Abstract
This paper conducts a detailed syntactic analysis of control structures in Amharic and sheds light on the current approaches to their syntactic representation and the operation thereof. Amharic control structures consist of the following components: (i) they are marked by the specific clause marker (CM) lɨ-; (ii) the control clause always contains an imperfective verb; (iii) the control predicate is fully inflected by phi-features which are coindexical to the matrix subject; (iv) the subject of the control clause is a PRO; and (v) only exhaustive subject control is licensed. Amharic control poses a challenge to Landau (2014)’s proposal that the control possibility stems from particular combinations of tense and agreement features of the control predicate. Instead we claim that Amharic data fit better in the analysis of future infinitives (Wurmbrand 2014) and prospective aspect (Kratzer 2011; Matthewson 2012). In addition, the PRO-analysis of Amharic control also entails that the Movement Theory of Control (MTC) is disfavored.
Highlights
The purpose of this paper is to perform a detailed syntactic analysis of control structures in Amharic, and to shed light on the current approaches to their syntactic representation and the operation thereof
Amharic control structures consist of the following components: (i) they are marked by the specific clause marker (CM) lɨ-; (ii) the control clause always contains an imperfective verb; (iii) the control predicate is fully inflected by phi-features which are coindexical to the matrix subject; (iv) the subject of the control clause is a PRO; and (v) only exhaustive subject control is licensed
We claim that Amharic control structures consist of the following components: (i) they are marked by the specific clause marker (CM) lɨ-; (ii) the control clause always contains an imperfective verb; (iii) the control predicate is fully inflected by phi-features which are coindexical to the matrix subject; (iv) the subject of the control clause is a PRO; and (v) only exhaustive subject control is licensed
Summary
The purpose of this paper is to perform a detailed syntactic analysis of control structures in Amharic, and to shed light on the current approaches to their syntactic representation and the operation thereof. Kebede yesterday//tomorrow 3smS-eat.impf-3smS aux.pst ‘Kebede was eating/used to eat .’ It should be pointed out, that even though ʔahun ‘now’ can be used in imperfectives in (6), the sentence does not express a present ongoing event (i.e. no eating event occurs at the speech time). ʔɨyyä- functions as a barrier for movement of the perfective verb to T (similar to the constraint on head movement; Travis 1984), and in such case a tense auxiliary is needed to rescue the structure. Example (17) exhibits a similar observation with (16) with respect to the syntactic position of the CM, namely lɨ- precedes and scopes over the negative marker in the embedded clause This gives further support to the claim that CMs are positioned at the peripheral position of the TP-field. We shall describe the morphosyntactic properties of control structures in Amharic
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