Studies in African Linguistics (Dec 1988)

Nominal relations in systemic dependency grammar

  • Jonathan Owens

DOI
https://doi.org/10.32473/sal.v19i3.107459
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 19, no. 3

Abstract

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Traditionally dependency grammar recognizes heads and dependents as primitive elements [Tesniere 1959, Robinson 1970, Hudson 1984]. I have suggested [Owens 1984b, 1985a] that these notions are dispensable ones and in this paper support this point with data from nominal relations (NP relations) in Oromo. In the first part of this paper, I describe the basic theoretical model, and in the second I consider two phenomena that have often been assumed to require the recognition of the notion 'head' (e.g. Zwicky [1985], namely agreement and case marking. I argue that no such notion is needed to describe them.

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