Studies in African Linguistics (Jun 2001)

Evidence for head raising in Kiswahili relative clauses

  • Deo Ngonyani

DOI
https://doi.org/10.32473/sal.v30i1.107362
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 30, no. 1

Abstract

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The author presents evidence from Kiswahili supporting a head-raising analysis recently proposed in Kayne (1994) and Bianchi (1999), in which the relative clause is generated as a complement of the determiner. Three kinds of evidence are presented: (1) selectional relations between demonstratives and some relative clauses; (2) quantified noun phrase-pronoun binding, in which the bound pronoun appears inside the head of the relative clause while its binder is located in the relative clause; and (3) relativization of objects comprising part of idiomatic expressions. The evidence supports both the head-raising hypothesis and the determiner complementation hypothesis.

Keywords