The syntax of the Setswana noun phrase

Abstract

This paper describes the structure of the Noun Phrase in Setswana, and specifically addresses the following questions: a) In what ways can the Setswana noun be modified? b) How are constituents within the Noun Phrase (NP) ordered relative to the head noun? c) What is the role of the morphemes that surface after the head noun in NPs modified by possessives, quantifiers and adjectives discussed in this paper? d) What is the structure of the Setswana Noun Phrase? With regards to question (a) we observed that the Setswana NP can be modified by demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers, adjectives and relative clauses and that the morphological form of the modifiers such as the first four is determined by the class of the modified noun. In addition, the formation of modifiers such as possessives, quantifiers, adjectives and relative clauses involves the use of a first positional demonstrative-like morpheme. In answer to questions (b) and (c), we observed that in each of the NPs discussed in this paper, the head noun occurs phrase initially and is immediately followed by the demonstrative-like morpheme which we concluded is a relative marker. This demonstrative-like marker is similar in form to what Cole (1955) refers to as the first positional demonstrative. We further observed that the structure of NPs modified by possessives, quantifiers and adjectives resembles the structure of NPs modified by relative clauses in Setswana with the exception that the predicate in these NPs does not have the relative suffix -ng found in pure relative clauses. We thus propose that Setswana NPs modified by possessives, quantifiers and adjectives are relativized NPs, albeit reduced ones. We proposed a structure of the Setswana NP in which the relative marker is the head of the Complementizer Phrase (CP) and the Inflectional head takes a Predicate Phrase instead of Verb Phrase to accommodate what we referred to in this paper as reduced relatives.