Verb agreement and the Structure of the Clause in Karaja

Publisher: KWPL
Publication date: 1997
Pages: 15A study of verb agreement and clause structure in Karaja, a Brazilian indigenous language of Macro-Je stock, discusses the subject and object agreement systems with relation to the Feature Specification Constraint. Implementation of the SOV order in Karaja is then analyzed and evidence is presented for the existence of a single functional phrase that must be postulated in order to handle the OV word order and check the object structural case. Object clitic constructions are then contrasted with object verb-internal affixes, and main verbs with auxiliaries. Concluding remarks are offered on the structure of the clause and the parametrization of the functional category of Agreement.