Bardi Complex Predicates as a Challenge to Monotonicity

Bardi (Nyulnyulan, Australian) has both simple and complex predicates and extensive morphological marking on the inflecting verb for agreement and valency. While in simple predicates valency marking is straightforward, in complex predicates there is a mismatch, a 'missing' argument which is marked in the verb but is not subcategorised for in the argument structure. It appears that the coverb modifies the F-structure introduced by the light verb -- if so, this is a clear violation of monotonicity.