On quantified DPs in Baule-Kode

Abstract

Baule, a language of the Kwa family, has a rich set of quantifiers, which occur post-nominally within the DP. Moreover, Baule DPs can also combine more than one quantifier, and the order of occurrence of the quantifiers yields different interpretations of the quantified DPs. We focus on three quantifiers, ngba ‘all’, klwaa ‘every’ and jwe ‘some’. Given the distribution and the semantic contribution these quantifiers, we propose a structure of the Baule DP in which quantifiers merge as the head of different functional projections. We show that Baule DPs are strictly head-initial, and argue that the word orders observed within the DP is the result of systematic leftward movement of different portions of the nominal structure.