Dr. Ruth Kramer
The definite article in English has an unremarkable syntax: it is always at the left edge of the noun phrase that contains it (e.g., *the* cat, *the* black cat, *the *cat that meowed). However, much recent research has shown that, in many languages, the distribution of the definite article is more complex (e.g., the definite article can be in the middle of a noun phrase), and this can cause difficulties for current linguistic theory. This talk focuses on the distribution of the definite article in Amharic, a Semitic language which is the national language of Ethiopia. The definite article in Amharic (traditionally called the definite marker) can appear in a wide range of positions within the noun phrase, almost none of which are predicted by current theories about the structure of noun phrases. I argue that the complex distribution of the definite marker can be almost entirely explained if it undergoes a particular type of independently-attested morphological operation. The resulting morphological analysis predicts the position of the definite marker across a large amount of data without requiring the syntax of the definite marker to be substantially different from definite markers/articles in other languages. Additionally, the analysis provides evidence for the recent idea that morphological operations apply using the same cycles as syntactic operations.
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