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Title:
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A Syntactic Analysis of the Nominal Systems of Italian and Luganda: How nouns can be formed in the syntax
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Author:
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Franca Ferrari
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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New York University
, Department of Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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2005
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Morphology
Syntax
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Subject Language(s):
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Italian
Ganda
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Director(s):
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Paul Elbourne
Richard Kayne
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Abstract:
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In this dissertation, I propose a comparative syntactic analysis of the Italian and Luganda nominal system. My main goal is to explore the possibilities of syntax as a noun formation device arguing that in both languages simple, derived and VN compound nouns are derivable in the syntax via Merger and Move.
Under the assumption that the distinction between gender and noun class features is only a formal one (Corbett 1991), the theoretical premise for a syntactic analysis of nouns is based on a revised interpretation and redefinition of the feature gender/class. An analysis of Italian and Luganda nominals reveals that the feature gender/class, in addition to its inflectional role in triggering agreement, has a marked derivational nature. Gender/class morphemes are used to derive nouns from non-nominal stems. They are types of derivational heads marked for the lexical feature [n] that project in the syntax in virtue of their inflectional nature. I therefore, argue that gender/class projects as a [n] feature and not as GenderP/ClassP as previously assumed.
Syntactically, I argue that noun formation results from the Merger of a [n] feature with an XP, where XP can be either a nominal, adjectival or verbal stem, or a VP, or an AspP, or a VoiceP. The Merger of [n] with one of the possible XPs is sufficient for deriving all noun types in both languages.
The justification for Move as part of the noun formation process stems from the symmetric constituent orders of Italian and Luganda nominals. Luganda nouns have an affix-stem order with an affixal noun class morpheme, whereas Italian nouns have a stem-affix order with an affixal gender/number. Applying Kayne's LCA (1994) to all levels of linguistic representation, I argue that the Luganda affix-stem order is the basic underlying order in nominals; whereas Move necessarily intervenes to derive the Italian stem-affix order.
Finally, the analysis shows that a syntactic approach to noun formation processes allows accounting uniformly for different nominal systems in unrelated language families.
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