Chaithra Puttaswamy (IIT Kanpur), Oliver Bond (Surrey) and Dávid Győrfi (Surrey)
Kannada (Dravidian; India) presents with a large number of co-headed verbs (or VV complex predicates) in which lexical verbs in participle, infinitive or gerundive form combine with a restricted set of over 20 'modulator' verbs encoding a variety of aspectual, modal and valence alternations. These modulators can be stacked, such that a complex predicate can function as the lexical head for additional modulators, with at least three modulators possible in the most complex stacked constructions. In this presentation, we outline the properties of Kannada's complex verbal system and explore the limitations on the ways in which modulators can combine to form monoclausal structures.
