most bound type of nouns in NVCPs. Hence, nouns within NVCPs make up a hierarchy of boundedness in Guinean Kpelle:

264(71) non-spatial nouns (autosemantic & relational) > body parts > preverbal nouns

265The second relevant parameter is bracketing, e.g., whether a noun within an NVCP forms an immediate constituent with the verb or the external argument if any. As for the constructions with non-spatial nouns, the possibility of their pronominalisation and modification (5.4), let alone the split predicate structures (5.5), suggests that they most likely adhere to their external argument first, e.g., [[NN]V]. Tone rule ordering (5.1.2) suggests that at least for spatial nouns, the phonological bracketing may be [N [NV]]. Since preverbal nouns only occur in NVCPs and nominal compounds (5.3.1), we may assume that they are stored as fixed combinations with the verb, hence a similar [N[NV]] bracketing is more likely for this type. Dispreferred or ungrammatical pronominalisation and modification of spatial nouns also suggest that they might form an immediate constituent with the verb.

266We have also demonstrated that the so-called “split predicate” constructions ‒ involving intransitivisation (5.5.1), focalisation (5.5.2), relativisation (5.5.3) and to a lesser extent topicalisation (5.5.4) ‒ reveal a non-trivial ability of Guinean Kpelle NVCPs even containing more bound nouns to be syntactically split in such structures patterning as [[NN] … V]. However, despite their syntactic splitability, such structures systematically have a semantic interpretation scoping over the whole predicate, suggesting that, first, their bracketing may still be [N[NV]] at the semantic representation, and that, second, there is a consistent mismatch between such syntactic structures and their semantic interpretation in Guinean Kpelle. The results pertaining to the bracketing are summarised in Table 13.

Noun type within NVCP

Default bracketing

non-spatial nouns

(autosemantic & relational)

[[NN] V]

spatial nouns

(body parts & preverbal nouns)

[N [NV]], but [[NN] … V] in split predicate constructions

267Table 13. Summary of bracketing in NVCPs

6.2. NVCP types in other Mande languages

268Overall, NVCPs seem to pattern differently in Western and Eastern Mande branches. Western Mande, e.g., Niokolo Maninka (Manding, Creissels 2013b) and Samogo (Samogo-Bobo, McPherson 2019b), tend to feature two very distinct types of complex verb structures: (i) noun-verb compounds featuring an open-ended list of bound nouns, and (ii) a limited set of preverbal markers – typically having no more than three items – referred to as preverbs and sometimes as prefixes, e.g., Shluinsky (2014) on Susu and Keïta (1989) on Jallonke, cf. also (Vydrin 2009; Creissels 2013). The first type is illustrated by (72ab), and (73ab) features the preverbs ma and to in Niokolo Maninka.

(72a)	Yir-óo	mǎŋ	jii-bóŋ	foloo.
	tree-art	pfv.neg	water-pour	yet

269‘The tree has not been watered yet.’

(72b)	Ñamféŋ-o	sé	i	daa-ñiniŋ	súb-ǒo	la.
	lion-art	potp	refl	mouth-search	meat-art	obl

270‘The lion eats meat.’ (Creissels 2013: 52)

(73a)	I	ñán-ta	ŋ	má	felé-la	lée.
	2sg	must-pfv	1sg	prev	look-inf	foc

271‘You should examine me well.’

(73b)	Saa	ye	Siláa	to	kúntu.
	snake.art	pfv	road.art	prev	cut

272‘A snake crossed the road.’ (Creissels 2013: 59)

12 Kastenholz (2000: 340) reports that in Bamana (Manding), lá- and mǎ- preverbs can be separated fr (...)

273In Niokolo Maninka, body part names, e.g., daa ‘mouth’ (72b), belong to the first type among other nouns, e.g., jii ‘water’ in (72a). In Seenku, body part names, e.g., dzʋ́ ‘outer mouth’, kɔ̰̏n ‘head’, form the main bulk of what McPerson (2020: 328) calls ‘noun-verb compounds’. In both languages, they seem to be clearly opposed to the preverbs, which have little morphosyntactic autonomy.12 Note that the má preverb in Maninka (73a) is most likely a cognate of mǎa ‘side surface’ in Guinean Kpelle.

274In contrast, in Southern Mande languages within the Eastern branch, the nominal stems within NVCPs typically retain a considerable morphosyntactic autonomy irrespective of their lexical type. Two descriptive approaches have emerged for the languages of this group. First, Vydrin (2009) and Makeeva (2013), focussing on spatial nouns in Eastern Dan and Kla-Dan respectively, do not view body part names as substantially different from the constructions with preverbal spatial nouns, both types referred to as preverbs. Still, Makeeva (2013) distinguishes between preverbs that are related to homonymous postpositions (ɓȁ̰ n ‘side surface’ / pp ‘on’ , tȁ n ‘horizontal surface’ / pp ‘on’, le̋ n ‘end, point’ / pp ‘in front’, gɯ́ n ‘interior’ / pp ‘in’, gɔ̏ n ‘head ; top’ / pp ‘at, for’) and those not related to homonymous postpositions (zȍ ‘heart’, ya̰̋ ‘eye’, li̋ ‘mouth, opening’). This distinction roughly corresponds to the division between preverbal nouns having more abstract semantics and related to general spatial nouns, as opposed to body part names in Guinean Kpelle.

275A separate line of Southern Mande studies, represented by (Aplonova 2019; Khachaturyan 2017; Kuznecova 2013), considers a broader range of nouns within NVCPs, including non-spatial ones, in Guro, Mano and Goo, respectively. Kuznecova (2013) thus uses the term ‘preverbs’ in a much broader sense, referring to all nouns within NVCPs. These authors show that there is no essential difference between different noun types within NVCPs in the respective languages.

276Guinean Kpelle NVCPs thus present an intermediate case between other languages within Western Mande branch, to which it belongs, and the Southern branch. First, its NVCPs have different properties predicted by the noun type, albeit with a more fine-grained boundedness scale, i.e., non-spatial > body part > preverbal noun. The scale also implies that there is some difference in the degree of boundedness between NVCPs body parts and preverbal nouns in Guinean Kpelle. Both these properties are more reminiscent of what has been attested in Western Mande. At the same time, all noun types within NVCPs retain some degree of autonomy in Guinean Kpelle, especially when it comes to ‘split predicate’ constructions (Section 5.5), which are also attested in Southern Mande; and even its preverbal nouns ‒ the most bound of all noun types ‒ retain their spatial semantics to a certain degree. This brings Guinean Kpelle NVCPs closer to Southern Mande, with which it borders geographically and shares some non-trivial grammatical features, e.g., abundant fusion and person-number cross-referencing (Konoshenko 2020).

277In Section 5.5, we have discussed the so-called ‘split predicate’ constructions revealing a consistent mismatch between the syntactic structure, i.e., when the noun within NVCP forms a constituent with the external argument, and its semantic interpretation, when the noun and the verb within NVCPs function as a single semantic unit. Similar bracketing mismatches are attested at different levels in other Mande languages. Thus, in Eastern Dan, a noun can be separated from the verb by a modifier within NVCP, but the modifier semantically scopes over the predicate, rather than over the noun with the external argument (Vydrin 2009). In Seenku and Niokolo Maninka, the preverbs are strongly bound and, arguably, they are part of the verb, yet phonologically they depend on the external argument (Creissels 2013; McPherson 2020). The systematicity of such mismatches suggests that the grammaticalisation of complex verbs in Mande languages has been a complex multi-layered process, pushed forward by the semantic idiomaticity of NVCPs, yet with syntax and/or phonology somehow staying behind and revealing its earlier stages.

7. Conclusions

278In this paper, we have provided a detailed description of NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle, and this is the first systematic account of noun properties within NVCPs in a Southwestern Mande language. We have demonstrated that non-spatial nouns, body part names and preverbal nouns show somewhat different properties within NVCPs in Guinean Kpelle, yet they all retain a considerable degree of structural autonomy, suggesting an overall rather weak degree of (pseudo)-incorporation (Khachaturyan 2017).

279A clear limitation of this study is that we have only focussed on the properties of nouns within NVCPs, without looking at the semantics of verbs selected by specific nouns, especially when there is a one-to-one correspondence between a noun and a possible verb it occurs with (Pompei & Piunno 2023). Furthermore, our findings are mainly based on elicitation, and it is necessary to test whether they hold for the natural discourse data in the future.

Abbreviations

2801 – first person

2812 – second person

2823 – third person

283art – article

284aut – autonomous

285b – basic predicative marker

286cp – complex predicate

287conj – conjunctive

288contr – contrastive

289cop – copula

290def – definite

291dem – demonstrative

292emph – emphatic marker

293exi – existential

294excl – exclusive

295foc – focus

296h – high tone

297imp – imperative

298incl – inclusive

299inf – infinitive

300ipfv – imperfective

301l – low tone

302lnk – linker

303loc – locative

304neg – negative

305nvcp – noun+verb complex predicate

306obl – oblique argument postposition

307pfv – perfective

308pl – plural

309pn – proper noun

310potp – positive potential

311poss – possessive

312pred – predicative

313prev – preverb

314prf – perfect

315refl – reflexive

316retr – retrospective

317sg – singular

318stat – stative

319quot – quotative

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Annexe

Appendix 1. Constructions explored in this study

Noun	Meaning	Noun type	Verb	Meaning	Spatial noun	NVCP semantics
kólô	‘work’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘work’
lóno	‘talk’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘talk’
kèémàanî	‘question’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘ask’
hwáa	‘argument’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘argue’
kɔ́	‘war’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘fight a war’
lɛ́ɛ	‘lie’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’	ɓà	‘lie to sb’
hwɛ́lî	‘music’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘play music’
hwǔlu	‘lie’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘tell lies’
lìewôo	‘advice’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘give advice’
pélê	‘talk’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘play’
tóu	‘oil palm nut’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘extract palm oil’
tíi	‘field	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’		‘cultivate a field’
hɛ́lî	‘party’	autosem	pú	‘pour’		‘have a party’
pélê	‘talk’	autosem	ɓó	‘implement’		‘talk’
tìhôo	‘sneeze’	autosem	ɓó	‘implement’		‘sneeze’
kɔ́lɔ	‘skin’	autosem	ɓó	‘implement’		‘peel off the skin’
wɛ̀lɛ̂ɛ	‘commission’	autosem	ɓó	‘implement’		‘commission’
kpǎlu	‘miracle’	autosem	kǔlo	‘take out’		‘work miracles’
hɛ́lâa	‘sacrifice’	autosem	kǔlo	‘take out’		‘make a sacrifice’
tǔmɔ	‘weed’	autosem	kǔlo	‘take out’		‘weed’
káhwe	‘coffee’	autosem	kǔlo	‘take out’		‘harvest coffee’
gílê	‘running’	autosem	hěɣe	‘take’		‘run’
tɛ̀ân	‘truth’	autosem	ɓó	‘implement’	ɓà	‘tell the truth’
ɓàɣà	‘offense’	autosem	ɓó	‘implement’	ɓà	‘insult sb’
háli	‘medicine’	autosem	kɛ́	‘do’	ɓà	‘treat sb’
lúɣô	‘benediction’	autosem	tǒo	‘drop’		‘bless’
wěle	‘song’	autosem	tǒo	‘drop’		‘sing’
ɓáɠa	‘porridge’	autosem	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’		‘cook porridge’
hwǐli	‘pilaf’	autosem	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’		‘cook pilaf’
hɔ́ŋ	‘parable’	autosem	hɔ̌ɔ	‘strike’		‘tell a parable’
yɛ̌ɠɛ	‘luck’	autosem	hɔ̀lɔɓó	‘get’		‘be lucky’
tɔ̌nɔ	‘benefit’	autosem	hɔ̀lɔɓó	‘get’		‘benefit’
kwɛ́lîŋ	‘inheritance’	autosem	hɔ̀lɔɓó	‘get’		‘inherit’
poss líiɓâ	‘pleasure’	relational	kɛ́	‘do’		‘satisfy sb’
poss lóno	‘talk’	relational	kɛ́	‘do’		‘discuss sb or sth’
poss háli	‘medicine’	relational	kɛ́	‘do’		‘treat sb’
poss hɛ́lɛ̂	‘greeting’	relational	ɓó	‘implement’		‘greet sb’
poss pélê	‘talk’	relational	ɓó	‘implement’		‘discuss sb or sth’
poss mɔ́nɔ	‘condemnation’	relational	ɓó	‘implement’		‘condemn sb’
poss wɔ́lɔ	‘crying’	relational	ɓó	‘implement’		‘weep for sb’
poss hwǎŋa	‘force’	relational	lɔ́	‘enter’		‘encourage’
poss wɛ̀lâa	‘urine’	relational	ɓó	‘implement’		‘urinate’
poss ɲɛ́i	‘face’	body part	kǔlo	‘take out’		‘solve’
poss ɲɛ́i	‘face’	body part	kwɛ́li	‘look for’		‘seduce’
poss ɲɛ́i	‘face’	body part	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’		‘meet’
poss ɲɛ́i	‘face’	body part	kɛ́	‘do’	ɓà	‘take care’
poss líi	‘heart’	body part	hǒŋ	‘catch’		‘please’
poss líi	‘heart’	body part	hólu	‘sting’		‘annoy’
poss líi	‘heart’	body part	kǔlo	‘take out’		‘die’
poss ɲíni	‘breast’	body part	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’		‘breastfeed’
poss kɔ́ɠɔ́	‘leg’	body part	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’		‘begin’
poss púlû	‘back’	body part	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’		‘turn around’
poss hwíin	‘force’	body part	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’		‘rest’
poss wéli	‘ear’	body part	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’	ɓà	‘listen closely’
poss ɲínaa	‘eyes’	body part	ɓó	‘implement’		‘wake up’
poss lá	‘mouth’	body part	ɓó	‘implement’		‘open mouth’
poss yéé	‘hand’	body part	kɛ́	‘do’	ɓà	‘guard’
poss hǔ	‘interior’	preverbal	kǔlo	‘take out’		‘explain’
poss mǔ	‘under’	preverbal	kǔlo	‘take out’		‘reply’
poss mǔ	‘under’	preverbal	hěɣe	‘take’		‘get up’
poss ɲáa	‘upper surface’	preverbal	tɛ́	‘go up’		‘start engine’
poss ɲáa	‘upper surface’	preverbal	yɛ̌ɛ	‘go down’		‘stop engine’
poss ɲáa	‘upper surface’	preverbal	kpɔ̌ŋ	‘assemble		‘assemble’
poss mǎa	‘side surface’	preverbal	kpɔ̌ŋ	‘assemble		‘wait’
poss mǎa	‘side surface’	preverbal	ɓó	‘implement’		‘peel’
poss ɲáa	‘upper surface’	preverbal	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’	ɓà	‘set against’
poss hǔ	‘interior’	preverbal	tɔ̌ɔ	‘stand’		‘train’

Appendix 2. Summary of noun properties within NVCPs based on all criteria

NA stands for non-applicable

Noun type within NVCP	non-spatial		spatial
Noun type within NVCP	autosem	relational	body parts	preverbal nouns
Phonology
Lexical tones	not bound	not bound	not bound	not bound
Rule ordering	NA	no examples	[N [NV]]	[N [NV]]
Morphology
{L^H} tone marker for kinship terms and body parts used non-relationally	NA	more bound (incorporation marker)	more bound (incorporation marker)	NA
Distribution and semantics
Occurrence outside of NVCPs	yes, with occasional exceptions		yes	only in compounds
Compositionality	more compositional		less compositional
Verbs	one or two verbs		many verbs
External arguments	NA	human	mostly human	any
Syntax
Non-split predicate constructions
Coordination	dispreferred	dispreferred	dispreferred	ungrammatical
Modification	possible	possible	dispreferred	ungrammatical
Pronominalisation	possible	possible	dispreferred	ungrammatical
Split predicate constructions
Intransitive	possible	possible (semantics depends on the predicate)	possible (but semantics scopes over the whole predicate)
Focus	possible	possible (semantics depends on the predicate)	possible (but semantics scopes over the whole predicate)
Relativisation	possible	possible (semantics depends on the predicate)	possible (but semantics scopes over the whole predicate)
Tail-head	usually no split predicates, but sparse evidence

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Notes

1 Within the Mandeist literature, Khachaturyan (2017) uses the term bound N+V combinations; Aplonova (2019) also takes a holistic approach exploring various types of NVCPs, but refers to them as complex verbs, somehow implying that nominal elements are more bounded in such constructions, which is not necessarily the case. A subtype of NVCPs involving spatial nouns and verbs similar to (1cd) was labelled N+V compounds by McPherson (2020) or verbal complexes containing preverbs and verbs (Makeeva 2013; Vydrin 2009). Here we opt for the term N+V (noun-based) complex predicates following Aplonova et al. (2024), who distinguish between noun-based and verb-based complex predicates, whereby the former include a nominal and a verbal stem, while the latter contain several verb stems.

2 In isolation, many speakers neutralise the surface contrast between /H/ and /HL/ on the stems having a final light syllable, e.g., CV and CVCV; but this phenomenon is not relevant for the present analysis.

3 In the underlying representations, prefixal grammatical tones accompanying initial consonant alternations (Section 2.3) are marked with superscripts before the host word, e.g., ^Lněe ‘his mother’; replacive grammatical tones are marked with superscripts in figure brackets after the host, e.g., nɛ́a^{LH} ‘wife’. In the surface representation, ^↓marks downstepped High tone.

4 In some dialects, the /z/ phoneme corresponds to [dʒ] represented here as j following the Africanist tradition.

5 Typically for Southwestern Mande, the same pronominal prefixes are also used to encode non-nominative subjects in Resultative-Stative TAM constructions (Vydrin 2011). For this reason, we label them ‘polyfunctional’, rather than non-subject pronominals.

6 Note that not all TAM constructions involve an AUX marker in Guinean Kpelle. Thus, a Resultative-Stative construction (a) is only marked by verbal suffixes and is characterised by a non-nominative subject marked by polyfunctional pronominals, cf. Section 2.4 (Vydrin 2011). Progressive (b) and Future constructions are formed with an existential auxiliary káa ‘be’ and a lexical verb in the Infinitive form; they also feature non-nominative pronominal subject coding.

(a) é-lɛ́lɛ-ɛ-ì

2sg-be_beautiful-stat-pred

‘You are beautiful.’

(b)	Gáa	wèle	tòô-i
	1sg\exi	song	fall-inf

‘I am singing a song.’

7 In (8), we label postverbal arguments as AdP, since they have the same syntactic function as adpositional phrases in languages with more grammaticalised adpositions.

8 In this paper, we use the term ‘external argument’ precisely to refer to NPs immediately preceding the nominal component of NVCP. We refer to the arguments introduced by general spatial nouns and following the verb as ‘postverbal arguments’, cf. Section 4.2; although they may also be viewed as external arguments in a more abstract syntactic sense. Note that the external argument may also be coreferential to the subject, e.g., ɲɛ́i ‘face’ + kɛ́ ‘do’ = ‘take care’.

9 Note that the {L} head marking is orthogonal to the non-referential {L^H} marking of relational nouns.

10 In this and the following subsection, glossed examples are provided with surface tones only.

11 Postverbal arguments do not belong to VP in Guinean Kpelle (Konoshenko 2014), as has been demonstrated for some other Mande languages as well (Nikitina 2009).

12 Kastenholz (2000: 340) reports that in Bamana (Manding), lá- and mǎ- preverbs can be separated from the verb in passive constructions (sic!), hence they have some autonomy; the reliability of his data has been cast into doubt by Vydrin (p.c., 2025).

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Maria Konoshenko et Maria Uvarova, « N+V complex predicates in Guinean Kpelle: », Mandenkan, 72 | -0001, 81-128.

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Maria Konoshenko et Maria Uvarova, « N+V complex predicates in Guinean Kpelle: », Mandenkan [En ligne], 72 | 2025, mis en ligne le 13 août 2025, consulté le 20 juillet 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/mandenkan/3730 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/14h2e

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Maria Konoshenko

University of Helsinki

maria.konoshenko@helsinki.fi

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Appendix 1. Constructions explored in this study

Appendix 2. Summary of noun properties within NVCPs based on all criteria

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