External possession meets bare nouns in Malagasy

Abstract

This paper examines apparent noun incorporation in Malagasy that is the result of external possession (possessor raising). It is shown that such incorporation is not derived via head movement or via compounding. Instead, it is argued that this is an instance of pseudo noun incorporation (Massam 2001): the possessum is merged as an NP sister to the predicate. As for the structure of external possession, a non-movement analysis is proposed: the apparent possessor is generated as the specifier of a null possessive head and binds an empty argument position within the possessum. The resulting structure and meaning are shown to be parallel to experiencer 'have' constructions in English.

When bare nouns scope wide. The case of Malagasy

“…In Antakarana object shift is impossible and all direct objects must be string adjacent to the verb (but the absence of object shift is not crucial for the proposed analysis). Before turning to the structure, I mention here that the same adjacency effects can be observed in possessor raising contexts (Keenan and Ralalaoherivony 2000;Paul 2009a). For simplicity, in this paper I will concentrate on bare noun direct objects that are not in possessor raising contexts.…”

Noun Incorporation: Essentials and Extensions

“…Certain subtypes of NI are particularly prevalent across languages, for example, the incorporation of possessors and body parts is found in languages which otherwise do not permit NI (see Aikhenvald 2000; Paul 2009). The literature on this topic is large enough to effectively constitute a separate body, and space limitations rule out its coverage here.…”

Introduction

“…One of the clearest candidates for a noun incorporation analysis concerns the nominal that appears in external possession constructions. Paul (2009) shows that external possession (possessor raising) in Malagasy can receive such an incorporation account, but that this incorporation is crucially not derived via head movement or compounding, but is instead an instance of pseudo noun incorporation in the sense of Massam (2001Massam ( , 2009.…”