Embedding and nominalization in karitiana (tupi)

Abstract

Subordinate clauses in Karitian exhibit a number of nominal characteristics, such as several affixes typical of noun phrases. In addition, they lack certain clause-specific heads, such as tense and mood (Storto, 1999). The formation of WH- questions also brings embedded clauses closer to noun phrases: first, they require displacement of the whole clause containing the interrogative pronoun, which is similar to the pattern found in questions with noun phrases; secondly, the moved clause behaves as a complex interrogative pronoun, since the question-formation morphology is sensitive to the case of the subordinate clause, not of the WH-element. Nonetheless, in spite of these similarities with nominal phrases, Rocha (2016) has questioned whether nominalization truly accounts for the behavior of subordinate clauses, as they also exhibit many other clause-like features such as valence alternation, evidential and aspectual heads, adverbial modifiers, and internal movement. We then propose a syntactic structure that combines functional heads of both nominal and clausal nature. This proposal is based on analyses within generative syntax which understand syntactically ambiguous patterns as different combinations of functional heads (Borsley & Kornfilt, 2000; Baker, 2011; Kornfilt & Whitman, 2011; Alexiadou et al. 2013). In our analysis, subordinate clauses in Karitiana include a nominal projection nP above several clausal/verbal heads, such as AspP, EvidP, VoiceP and vP. This mixed internal structure would then capture both nominal and clausal/verbal features simultaneously.