ARGUMENT MOVEMENT IN KÙCÉ: A MINIMALIST APPROACH

Argument movement is a scrambling operation whose properties have been elucidated and its ramifications explored over the last couple of years within the Generative Grammar model. Nevertheless, this scrambling operation has continued to interest scholars particularly because of many parametric variations that exist across languages. This paper therefore investigates Argument movement in Kùcé, a Niger-Congo language spoken in Bassa, Plateau State, North-Central Nigeria, with the aim of determining the properties of the movement operation as well as the triggers responsible for the movement. The study employed the qualitative research methodology, as data were sourced from competent native speakers of Kùcé with the use of a researcher-designed wordlist, Ibadan wordlist containing about five hundred words, and unstructured oral interview. The data were then subjected to descriptive content analysis. Using the Minimalist Program (MP) as a framework, the study found that Argument movement in raising constructions is essentially to value the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) feature of the superficial subject against the strong EPP feature of subject agreement (AGRS) in a Spec head configuration before spell out. The study also found that arguments in ergative constructions value their Case in relation to the verb prior to movement, which makes movement not for Case valuation but for satisfying the strong EPP feature of AGRS. In Verb Phrase-Internal Subject Hypothesis, not only can the EPP features be valued, but also the Nominative Case features of the subject argument. However, strong EPP features essentially constitute the trigger responsible for movement as Nominative Case features are free riders which are valued along with the EPP features to ensure convergence.