Lexical categories, lack of inflection, and predicate-fronting in Niuean

* 1. Introduction One persistent goal of linguistics is to find correlations between various grammatical characteristics of a language. In this paper I will propose a connection between the isolating morphology (and lack of copular verbs) in Niuean, a Polynesian language of the Tongic subgroup, and the predicate initial nature of the language. It is a very salient property of Niuean that the language has no inflectional morphology. There is no phi-agreement in the language, and there is no tense inflection on the verb or auxiliaries. 1 One possibility is that this is just a morpho-phonological accident. In this view, Niuean is a language with lots of phonetically zero-morphology, but it still has all the phi and tense featural material that has been tied to verb movement and subject externalization within Minimalist theory (eg. Chomsky 2000). If this is the case, Niuean could develop overt inflection and nothing else about the language would change. Another possibility is that this is not the case, and that the lack of inflection in Niuean is crucial to its current syntax. In this view, if agreement were to emerge in the language, other aspects of its syntax would have to change fairly radically at the same time. In this paper I will explore this latter view, arguing that the lack of inflection in Niuean is related to the fact that * I would like to thank ** (to be written after review process is completed) 1 Seiter 1980 describes a form of reduplicative agreement for number in Niuean, but Abdolhosseini et al 2002 show that this indicates plural aspect and is not agreement.

[1]  David Gil,et al.  Syntactic Categories, Cross-Linguistic Variation and Universal Grammar , 2000 .

[2]  Mélanie Jouitteau.  Nominal properties of vPs in Breton , 2005 .

[3]  Andrew Carnie,et al.  The Syntax of Verb Initial Languages , 2000 .

[4]  Andrew Carnie,et al.  Non-Verbal Predication and Head-Movement by , 1995 .

[5]  Rolf Noyer,et al.  Movement Operations after Syntax , 2001, Linguistic Inquiry.

[6]  Tracy Holloway,et al.  Pseudo Noun Incorporation and Argument Structure in Niuean , 2004 .

[7]  Sandra Chung.  The Syntax of Nominalizations in Polynesian , 1973 .

[8]  Arnfinn Muruvik Vonen.  Polynesian multifunctionality and the ambitions of linguistic description , 2000 .

[9]  Susan Rothstein.  The Syntactic Forms of Predication , 2004 .

[10]  William J. Seiter.  Studies in Niuean syntax , 1980 .

[11]  James Mccloskey.  Clause structure, ellipsis and proper government in Irish , 1991 .

[12]  Christopher D. Manning.  Ergativity : Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations , 2000 .

[13]  Diane Massam,et al.  Essential Features of Predication in English and Niuean , 1997 .

[14]  E. Pearce.  Phrasal movement within the Maori DP , 2003 .

[15]  R. Sproat.  Welsh syntax and VSO structure , 1985 .

[16]  Stanley Dubinsky,et al.  Functional Architecture and the Distribution of Subject Properties , 2001 .

[17]  Howard Lasnik,et al.  Step by step : essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik , 2000 .

[18]  Richard A. Demers,et al.  Predicates and pronominal arguments in Straits Salish , 1994 .

[19]  David Pesetsky,et al.  Zero Syntax: Experiencers and Cascades , 1994 .

[20]  Ulrike Mosel,et al.  Samoan Reference Grammar , 1992 .

[21]  Alec Marantz,et al.  Clitics, morphological merger, and the mapping to phonological structure , 1988 .

[22]  Marie-Thérèse Vinet.  FRENCH NON-VERBAL EXCLAMATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS , 1991 .

[23]  E. Anagnostopoulou,et al.  Parametrizing Agr: Word Order, V-Movement and Epp-Checking , 1998 .

[24]  K. Oda.  Wh-questions in V-initial languages , 2002 .

[25]  W. Bruce Croft.  Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations , 1990 .

[26]  JÜRGEN BROSCHART,et al.  Why Tongan does it differently: Categorial distinctions in a language without nouns and verbs , 1997 .

[27]  Alec Marantz,et al.  No escape from syntax: Don't try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon , 1997 .

[28]  Bernard Comrie,et al.  Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes , 2000 .

[29]  Diane Massam,et al.  Number and Events: Verbal Reduplication in Niuean , 2002 .