Syntactic Analysis of Kimbeere Relative Clauses

Abstract

This paper provides a syntactic analysis of noun phrase movement in raising predicates in Kimuthambi. The study is guided by the Principles and Parameters theory by Chomsky & Lasnik (1993) and in particular, the Minimalist Program developed by Chomsky (1995). This theory recognizes that there is always a trigger movement which is the need to check features at an appropriate landing site. The paper demonstrates that Raising in Kimuthambi is triggered by need to check case features. Since raising verbs cannot assign case to a NP, the NP must move to a position in a sentence where it can be assigned case. This according to Carnie (2007) is due to the fact that the NP and the case assigner must be local in such a way that it must be the specifier or the complement of the case assigner, in order to check the feature of case. Case therefore becomes a mandatory trigger for movement of NPs that are not in positions that can be assigned case as in the case of raising predicates. The paper also demonstrates that unlike in English where raising occurs out infinitive clauses only, there is hyper raising in Kimuthambi where raising can occur out of a finite clause.