A Minimalist Analysis of the Syntactic Structure of the Prepositional Phrase in Kiĩgembe
Abstract
The Minimalist Program by Chomsky (1995) was a reaction to the excessive complexity of structures and principles in previous generative approaches. It is, therefore, geared towards achieving syntactic operations in the simplest manner possible. It also maintains the idea of X-bar theory that all phrases in all languages have the same structure. In this study, data from Kiĩgembe, a dialect of Kimeru (a Bantu language), is used to assess the truthfulness of this assumption. The findings of this study reveal that the Prepositional Phrase (PP) in Kiĩgembe can truly be accounted for using the Minimalist Program.
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