Non-Subject Agreement Elements in Amharic Relative Clause

Non-subject agreement elements were believed to exist in transitive verbs. However, their presence is attested in Amharic intransitive and passive verbs too. This work examines their nature and function in structures of relative clauses. The result shows that the non-subject agreement elements which were termed as AgrO mark pro or NPs that are direct objects and direct cognate objects in transitives and passives, but only direct cognate objects in intransitives. They are also believed to refer to only definite NPs and usually denote contrastive topics. The other types, i.e. Agrpp are composed of the semantic role assigners (applicatives) /-ll-/ or /-bb-/ and object markers. The object markers mark indirect objects (except when used in intransitives) and oblique objects. It is these object markers that show agreement. Under the framework of Minimalist Program, attempt is also made to see the derivation of applicatives, objects, and relative clauses. This is to explain how semantic role and grammatical case assignment is handled in the language. This book should be useful to any linguist who is interested in Amharic morphosyntax.

Autorentext

Desalegn Hagos: MA in General Linguistics, Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and philology at Addis Ababa University(Ethiopia),Interested in Syntax.