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The Morphosyntax of the Noun Phrase

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Topics in Kwa Syntax

Part of the book series: Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory ((SNLT,volume 78))

Abstract

This chapter is intended to familiarize the reader with certain aspects of the noun phrase in the Kwa languages. A major observation that we have made in this chapter is that even though the noun head precedes modifiers and determiners on the surface, it is reasonable to assume that these languages are underlyingly head initial. The consequence of this view is that the sequence of modifiers and the relative position of the noun with respect to the determiners derive from various movement operations that pied-pipe the noun phrase to the left of its modifiers and determiners. The chapter also previews relative and possessive constructions in some Kwa languages.

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Notes

  1. 1.

     I thank Victor Manfredi for his comments, criticisms, and suggestions on previous versions of this chapter.

  2. 2.

     The reduplicated adjectives in these examples should not be confused with those discussed in Section 2.3.1, which have a predicative adjective as source. The ones presented here have no predicative adjective equivalent.

  3. 3.

     See Agbedor (1996) and Aboh (2004a) on the discussion of pronouns in Gbe.

  4. 4.

     Yoruba apparently patterns like Igbo in this respect. We thank Victor Manfredi for bringing this to our attention.

  5. 5.

     The Gbe languages do have expressions in which a plural pro-form precedes the numeral marker as in the following examples (see Essegbey 1993, for the discussion on Ewegbe).

    (i)a.Vílὲ,yé-mὲὲnὲ[Gungbe]

    childNumNum.Pro-personfour

    ‘The children, two of them’

    1. b.

      Awu wo-ame eve

    GarmentNum.Pro-persontwo

    ‘Two of the clothes’

  6. 6.

     It is not clear at the moment whether Yoruba has a determiner of the Gungbe-type lɔ́. However it has a postnominal particle náà, which Ajiboye (2005: 201) analyses as saliency marker though its semantics and syntax are very similar to those of the Gungbe element lɔ́. More work is needed in order to identify clearly the semantic contributions of these particles to the DP they occur with.

  7. 7.

    In the Kwa languages which kept a residual noun class system number is marked on the noun (i.e., N). Therefore, Twi (Akan), for instance, expresses number both by means of a prefix (ia) or a suffix (ib), depending on the ‘class’ of the noun (Christaller 1964).

    (i)a.ohéne ‘a king’ Æ ahéne ‘kings’

    b.onùá ‘a brother’ Æ anua-nom ‘brothers’

  8. 8.

    See also Cinque (2005) and references cited there.

  9. 9.

    Alternatively, one could suggest that the Gungbe adjectives head their own projections within FPINFL. The word order in (34) would therefore derive from NP movement to [spec FPAdj], the specifier position of the functional projection headed by the adjective. Then, FPAdj moves leftward to [spec FPNral], which in turn moves to [spec FPDem]. Finally FPDem as a whole moves cyclically to [spec NumP] and [spec DP]. While this analysis may look straightforward at first sight, it is undermined by the fact that most modifying expressions (e.g., adjectives and numerals) can be internally modified in Gungbe, suggesting that they are not heads but maximal projections (i.e., XPs).

  10. 10.

     Such structures are superficially similar to predicate cleft which also involve doubling of the verb, see Ameka, this volume.

  11. 11.

    For ease of discussion I refer to this structure as IP, but see Bowers (1993, 2001), Kayne (1994), den Dikken (1995, 1998, 2006) and much related work for discussion.

  12. 12.

    Talmy (2000: 196 ff) argues that “a major group of space-characterizing linguistic forms makes appeal to a Ground object’s having some form of asymmetry, or biasing in its structure. Either it has structurally distinct parts – parts that in themselves are distinguishable from one another and can form a basis for spatial discriminations – or it has some kind of unidirectionality”. Under this characterization therefore, the Ground may be complex in the sense described in this paper, in that it involves a Reference Object whose part is used to localize the Figure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication, University of Amsterdam, Spuistraat 210, 1012, VT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Enoch O. Aboh

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Correspondence to Enoch O. Aboh .

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  1. Fac. Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, 1012 VB, Netherlands

    Enoch O. Aboh

  2. Dept. African & Asian Languages &, University of Florida, Gainesville, 32611, U.S.A.

    James Essegbey

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Aboh, E.O. (2010). The Morphosyntax of the Noun Phrase. In: Aboh, E., Essegbey, J. (eds) Topics in Kwa Syntax. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 78. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3189-1_2

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