DP in Bantu and Romance
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Vicki Carstens
Abstract
The paper considers several aspects of Bantu and Romance DPs, including: (i) Noun Class and grammatical gender; (ii) apparently derivational properties of the two; (iii) ordering among nouns and their modifiers; and (iv) concord in DPs. Several conclusions are argued for. Firstly, Bantu Class is a gender system like that of Romance, with gender-specific Spell-Out of number features. Secondly, despite some surface evidence to the contrary, gender/Class is an uninterpretable feature, without derivational functions. Thirdly, DPs of the two languages share a common architecture; and fourth, in both families concord is the result of the Agree relation. Thus many properties of nouns and DPs are common to both language groups, as the hypothesis of UG leads us to expect.
Abstract
The paper considers several aspects of Bantu and Romance DPs, including: (i) Noun Class and grammatical gender; (ii) apparently derivational properties of the two; (iii) ordering among nouns and their modifiers; and (iv) concord in DPs. Several conclusions are argued for. Firstly, Bantu Class is a gender system like that of Romance, with gender-specific Spell-Out of number features. Secondly, despite some surface evidence to the contrary, gender/Class is an uninterpretable feature, without derivational functions. Thirdly, DPs of the two languages share a common architecture; and fourth, in both families concord is the result of the Agree relation. Thus many properties of nouns and DPs are common to both language groups, as the hypothesis of UG leads us to expect.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xi
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Part 1. Clitics and agreement
- Concepts of structural underspecification in Bantu and Romance 3
- On different types of clitic clusters 41
- Pronominal object markers in Romance and Bantu 83
- The Bantu-Romance connection in verb movement and verbal inflectional morphology 111
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Part 2. The structure of DPs
- DP in Bantu and Romance 131
- On the interpretability of φ-features 167
- Agreement and concord in nominal expressions 201
- A unified syntactic analysis of Italian and Luganda nouns 239
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Part 3. Information structure
- The fine structure of the Topic field 261
- Focus at the interface: Evidence from Romance and Bantu 293
- Agreement in thetic VS sentences in Bantu and Romance 323
- Index of languages 351
- General index 353
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xi
-
Part 1. Clitics and agreement
- Concepts of structural underspecification in Bantu and Romance 3
- On different types of clitic clusters 41
- Pronominal object markers in Romance and Bantu 83
- The Bantu-Romance connection in verb movement and verbal inflectional morphology 111
-
Part 2. The structure of DPs
- DP in Bantu and Romance 131
- On the interpretability of φ-features 167
- Agreement and concord in nominal expressions 201
- A unified syntactic analysis of Italian and Luganda nouns 239
-
Part 3. Information structure
- The fine structure of the Topic field 261
- Focus at the interface: Evidence from Romance and Bantu 293
- Agreement in thetic VS sentences in Bantu and Romance 323
- Index of languages 351
- General index 353
