Applying the Nonsentential Analysis to Classical Nahuatl

Author ORCID Identifier

0009-0002-2371-4295

Degree Year

2026

Document Type

Thesis - Oberlin Community Only

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

English

Advisor(s)

Yorki J. Encalada
Jason D. Haugen

Committee Member(s)

Yorki Encalada
Jason Haugen
Robert Xu

Keywords

Linguistics, Syntax, Chomsky, Classical Nahuatl, Minimalism, Nonsententials

Abstract

The syntax of utterances smaller than a sentence is an underdiscussed but intriguing grammatical quandary. Competing analyses propose deletion from a full sentence and base generation of small utterances as structural answers. Ellen Barton and Ljiljana Progovac (2005) propose a nonsentential analysis of the latter class. Their theory is couched in Minimalism, a generativist theory that aims to simplify syntactic processes to their barest essentials, wherein the maximal projection of a sentential is at least a Tense Phrase, and nonsentential utterances are ones without the motivation to merge up to TP. However, their analysis is limited to mainly Indo-European languages. In this paper, I apply the nonsentential analysis to Classical Nahuatl, a Uto-Aztecan language with complex morphosyntax. I refer to Michel Launey’s theory of omnipredicativity in my consideration of the maximal projection of CN nouns and Jason Haugen’s argument for CN configurationality in my consideration of verbs. Ultimately, I claim that although nouns can act as predicates, they on their own do not project further than a Possissive Phrase, allowing for nonsententials nouns. However, due to the split-Complementizer model, which poses a series of phrase types above the TP, and the fact that CN is a verb-initial language, verbal utterances invariably project beyond TP, suggesting that there are no VP nonsententials.

Notes

Department: Linguistics

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