Restructuring with ARI

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis of the verbal element ari in Basque. We will claim that ari is not an auxiliary-like element, but, rather, a verb. Furthermore, we posit the existence of a restructuring process that turns the main verb ari and the nominalized verb of its complement into one single complex verbal unit. This restructuring process converts a complex biclausal structure into a monoclausal one, accounting in this way for the characteristics of ari constructions that we will point out in the course of the following discussion.
   The article is organized in the following way. In section 1, we provide some background information on 'particles' which, like ari, appear between main verbs and the auxiliary forms in affirmative clauses. We will show that such elements do not pattern together as a group, but actually belong to different categories: inflectional elements (bide, omen, ote, etc.), auxiliary forms (ahal) and main verbs (nahi, behar). We will try to establish the status of ari with respect to these elements. The properties of ari constructions are described in section 2, and, finally, in section 3 we propose an analysis of ari as a main verb optionally undergoing restructuring in some contexts.This analysis is shown to be more explanatory than other alternatives examined in that section.