Split and Split/Doubled Inflectional Patterns

Not all languages show obligatory verbal inflection on only the auxiliary verb, only the lexical verb, or simultaneously on both, as in the AUX-headed, LEX-headed, and Doubled (or co-headed) inflectional patterns, respectively. There are also languages which split the obligatory inflectional categories between the auxiliary verb element and the lexical verb element. This chapter deals with this so-called ‘split’ pattern. It also addresses the striking split/doubled pattern. In this group are languages that split certain types of inflectional categories between the auxiliary verb part and/or the lexical verb of the construction, but other inflectional categories are realized on both the auxiliary verb and the lexical verb. A wide range of split and split/doubled inflectional patterns is attested in auxiliary verb constructions from around the world. These show a number of different sub-patterns, but all entail splits in which both the lexical verb and the auxiliary verb allow a different (sub)set of inflectional categories to be encoded on them, sometimes overlapping in the case of split/doubled patterns, or not in the case of true split patterns. Lexical verbs may also be marked as syntactic, phrasal, or structural dependents on the auxiliary head, despite the inflectional head properties being distributed between the lexical verb and the auxiliary. In a small number of cases, it is instead the auxiliary that is marked as dependent in a split or split/doubled AVC.