Abstract
AbstractEwe (Kwa, Niger-Congo) has a construction known in the literature as thenyá-construction (Ameka 1991,2005a;Collins 1993;Duthie 1996;Adjei 2014). The logical internal argument of the construction occurs in subject position and the logical external argument is either absent on the surface or represented in the construction as afor-PP. In this paper, I consider the syntax of the Ewenyá-construction, exploring data from the Tongugbe dialect. I show that thenyá-construction shares properties with English middles. I demonstrate that the agent or experiencerfor-PP that may occur in thenyá-construction is its external argument, projected in Spec vP. Further, I argue that even if thefor-PP is not overtly realized, it is syntactically projected in Spec vP, contrary to theories likeBruening 2013. The analysis I put forward provides support for the Theta-Criterion, which forces all arguments to be syntactically projected.
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