Nominal Prefix Drop in Aghem: Agree and Strictly Local Impoverishment
Leonel Fongang Tadjo
September 2024
 

I provide further empirical evidence from the Grassfields Bantu language Aghem that Impoverishment rules are not as arbitrary as is generally thought. They are (and need to be) featurally (Nevins 2011; Arregi & Nevins 2012; Keine & Müller 2020, among others) and locally (Kallulli & Trommer, 2011; Božič, 2020) constrained. In Aghem, nominal prefixes drop with all agreeing modifiers, except numerals and the quantifier dzìm ‘all’. I claim that this is an instance of haplological dissimilation (Nevins, 2012) that is sensitive to morphological features, and argue that the repetition is resolved by deleting the n head with inherent φ-features in the presence of an agreeing X head with non-inherent φ-features of the same type. I demonstrate that while the modifiers that require nominal prefix drop c-command the n head that is targeted by Impoverishment, numerals and the quantifier do not. I rely on this to propose a restriction on the deletion operation based on closest c-command. Crucially, the locality restriction proposed in Božič (2020) for Ljubljana Slovenian does not derive the Aghem facts. I propose a revised version of this requirement that accounts for Ljubljana Slovenian, as well as Aghem. This restriction, I show, can further derive similar facts from other Grassfields Bantu languages, namely Isu and We.
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Reference: lingbuzz/008395
(please use that when you cite this article)
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keywords: nominal prefx, aghem, agree, locality, impoverishment, morphology, syntax
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