The Ekegusii Determiner Phrase Analysis in the Minimalist Program

Abstract

Among some of the recent syntactic developments, the noun phrase has been reanalyzed as a determiner phrase (DP). This study analyses the Ekegusii determiner phrase (DP) with an inquiry into the relationship between agreement of the INFL (sentence) and concord in the noun phrase (determiner phrase). It hypothesizes that the Ekegusii sentential Agreement has a symmetrical relationship with the Ekegusii Determiner Phrase internal concord and feature checking theory and full interpretation (FI) in the Minimalist Program is adequate in the analysis of the internal structure of the Ekegusii DP. In employing the Minimalist Program (MP), the study shall first seek to establish the domain of the NP in the Ekegusii DP and go ahead to do an investigation into the adequacy of the Minimalist Program in analyzing the Ekegusii DP. This study is also geared towards establishing the order of determiners in the DP between the D-head and the NP complement. The study concludes that the principles of feature checking and full interpretation in the minimalist program are mutually crucial in ensuring that Ekegusii constructions (DP and even the sentence) are grammatical (converge). This emphasizes the fact that the MP is adequate in Ekegusii DP analysis.