The syntax of relative clause constructions in Tigrinya
Abstract
This thesis establishes the syntactic representation and derivation of relative clause (RC) constructions in Tigrinya. I demonstrate the external headedness of Tigrinya RCs based on indirect evidence taken from the licensing of NPIs and Case assignment. I show that an NPI as the Head of an RC cannot be licensed for by negation inside the relative clause. This shows indirectly that the Head is not within the relative clause and has not been established by a raising process based on the domain in which it must exist to be licensed by negation. Given a phase analysis, I also show that a structural relationship in which the Head is external to the RC is required to account for the necessary Case assignment by the matrix verb. Second, I argue that a process of I-to-C movement is involved in the affixation of the RC marker based on the requirement of having a dummy auxiliary carry the relative affix in the presence of a gerundive verb form. Next, I argue for what I am calling the Op-indexing analysis adapted from Aoun & Li (1993, 2003) to account for the lack of effects from island constraints and the absence of reconstruction effects in Tigrinya RCs. The Op-indexing analysis proposes that a base-generated operator in the highest embedded Spec-CP of the RC sufficiently accounts for available long distance binding relationships despite the lack of evidence for movement from island constraints and reconstruction effects. Finally, I argue for the existence of a resumptive pronoun in the form of pro in the gap position bound by the operator. This claim is made based primarily on theta-role assignment (Rizzi 1982) and phi-feature identification on the verb local to the gap in the relative clause. This thesis offers new knowledge about the language Tigrinya in the form of a generative account of the derivation of RCs. Additionally, it supports recent claims that language parameterization is not an issue of binarity. More specifically, the work done in this thesis supports the hypothesis that a language can no longer be thought to make a choice between just syntactic movement and LF-movement.
Degree
M.A.
Advisors
Benedicto, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Linguistics
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