| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is a study of two levels of nominal licensing illustrated by bare nominals (BN) in Wolof: licensing of the BN itself and licensing at the level of its features. The former can be seen in the restrictions imposed on the syntactic positions a BN can occupy and the strategies employed to bypass them. The latter is reflected in the typologically unusual singular interpretation of BNs in this language, which stands in contrast with the number neutrality that BNs usually display in other languages.
Bare nominals in Wolof can occur in the object position and they must be adjacent to the transitive verb that subcategorizes for them. They are, furthermore, narrow scope indefinites. These are properties usually attributed to Pseudo Noun Incorporation. However, there are two circum-stances under which the requirement to be adjacent to the verb can be obviated: when either a DP is introduced between the subject and the PNI-ed object or the latter is A'-moved. While the introduction of an additional argument and A'-movement are disparate phenomena, a dependent case analysis of nominal licensing (Branan, to appear) can account for why they both allow a PNI-ed object to not be adjacent to the verb in Wolof. Branan argues that all nominals must be li-censed with case (Levin, 2015), with case assignment being calculated in terms of dependent case (Marantz, 1991). When assigning case to a nominal is impossible, a last resort licensing strategy is available, namely, surface adjacency with the verb. Under the proposal that Branan makes about domains of case assignment and the position of case competitors in the sentential spine, bare nominal objects in Wolof cannot be licensed with case, which is why they must be adjacent to the verb. However, the introduction of an additional argument provides a case competitor to a PNI-ed object, allowing it to do away with licensing via linear adjacency with the verb. Likewise, A'-moving a bare nominal object brings it close to the subject, which can transformationally act as a case competitor. I argue thus that a dependent case theory of PNI can provide a uniform analysis of the PNI distribution of bare nominals in Wolof. If correct, this analysis has two implications. Empirically, it provides further evidence that a strict adjacency condition cannot adequately characterize PNI crosslinguistically (Driemel, 2020). Theoretically, it motivates a reappraisal of the claim that dependent case and nominal licensing are necessarily incompatible with each other (Marantz, 1991).
This analysis, however, is not sufficient to account for another facet of BNs in Wolof, namely, its singular interpretation. Crosslinguistically, BNs are often number-neutral, i.e., their number interpretation does not imply any commitment to a singular or plural interpretation. In Wolof, however, BNs are singular when unmodified. This can be argued for based on, e.g. the impossibility of saturating a collective predicate, on the fact that they must be referred back to with a singular pronoun, and that they cannot be the antecedent of a plural anaphor. However, a plural interpretation becomes available when a nominal-internal plural feature is exponed in the form of relative complementizer or possessum agreement. The generalization is that BNs in Wolof are singular, unless plural morphology is exponed within the nominal. I propose a version of Kalin’s (2017;2018;2019) framework of nominal licensing whereby certain interpretable features require licensing by the operation Agree; they are “derivational time bombs” that must be “defused” by this operation. Specifically, I argue that the feature [+plural] in Wolof nominals fall under this category. I assume that all nominals in Wolof, bare and full, can in principle be singular or plural. An obligatorily [+singular] interpretation arises in a BN when there is no probe to Agree with the [+plural] version, causing the derivation to crash. Conversely, if the BN merges with structure that contains a number probe, [+plural] can be defused, so that the corresponding construal can arise. This probe surfaces as relative complementizer or possessum agreement. The singular interpretation of BNs in Wolof arises as conspiracy between the need to license [+plural] and the restrictions and resources available within the nominal a BN is embedded into. If correct, this analysis offers an analysis as to why BNs in Wolof do not follow the number neutrality tendency found in other BN languages. It also provides support for the view that the licensing of interpretable features may be a driving force in a derivation. | |
