On quantified DPs in Baule-Kode

Abstract

Baule-Kode, a variant of the Baule language belonging to the Kwa family, has a rich set of quantifiers, which systematically occur post-nominally within the DP. Moreover, Baule-Kode DPs can also combine more than one quantifier, and the order of occurrence of the quantifiers yields different interpretations of the quantified DPs. We focus on three quantifiers, ngba ‘all’, klwaa ‘every’ and jwe ‘some’. Given the distribution and the semantic contribution of these quantifiers, we propose a structure of the Baule-Kode DP in which quantifiers merge as the head of different functional projections. We show that Baule-Kode DPs are strictly head-initial, and argue that the word orders observed within the DP are the result of systematic leftward movement of different portions of the nominal structure.

Keywords

• Baule
• quantifiers
• universal
• existential
• DP structure