TRANSITIVITY AND DOUBLE OBJECT CONSTRUCTION IN IGBO Maduabuchi Sennen Agbo and Lendzemo Constantine Yuka Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Benin, Nigeria. lc_yuka@yahoo.co.uk , lcyuka@uniben.edu maduagbo@yahoo.com The classification of Igbo verbs by prominent scholars of Igbo grammar has been as contentious as it has been interesting. Even more controversial has been the question of transitivity in Igbo (Ubahakwe 1976, Uwalaka 1984, Nwachukwu 1984a, Emenanjo 1975, 2005 and other works). Following Emenanjo (2005), we highlight the relevance of complementation rather than transitivity in the classification of Igbo verbs. This paper combines Hopper and Thomson’s (1980) Transitivity Hypothesis and Emenanjo’s (2005) complementation based classification of Igbo verbs, to argue that the composite scores of morpho-syntactic and semantic parameters of each verb specifies the transitivity alternation of the verb and the arguments it subcategorizes for. We identify the significance of applicative constructions to the total transfer of an object from an agent to a patient and argue further that only constructions with general complement verbs have the potentials to participate in double object constructions in Igbo. Our conclusion that transitivity as a continuum can have validity strictly at the clause level may not be restricted to Igbo grammar since cross-linguistics evidence (Hopper and Thomson, 1980) shows that the specification of the transitivity features of a verb in isolation can turn out to be very misleading. La classification des verbes de la langue igbo par d’éminents chercheurs reste une question litigieuse et intéressante. Elle est d’autant plus controversée lorsqu’il s’agit de la transitivité en igbo (Ubahakwe, 1976, Uwalaka 1984, Nwachukwu 1984a, Emenanjo 1975, 2005 et d’autres).  l’instar d’Emenanjo (2005), nous mettons en relief la pertinence du complément plutôt que celle de la  dans la classification des verbes igbo. Cet article fait l’apologie de la synthèse de l’se de la  de Hopper et Thomson (1980) et la classification des verbes igbo  sur le complément de Emenanjo dans la mesure où il soutient que les composantes caractéristiques des tres morpho- syntactiques et sémantiques de chaque verbe concourent à spécifier l’alternance de la  du verbe et les arguments de sa sous-catégorisation. Nous identifions l’importance de constructions de l’applicatif au transfert complet d’un objet de la position agent  celle du patient, et nous soutenons plus loin que seules les constructions qui ont des verbes à compléments raux sont à même de participer aux constructions d’objet double en igbo. Notre conclusion selon laquelle la  en tant que continuum ne peut avoir sa  qu’au niveau de la phrase pourrait ne pas se limiter à la grammaire igbo puisque les preuves provenant de plusieurs langues (Hopper et Thomson, 1980) montrent que la  des traits de la  d’un verbe en isolation peut conduire  l’erreur. 0. INTRODUCTION The question of transitivity in Igbo syntax has remained controversial. Prominent scholarly works on the subject (Emenanjo 1975, 1978, 2005; Nwachukwu 1984a:Uwalaka 1984, 1988 and Ubahakwe, 1976) have focused on the rigid split of Igbo verbs into transitive and intransitive classes. No doubt, Igbo is a verb 1 language and the study of any subclass of its verbs amounts to the study of the language 2 . However, the notion of 1 For the Igbo language, a study of the syntactic and semantic properties of any class of its verbs can stand as a study of the language (Uwalaka, 1988; 1984). 2 The examples in this paper were taken mostly from the daily utterances by speakers of the Nnewi and Nsukka dialect clusters of Igbo. The examples were tested for grammaticality with five native speakers of