Hyperactivity and Hyperagreement in Bantu

Abstract: Many Bantu languages exhibit A-movements and patterns of iterating agreement that are disallowed in Indo-European languages. In Minimalist theory, both agreement and movement are constrained by an Activity requirement stipulating that goals in Agree relations must have an unchecked uninter...

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Publicado en:Lingua Vol. 121; no. 4; pp. 721 - 742
Autor principal: Carstens, Vicki
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. Apr2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      pub: Elsevier B.V.
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        10.1016/j.lingua.2010.11.001
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        atl: Hyperactivity and Hyperagreement in Bantu
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        au: Carstens, Vicki
        affil: University of Missouri-Columbia, 224 Tate Hall, Columbia, MO 65211-1500, USA
      su:
        Agreement (Grammar)
        Bantu languages
        Pattern perception
        Case studies
        Language & languages
        Gender
        Semantics (Philosophy)
      sug:
        subj:
          Agreement (Grammar)
          Bantu languages
          Pattern perception
          Case studies
          Language & languages
          Gender
          Semantics (Philosophy)
      keyword:
        Activity
        Agreement
        Bantu
        Concord
        Hyper-raising
        Inversion
      ab: Abstract: Many Bantu languages exhibit A-movements and patterns of iterating agreement that are disallowed in Indo-European languages. In Minimalist theory, both agreement and movement are constrained by an Activity requirement stipulating that goals in Agree relations must have an unchecked uninterpretable feature. For Indo-European DPs the sole Activity feature in A-relations is Case; but I argue here that grammatical gender, a component of Bantu noun class, is uninterpretable too. Case and nominal gender differ in that the latter enters the syntax already valued. Assuming goal deactivation is a consequence of syntactic valuation, we derive the result that gender is an infinitely reusable Activity feature. Adjunction of Bantu N to D makes gender visible to all clause-level probes, and Bantu DPs are therefore able to A-move more freely than their Indo-European counterparts and to value iterating agreement. The proposals provide a unitary explanation for the existence in Bantu of Subject Object Reversal, locative inversion controlling subject agreement, hyper-raising, concord, left-edge agreement with operators, and multiple subject agreement. The syntax of gender argues that uninterpretable features need not be deleted from a syntactic object bound for the Conceptual–Intentional interface.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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