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Part of
A0 – The Lexical Status of Adjectives
Edited by Phoevos Panagiotidis and Moreno Mitrović
[Language Faculty and Beyond 17] 2022
► pp. 155–186

Nominal Attributive Modifiers (NAMs) in Ògè

This paper examines the syntax of adjectives in the Ògè language and argues that attributive adjectives in Ògè are nominal. Attributive adjectives are called Nominal Attributive Modifiers (NAMs) in this work. Adopting the notion of dependent and independent features as introduced in Zeijlstra (2020), this paper shows that the grammaticality of NAM depends on the modified noun in attributive expressions in Ògè. For NAMs that are not in a local relationship with the modified noun, evidence is given to show that such expressions are genitives or possessives. Accordingly, I analyze NAM as adjuncts in modification expressions. Finally, I show that the adjunct (NAM) is involved in feature checking which further contributes to the label ‘[N]’ for the concatenation of a NAM with a Noun.

Keywords: nominal, attributive, predicative, adjunct, genitives, modifier, Ògè, independent, dependent, features
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Internal syntax of NAMs in Ògè
    • 2.1Nominal Attributive Modifiers (NAMs) in Ògè
      • 2.1.1 í-NAMs in Ògè
      • 2.1.2Nominalizations in Ògè
      • 2.1.3Internal structure of í-NAMs
    • 2.2Verbal status of predicative forms in Ògè
  • 3.Implications of the analysis
  • 4.External syntax of NAMs
    • 4.1NAMs in argument positions
    • 4.2Adjunction analysis of attributive adjectives
      • 4.2.1Optionality of NAMs in attributive positions
      • 4.2.2Problems with the label of adjuncts in the Minimalist Program
      • 4.2.3Problems of the traditional analysis of adjuncts for NAMs
      • 4.2.4Zeijlstra (2020)
  • 4.3NAMs are dependent on the modified noun
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.17.05ade
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