NP-internal structure and the distribution of adjectives in Mə̀dʉ́mbὰ

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses the structural and internal properties of adjectives in Mə̀dʉ́mbὰ, a Grassfield language spoken in the west region of Cameroon. It focuses on material inside the NP with a view towards establishing the structural positions of NP-internal constituents such as adjectives. I analyze adjectives and propose, following Scott, Gary-John. 1998. Stacked adjectival modification and the structure of nominal phrases. School of Oriental and African Studies Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 8. 59–89, Scott, Gary-John. 2002. Stacked adjectival modification and the structure of nominal phrases. In Guglielmo Cinque (ed.), Functional structure in DP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures, 91–120. New York: Oxford University Press that adjectives pattern within the DP just like adverbs pattern within the clause. In Mə̀dʉ́mbὰ, an adjective can be placed before the noun, after the noun or alternatively before and after the noun. Mə̀dʉ́mbὰ adjectives can further be distinguished as belonging to three classes: pure adjectives, verbal adjectives and nominal adjectives. In this paper I focus principally on the position in which attributive adjectives are generated inside the DP. However, issues relating to the internal structure of adjectives will also be mentioned. I show that Cinque, Guglielmo. 1994. On the evidence for partial N-movement in the Romance DP. In Guglielmo Cinque, Jan Koster, Jean-Yves Pollock, Luigi Rizzi & Raffaella Zanuttini (eds.), Paths towards universal grammar, 85–110. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, Cinque, Guglielmo. 2003. The dual source of adjectives and XP-vs. N-raising in the Romance DP. Incontro annuale di dialettologia, Padua, 26, Cinque, Guglielmo. 2010. The syntax of adjectives: A comparative study. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs. Cambridge: MIT Press), and Laenzlinger, Christophe. 2005. French adjective ordering: Perspectives on DP-internal movement types. Lingua 115 views are both necessary to fully capture adjectival placement facts in Mə̀dʉ́mbὰ. Building on and refining the analysis given by these authors, I demonstrate that the type of mechanism involved in introducing adjectival modification correlates with the syntax of the adjective. On the proposal advanced here, depending on their syntactic distribution, adjectives are generated in specifier positions directly and NumP versus FP movement yields the surface structure.