The Structures Of Nominal Clauses In Afan Oromo A Minimalist Approach

This thesis explores the structure of nominal clauses in Afan Oromo within the framework ofrnChomsky’s (1993, 1995) Minimalist Program. In particular, it focuses on two types of nominalrnclauses: akka clause, which is finite and f -clause, which is non-finite. Attempt is made tornidentify the functional and lexical categories, the possible movements that drive nominal clausernstructures and the hierarchical order of functional and lexical projections in the structures.rnIn akka clause, there are six functional projections – CP, TP, AspP, NegP, AgrSP and AgrOP. Inrnxirnf -clause, on the other hand, there are CP, TP, NegP, AgrSP and AgrOP. With regard torndistribution, akka clause is limited to the position of complement while f -clause can occur in allrnargument positions. Since the language marks nominative case morphologically, the nominalrnhead of f -clause displays the nominative case suffix /-n/. Concerning case checking, both AgrSrnand Asp can check nominative case and the possible checking domain for accusative case is thernlight verb and light noun. It is also shown that nominal clauses have SOV word order where thernobject may be preposed for purpose of focus. Finally, the syntactic representations of nominalrnclauses have been discussed. The hierarchy in akka clauses is [DP [ CP [ AgrSP [ TP [AspP [rnNegP [AgrOP [ vP [VP ]]]]]]]] while in f -clauses the order is [ DP [CP [ AgrSP [ TP [ NegPrn[AgrOP [ nP [ NP ]]]]]]]].

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