Report verbs, a distinct class of verbs used in both direct and indirect speech, have been widely acknowledged by grammarians across languages. In Yoruba linguistics, however, prior studies have predominantly focused on classifying these verbs and analyzing their complementation patterns through traditional elicitation techniques such as fieldwork and grammaticality judgments, often neglecting co-occurrence patterns of the report verbs using naturally occurring data. Therefore, this study investigates the co-occurrence and complementation patterns of report verbs in Yoruba through corpus-based analysis, with the goal of evaluating the validity of claims made in existing literature. The data were sọurced from a generalized Yoruba corpus comprising texts from the bible, novels, and news_sites. Analytical tools used include a concordance program and AntConc version 4.3.1. Findings reveal that many of the constructions involving the marked report verb bèèrè/ bèrè,’to ask’ previously dismissed by Awobuluyi (2013) as errors influenced by English or signs of linguistic incompetence, are in fact naturally occurring in native Yoruba usage. The study concludes by advocating for a shift toward empirical, usage-based approaches in Yoruba linguistic research, emphasizing descriptivism over the prescriptive tendencies of traditional field methods.