Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

It is a documented fact that restrictive relative clauses in Tigrinya (a head final Semitic language spoken In Eritrea and in some parts of Ethiopia), can appear between the demonstrative/determiner and the head noun, “like all other qualifiers” (Kogan 1997).

What has not been taken into consideration, to our knowledge, is the (optional) post-nominal occurrence of Tigrinya relative clauses, as well as their position with respect to other nominal modifiers, adjectives and numerals in particular. Our first goal is therefore to remedy this lacune by providing a thorough description of possible and impossible word orders within the DP.

Our second goal is to provide a theoretically-satisfying analysis of possible re-orderings of the Dem - RC - Num - A – N hierarchy in Tigrinya. The insight comes from Cinque (2003, 2013, 2015), who argues in favor of a generalized double-headed analysis of relative clauses. According to this view, relative clauses have both an internal head and an external head but, typically, only one of the two is pronounced.

We claim that in the Tigrinya DP, RC is merged below D/Dem, and above Num, the latter c-commanding A and N. We also claim that not only is the relative head N both external and internal (to the RC), so are the other constituents of the DP, up to and including NumP.

The grammatical Tigrinya word orders involve different spell-out options of the external or the internal heads within NumP, i.e., Num, A and N, in compliance with the following two constraints. First, if an external head is pronounced, the corresponding internal head must be silent; second, if a head of the Num - A - N hierarchy is pronounced externally, then all the constituents that it c-commands must be pronounced externally too.

(Joint work with Ur Shlonsky)