27.103, Books: Argument Licensing and Agreement: Halpert

Tue Jan 5 22:52:17 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-103. Tue Jan 05 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.103, Books: Argument Licensing and Agreement: Halpert

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Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2016 17:52:04
From: Carolyn Napolitano [Carolyn.Napolitano at oup.com]
Subject: Argument Licensing and Agreement: Halpert

Title: Argument Licensing and Agreement 
Series Title: Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax  

Publication Year: 2015 
Publisher: Oxford University Press
	   http://www.oup.com/us

Book URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/argument-licensing-and-agreement-9780190256487 

Author: Claire Halpert

Paperback: ISBN:  9780190256487 Pages: 320 Price: U.S. $ 39.95

Abstract:

The strikingly unrestricted syntactic distribution of nouns in many Bantu languages often leads to proposals that syntactic case does not play an active role in the grammar of Bantu. This book offers a different conclusion that the basis of Zulu that Bantu languages have not only a system of structural case, but also a complex system of morphological case that is comparable to systems found in languages like Icelandic. By comparing the system of argument licensing found in Zulu to those found in more familiar languages, Halpert introduces a number of insights onto the organization of the grammar.

First, while this book argues in favor of a case-licensing analysis of Zulu, it locates the positions where case is assigned lower in the clause than what is found in nominative-accusative languages. In addition, Zulu shows evidence that case and agreement are two distinct operations in the language, located on different heads and operating independently of each other. Despite these unfamiliarities, there is evidence that the timing relationships between operations mirror those found in other languages. Second, this book proposes a novel type of morphological case that serves to mask many structural licensing effects in Zulu; the effects of this case are unfamiliar, Halpert argues that its existence is expected given the current typological picture of case. Finally, this book explores the consequences of case and agreement as dissociated operations, showing that given this situation, other unusual properties of Bantu languages, such as hyper-raising, are a natural result. This explor
 ation yields the conclusion that some of the more unusual properties of Bantu languages in fact result from small amounts of variation to deeply familiar syntactic principles such as case, agreement, and the EPP. 

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories
                     Morphology
                     Syntax
                     Typology

Subject Language(s): Zulu (zul)

Language Family(ies): Narrow Bantu

Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=96273

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