Determiner spreading in Rukiga

Linguistics, vol. 61, pp. 1285–1339

Abstract

Determiner spreading, the phenomenon whereby adnominal modifiers carry an 'additional' determiner, has been studied extensively for a variety of languages, most notably Greek, Semitic, and Scandinavian languages. Interestingly, the same phenomenon occurs in the Bantu language Rukiga. We show how the Rukiga augment is parallel to the Greek determiner in the context of modification, and how it triggers a restrictive reading when present on a larger class of modifiers than familiar so far: relative clauses, adjectives, possessives, and certain quantifiers. Considering its morphosyntactic and interpretational properties, we propose that the variation in the presence versus absence of the augment on modifiers is due to different underlying structures, applying an analysis of determiner spreading in terms of a reduced relative clause structure.

Authors 3

1. Allen Asiimwe

   Makerere University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of African Languages, School of Languages, Literature and Communication , Makerere University , Kampala , Uganda

2. Maria Kouneli

   Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Linguistics, Rutgers University , New Brunswick , USA

3. Jenneke van der Wal corresponding Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University Centre for Linguistics , Leiden , The Netherlands