Evidence for a DP-projection in West Greenlandic Inuit

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique
• Main Author: Manlove, Kathleen
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2015
• Subjects: Linguistics and Language; Language and Linguistics; greenlandic; inuit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008413100026244; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0008413100026244

Abstract Evidence for a DP-projection in West Greenlandic Inuit Abstract The goal of this paper is to argue in favor of a DP-layer in West Greenlandic Inuit noun phrases and in doing so contribute to the argument that the absence of overt D-elements is not directly indicative of the absence of a DP-layer. Inuit is a polysynthetic, ergative language with no overt articles; for this reason it has been argued that a D-head is unnecessary. Others have argued contrastively that a functional projection KP (Case) is necessary (often assuming DP). This paper differs from both camps in the sense that it considers syntactic features specific to D. I present three primary arguments in support of a D-head in West Greenlandic: (i) the D-head acts as the locus of agreement features in possessive DPs, (ii) the D-head is the locus of the syntactic/semantic feature of definiteness; and (iii) a DP-layer is needed to provide a landing site for movement in DP-internal word order variations.