ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the fundamental question, what is the serial verb parameter? In other words, why does the grammar of Èdó allow verb serialization whereas English does not? Or, to take a finer-grain version of the question, why do resultative SVCs show up consistently as V-V compounds in Igbo and Chinese? The basic claim that I will argue for is that the serial verb parameter can be derived from differences in the nature and “strength” of Tense-bearing functional heads across languages (cf. Muysken 1988, Déchaine 1993, Collins 1997, also Baker 1989, traceable to Roberts 1985).
