Amharic Relatives and Possessives: Definiteness, Agreement, and the Linker

Ouhalla's (2004) valuable discussion of relativized and possessed noun phrases in Amharic leaves a number of questions open. Foremost among these is the placement of the linker element yä-. Starting from an analysis of relative clauses and possessors as predicates of their "heads," th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Linguistic inquiry 2007-03, Vol.38 (2), p.302-320
Main Author:	den Dikken, Marcel
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Adjectives Agree Amharic Amharic language Betting complex noun phrase conjunction Definiteness Descriptive studies and applied theories gender agreement Grammatical gender head movement inverted word order Linguistics linker Noun phrase Noun phrases Nouns Ouhalla, Jamal phase phrase possessor Predicate Inversion Predicates relative clause Relative clauses Remarks and Replies Syntax Verbs
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Summary:	Ouhalla's (2004) valuable discussion of relativized and possessed noun phrases in Amharic leaves a number of questions open. Foremost among these is the placement of the linker element yä-. Starting from an analysis of relative clauses and possessors as predicates of their "heads," this article develops a syntax of complex noun phrases in Amharic that explains the raison d'être and placement of yä-, and also accommodates facts about definiteness marking and agreement in the Amharic complex noun phrase that have hitherto largely escaped attention or analysis. The analysis emphasizes the role of Predicate Inversion and head movement in syntax, and it confirms and extends the minimalist Agree- and phase-based approach to syntactic relationships.
ISSN:	0024-3892 1530-9150 1530-9150