The INFL constituent in the Mundani language
The thesis is a syntactic study of the Inflectional constituent (INFL) in Mundani, a Grassfields Bantu language of the Mbam-Nkam subgroup, spoken in the S.W. Province of the Republic of Cameroon. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the Mundani language and people; chapter 2 summarizes relevant aspects of the modular system of Universal Grammar known as Government and Binding (GB) theory that forms the basic theoretical framework of the study. In order to place the INFL constituent within its wider syntactic context, chapters 3 and A outline Mundani clause structure, including interrogatives, negation, and interesting deviations from basic SVO word order in Topic and Focus constructions. The INFL constituent itself is introduced in chapter 5, with two possibilities for syntactic analysis: (i) as a single split constituent; (ii) as two separate syntactic categories: TENSE projecting to TP, and AQR projecting to AgrP. The evidence favours the second approach, which is adopted as a basis for discussion. Chapters 6 and 7 detail the content and syntactic properties of the category TENSE, including the licensing of nodes in complex TENSE constituents composed of several elements; the content and syntax of the category AGP
Magba, Elizabeth Ann
Linguistics
The INFL constituent in the Mundani language. The thesis is a syntactic study of the Inflectional constituent (INFL) in Mundani, a Grassfields Bantu language of the Mbam-Nkam subgroup, spoken in the S.W. Province of the Republic of Cameroon. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the Mundani language and people; chapter 2 summarizes relevant aspects of the modular system of Universal Grammar known as Government and Binding (GB) theory that forms the basic theoretical framework of the study. In order to place the INFL constituent within its wider syntactic context, chapters 3 and A outline Mundani clause structure, including interrogatives, negation, and interesting deviations from basic SVO word order in Topic and Focus constructions. The INFL constituent itself is introduced in chapter 5, with two possibilities for syntactic analysis: (i) as a single split constituent; (ii) as two separate syntactic categories: TENSE projecting to TP, and AQR projecting to AgrP. The evidence favours the second approach, which is adopted as a basis for discussion. Chapters 6 and 7 detail the content and syntactic properties of the category TENSE, including the licensing of nodes in complex TENSE constituents composed of several elements; the content and syntax of the category AGP
infl constituent language syntactic study inflectional constituent infl bantu language subgroup speak province republic cameroon briefly introduces language people relevant_aspect modular system universal_grammar known government_binding theory form basic theoretical_framework study order_place infl constituent within_wider syntactic context outline clause_structure include interrogative negation interesting deviation basic svo word_order topic focus construction infl constituent introduce possibility syntactic_analysis single split constituent two_separate syntactic category tense project project evidence favour second basis discussion detail content syntactic_property category tense include license node complex tense constituent compose several element content syntax category