Determiner spreading in Rukiga
Determiner spreading, the phenomenon whereby adnominal modifiers carry an ‘additional’ determiner, has been studied extensively for a variety of languages, most notably Greek, Semitic, and Scandinavian languages. Interestingly, the same phenomenon occurs in the Bantu language Rukiga. We show how the...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
De Gruyter
2023-09-01
|
| Series: | Linguistics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2021-0027 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Determiner spreading, the phenomenon whereby adnominal modifiers carry an ‘additional’ determiner, has been studied extensively for a variety of languages, most notably Greek, Semitic, and Scandinavian languages. Interestingly, the same phenomenon occurs in the Bantu language Rukiga. We show how the Rukiga augment is parallel to the Greek determiner in the context of modification, and how it triggers a restrictive reading when present on a larger class of modifiers than familiar so far: relative clauses, adjectives, possessives, and certain quantifiers. Considering its morphosyntactic and interpretational properties, we propose that the variation in the presence versus absence of the augment on modifiers is due to different underlying structures, applying an analysis of determiner spreading in terms of a reduced relative clause structure. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0024-3949 1613-396X |