The Tigrinya zɨ- prefix
| Autor: | Gioia Cacchioli |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2023 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Brill's Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics. 15:232-261 |
| ISSN: | 1877-6930 1876-6633 |
| DOI: | 10.1163/18776930-01501004 |
| Popis: | Head-final languages are not expected to display verbal prefixes. However, in Tigrinya—a consistent SOV Ethio-Semitic language—the “relative marker” is a prefix that precedes the subordinate verb. Taking an antisymmetric and LCA approach to head-finality, I challenge the idea that what have been traditionally called prefixes in head-final languages have an intrinsic “prefixal morphological property”. Instead, I argue that prefixes are elements that are subject to specific syntactic constraints that result in them appearing in front of verbs. I therefore propose a new syntactic analysis of relative clauses in Tigrinya that explains not only the appearance of the prefix zɨ- on the left of the subordinate verb, but also its occurrence on both the verb and the auxiliary in periphrastic verbal forms expressing progressive aspect: I suggest that zɨ- is a marker of successive-cyclic movement. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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