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      Māori subject extraction

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          Abstract

          This paper focuses on subject extraction in Māori, the indigenous Polynesian language of New Zealand. Māori has a range of verbal and non-verbal predicate constructions. I argue that, whilst subject topicalisation is generally permitted in all constructions, subject questioning is restricted (see Bauer 1993; 1997). More specifically, I claim that subject questioning is permitted in verbal and prepositional predicate constructions, but prohibited in nominal predicate constructions, all else being equal (see also de Lacy 1999). I adopt and defend a cleft analysis of questions according to which the questioned constituent is the matrix predicate phrase and the matrix subject is a headless relative clause ( Bauer 1991; 1993; 1997). I propose that the restriction on subject questioning results from intervention in this headless relative clause. I argue that the C head probes for a nominal feature rather than a traditional Aʹ-feature. Consequently, nominal predicate phrases intervene with Aʹ-movement of the subject, whilst verbal and prepositional predicate phrases do not. My analysis suggests that Aʹ-movement is generally triggered using nominal features in Māori. I discuss this proposal from an emergentist perspective, i.e. one where formal features are not innately pre-specified but rather emerge during language acquisition guided by the Third Factor cognitive bias to “Maximise Minimal Means” ( Biberauer 2017; Biberauer & Roberts 2015; 2017).

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          The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery

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            Three Factors in Language Design

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              Relativized relatives: Types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                2397-1835
                Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
                Ubiquity Press
                2397-1835
                17 October 2018
                2018
                : 3
                : 1
                : 110
                Affiliations
                [1 ]University of Cambridge, GB
                Article
                10.5334/gjgl.566
                05558483-5cc1-47c2-a693-78e9c9613c45
                Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s)

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 06 November 2017
                : 22 June 2018
                Categories
                Research

                General linguistics,Linguistics & Semiotics
                Aʹ-movement,Maximise Minimal Means,emergent features,subject extraction,Māori

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