Inside the "Noun" in Maasai

In this paper, I will present an analysis of the simple “Noun” in Maasai (lda “dog”) which yields new insights into the basic building blocks of DPs, the way these are combined, the movement processes that apply within DPs, and the agreement patterns that result. Simple nouns in Maasai are at least bi-morphemic, and according to standard practice would either be selected from the lexicon fully inflected, or be derived in the syntax through head movement. I will depart from standard practice and argue that Maasai Nouns are neither selected in their full forms, nor derived by head movement. Instead they are derived syntactically through (remnant) XP movement. This position is consistent with much recent work that has shown that head movement is either not an option allowed by UG, or is a severely restricted option (see section 2) and follows the line of research I pursued in previous work with Anna Szabolcsi (Koopman and Szabolcsi 2000). Since the analysis of agreement patterns plays an important role in the argumentation, I will spell out my assumptions about the theory of agreement in (section 3), and defend the Spec head analysis of agreement over Agree (Chomsky, 1998).