Paradigmatic gaps in (quasi-)serial verb constructions

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the idiosyncratic morphological restrictions on Faroese try and. Both verbs must be formally identical, and further, the verbs must be in their imperative form, infinitive form, or a form syncretic with the infinitive. The restrictions in Faroese are similar to restrictions on English try and (Carden and Pesetsky 1977) and go get (Bjorkman 2016) where both verbs must be bare. Bjorkman (2016) proposes that both verbs in go get must realize an imperative feature and inflection assigned by a higher head and that these features can only be jointly expressed as a bare verb. We extend Bjorkman's analysis by claiming that imperatives (at least in Faroese) already contain an infinitive feature, so Faroese try and is compatible with both an imperative and infinitive. However, all other forms, including forms that are syncretic with the imperative, are ungrammatical due to the extra feature(s) involved. Our study shows that Bjorkman's (2016) proposal for English go get can be extended to Faroese try and and it provides an argument that the imperative should be thought of as featurally dependent on a non-finite feature.