Definite Markers, Phi Features and Agreement - Georgetown ...

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The corpus that is most often used is the Walta Information Center Tagged AmharicNews Corpus, which contains 1,065 Amharic news articles (210,000 words) from the WaltaInformation Center (a privately-owned news source in Ethiopia). The news articles are from1998-2002 and are tagged for part of speech (see Demeke and Getachew 2006 on taggingconventions and the development of the corpus).Another corpus that is used less often (primarily because it was only recentlyencountered) is the New Mexico State University Amharic Parallel Text Corpus. This corpuscontains approximately 700 news articles from various Amharic news sources with line-by-lineparallel translations in English. The corpus used the least, but occasionally appealed to, is atranslation of the Bible into Amharic by the International Bible Society. All of these corpora arefreely available online.In general, data from my own fieldwork is given primacy in the thesis, although it isoften augmented with data from grammars and confirmed in a broader context with data fromthe corpora.2.4 Amharic is ReadyOverall, Amharic is a language prime for theoretical investigation. It is spoken widelyand has a rich descriptive tradition. It is a member of a language family whose most widelyspokenlanguages have been extensively studied, but due to the influence of the Cushiticlanguages, it varies in deep and interesting ways from Arabic and Hebrew. Throughout thethesis, special attention is granted to Arabic and Hebrew data (see e.g., the section on Arabicplurals in Chapter 4) in the hopes of paving the way for more detailed comparative work in the12
future. I hope also that the recent flowering of theoretical work on Amharic itself continues, andthat this dissertation will become part of a larger recognition and study of Amharic in the future.3 THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDThis dissertation is an extended investigation of the syntax-morphology interface, and soit is necessary to clarify what frameworks are being adopted for syntax and morphology. Most ofthis section is spent laying out the fundamental ideas of Distributed Morphology, which is usedthroughout the thesis and which readers may be less familiar with. On the syntactic side, I adoptstandard Minimalist assumptions (Chomsky 2000, 2001, 2004), relying in particular on the notionof phases as cyclic units for the syntax and the syntactic relation Agree as the formalization ofagreement. Both of these ideas are extensively discussed in the contexts where they come up inthe thesis, so the focus in this background section is on the main assumptions and underpinningsof Distributed Morphology.There is a fundamental tension between lexical and syntactic approaches to morphologyin research on the syntax-morphology interface. I will not be arguing for one approach over theother (although see Chapter 6 for some discussion), but it is important to provide some contextfor Distributed Morphology. In traditional grammar, the division between syntax andmorphology was strict --- morphology assembled words and syntax assembled phrases.However, Chomsky (1957) altered the syntax-morphology landscape by arguing that verbscombine with inflectional morphemes in the syntax, and this approach has guided much work inthe field ever since. Nevertheless, lexicalism is hardly an artifact. Chomsky himself (Chomsky1970, or at least an interpretation of Chomsky 1970; see Marantz 1997) endorsed a partiallylexical approach to complex word formation, and more recent lexical approaches include13
Page 1 and 2: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIASANTA CRUZD
Page 3 and 4: TABLE OF CONTENTSGLOSS ABBREVIATION
Page 5 and 6: 3 The Representation of Gender: Fir
Page 7 and 8: 2 Gendered Plurals and Feminine Suf
Page 9 and 10: GLOSS ABBREVIATIONS3 Third personAC
Page 11 and 12: with two different slots for plural
Page 13 and 14: Portions of this work were presente
Page 15 and 16: CHAPTER 1:INTRODUCTION1 THEMESThe i
Page 17 and 18: assumptions are laid out in Section
Page 19 and 20: of Amharic (Leslau 1995) is the cur
Page 21 and 22: (4) [[ CP nnat-u ndä-mot-ätt ] tn
Page 23 and 24: 2004, Kramer 2006 on differential o
Page 25: nominalized verbal forms (as sugges
Page 29 and 30: To be more specific, Distributed Mo
Page 31 and 32: Pānịnian Principle states that a
Page 33 and 34: (2001, 2007) and Arad (2003, 2005)
Page 35 and 36: the realization of D when it is obl
Page 37 and 38: CHAPTER 2:DEFINITE MARKING IN AMHAR
Page 39 and 40: 2 THE DATAIndefinite nominals are g
Page 41 and 42: (4) a. tllk’-u bet big-DEF house
Page 43 and 44: c. [Almaz k’ondo ndä-hon-ätt y
Page 45 and 46: (12) k’ondo-w tllk’(-u) k’äy
Page 47 and 48: elative clause complementizer 5 ),
Page 49 and 50: analyzed, the fact that possessive
Page 51 and 52: 3.1 D versus [DEF]Both Ouhalla 2004
Page 53 and 54: (20) Agreea. Agree holds between a
Page 55 and 56: morphological realization of the sy
Page 57 and 58: Zwicky (1996). It is crucial to det
Page 59 and 60: find a host in its base position. I
Page 61 and 62: pronouns, which are prosodic 2P cli
Page 63 and 64: easons not to accept the structure
Page 65 and 66: (31) DP (Spell-Out and Linearizatio
Page 67 and 68: AP) have specifiers that are morpho
Page 69 and 70: The definite marker thus receives a
Page 71 and 72: also contains the specifier positio
Page 73 and 74: e the case that other languages wit
Page 75 and 76: a precedence relation on items that
Page 77 and 78:
The Latin conjunction -que is often
Page 79 and 80:
The account of phase impenetrabilit
Page 81 and 82:
The variation generates the basic f
Page 83 and 84:
5.1 Free RelativesAmharic free rela
Page 85 and 86:
(52) [ DP -u [ NP [ CP zzih yämät
Page 87 and 88:
(56) a. *bunna räddim näggade b.
Page 89 and 90:
In (59), the topmost N node is a M-
Page 91 and 92:
Even extremely complex numerals can
Page 93 and 94:
implausible for a very internally c
Page 95 and 96:
Overall, this section has extended
Page 97 and 98:
There are also some Amharic-interna
Page 99 and 100:
The relevant Feature Copying rule f
Page 101 and 102:
(79) tnn-wa k’äyy(-wa) mäkinasm
Page 103 and 104:
Local Dislocation will attach the i
Page 105 and 106:
6.3 Definite Marking in Demonstrati
Page 107 and 108:
This mechanism can be thought of as
Page 109 and 110:
specifier is filled and (as per the
Page 111 and 112:
definiteness agreement on the adjec
Page 113 and 114:
syntactic operations can access any
Page 115 and 116:
2 GENDER IN NOMINALS2.1 The FactsAs
Page 117 and 118:
(4) a. tämari-w tämari-wastudent-
Page 119 and 120:
säw as a default masculine is ‘p
Page 121 and 122:
For example, magav without any suff
Page 123 and 124:
of a copular clause (see (5)). Also
Page 125 and 126:
The Ethio-Semitic language Ge’ez
Page 127 and 128:
Amharic as well for the vast majori
Page 129 and 130:
She assumes that en Pere ‘Pere’
Page 131 and 132:
(17) a. afrikawi-yan wändmm-ott-at
Page 133 and 134:
example, a verb like hammer consist
Page 135 and 136:
almost every other kind of animate
Page 137 and 138:
Amharic, the roots associated with
Page 139 and 140:
this analysis, there is simply nowh
Page 141 and 142:
(29) D, [DEF], [+FEM], [-PL] ↔ -w
Page 143 and 144:
(33) nP3n √Pg√For many nominals
Page 145 and 146:
inanimates are masculine and can th
Page 147 and 148:
(36) Same-Root NominalsRoot: no gen
Page 149 and 150:
This idea is workable for the licen
Page 151 and 152:
meaning of the nominal and interpre
Page 153 and 154:
(41) cP3c NP[iCLASS] !N[u +FEM]Fram
Page 155 and 156:
einstated (or preserved) in PF beca
Page 157 and 158:
morphologically expressed!), it eit
Page 159 and 160:
without any need for a look-back me
Page 161 and 162:
together, and I review several prev
Page 163 and 164:
specified include inanimates and ep
Page 165 and 166:
Many of the analyses above divide n
Page 167 and 168:
under plain n with no [+/-FEM] feat
Page 169 and 170:
presupposition that the discourse r
Page 171 and 172:
(47) Root: / l b s/Verb: läbbäsä
Page 173 and 174:
pleasing, but perhaps workable. How
Page 175 and 176:
(50) Infinitivesa. säbbärä ‘br
Page 177 and 178:
All these derived nominals are same
Page 179 and 180:
may be present syntactically in a f
Page 181 and 182:
CHAPTER 4:NUMBER IN AMHARIC NOMINAL
Page 183 and 184:
(2) ld-u mäs’haf wässäd-ächil
Page 185 and 186:
Some nominals undergo nonconcatenat
Page 187 and 188:
number is a feature on the root. 4
Page 189 and 190:
Amharic results from the spell out
Page 191 and 192:
In (7)a, the category-neutral conso
Page 193 and 194:
Arad (2003, 2005:Ch. 7) also provid
Page 195 and 196:
The vocabulary items in (12) raise
Page 197 and 198:
ule (for forming regular plurals).
Page 199 and 200:
There is one additional semantic id
Page 201 and 202:
specific claim that the combination
Page 203 and 204:
exactly what is needed for the Amha
Page 205 and 206:
toponyms and results in a nominal f
Page 207 and 208:
However, the double plurals also su
Page 209 and 210:
3.3.2 Other n AccountsImportant sup
Page 211 and 212:
lexical. Needless to say, regular p
Page 213 and 214:
However, there are also ‘irregula
Page 215 and 216:
irregular and regular plural inflec
Page 217 and 218:
plurals) and irregular plurals that
Page 219 and 220:
the same; both contain a plural fea
Page 221 and 222:
system of Amharic and a mixture res
Page 223 and 224:
at all. Moreover, it is not fully e
Page 225 and 226:
Moving on to irregular plurals, L08
Page 227 and 228:
n[+PL] combines with √XAZEYR to f
Page 229 and 230:
The ordering here can be affected b
Page 231 and 232:
I assume that relative clauses are
Page 233 and 234:
(45) Proposal 1: YP = FocusP, XP =
Page 235 and 236:
(49) DP3D NumP → [D * CP …]3CP
Page 237 and 238:
the independent analysis. Despite i
Page 239 and 240:
and Torrego (2007) propose that val
Page 241 and 242:
singular. Since irregular plurals d
Page 243 and 244:
the number feature from n, as well
Page 245 and 246:
In (57), the head X is the probe: i
Page 247 and 248:
It is not immediately clear what ki
Page 249 and 250:
vocabulary items for the category n
Page 251 and 252:
The feature sharing analysis in gen
Page 253 and 254:
or on both morphologically. However
Page 255 and 256:
The dependence on n[+PL] makes an i
Page 257 and 258:
plurals. However, these different o
Page 259 and 260:
for Borer’s (2008, 2009, forthcom
Page 261 and 262:
plurals have distinct masculine and
Page 263 and 264:
The Subset Principle ensures that a
Page 265 and 266:
(5) kä-2 i 500 bë-lay yämmi-hon-
Page 267 and 268:
(8) ityop’p’yawi ‘Ethiopian (
Page 269 and 270:
2.2 Plurals and The Feminine Suffix
Page 271 and 272:
j. k’ddus k’ddstsaintfemale sai
Page 273 and 274:
feature sharing. I posited that Num
Page 275 and 276:
However, there is another option fo
Page 277 and 278:
(22) Num n[-PL][-PL][+FEM]At Vocabu
Page 279 and 280:
(26) a. mänäk w s-it-ottnunsb. mu
Page 281 and 282:
(28) a. *mänäkos-it-an, *mänakos
Page 283 and 284:
(32) -awi Paradigm for ‘Ethiopian
Page 285 and 286:
corresponds to irregular plural mor
Page 287 and 288:
(40) afrik-awi-t-wa agär Burkina F
Page 289 and 290:
To sum up, I initially showed that
Page 291 and 292:
gender features indicates that the
Page 293 and 294:
how the GNN analysis of number and
Page 295 and 296:
(49) a. nnäzziya säw-ott b. nnäz
Page 297 and 298:
Only certain adjectives participate
Page 299 and 300:
‘honored.’ The adjective k’dd
Page 301 and 302:
(65) a. tnn-*(ott)-u tämari-wottfe
Page 303 and 304:
Although some quantifiers and numer
Page 305 and 306:
determiners specifically retained a
Page 307 and 308:
agreement in that it involves featu
Page 309 and 310:
A = Mostly, B = NoHPSG approaches,
Page 311 and 312:
This accords with results from Chap
Page 313 and 314:
intermediate projection between D a
Page 315 and 316:
features, they will not be able to
Page 317 and 318:
prevented from happening in the syn
Page 319 and 320:
features (Y and Z, Z and lowest X,
Page 321 and 322:
The idea that a shared feature can
Page 323 and 324:
Overall, the concord facts investig
Page 325 and 326:
position where the moved element ca
Page 327 and 328:
many larger issues are at stake if
Page 329 and 330:
CHAPTER 6:CONCLUSIONS1 INTRODUCTION
Page 331 and 332:
(1) DP3D NumP3Num nP3n √The quirk
Page 333 and 334:
projections are best identified as
Page 335 and 336:
thesis has provided a firm foundati
Page 337 and 338:
general) was proposed in order to e
Page 339 and 340:
this was seen in Chapter 4 for plur
Page 341 and 342:
REFERENCESNB: Ethiopian names are a
Page 343 and 344:
Bender, M.L., J.D. Bowen, R.L. Coop
Page 345 and 346:
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by
Page 347 and 348:
Embick, David. 2008. Localism versu
Page 349 and 350:
Gribanova, Vera. 2009. The phonolog
Page 351 and 352:
Heller, Daphna. 2002. On the constr
Page 353 and 354:
Kramer, Ruth. 2007. Nonconcatenativ
Page 355 and 356:
McCarthy, John. 2000. Faithfulness
Page 357 and 358:
Postal, Paul M. 1969. On so-called
Page 359 and 360:
Steele, Susan. 1978. Word order var
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