The morphosyntax of complex verbal expressions in the Horn of Africa

The present dissertation is a study of the morphosyntax of complex verbal expressions in Amharic, Afar and Oromo. The complex verbal expressions discussed in these languages are morphological transitive, causative and applicative expressions. These expressions involve a morpheme or morphemes that mark the derivation of the expressions. The complex verbal expressions in these languages also display interesting morphological variations. These variations are delivered by the expected and unexpected distributions of the derivational morphemes. The main focus of this dissertation is to investigate such unexpected distributional patterns of the derivational morphemes involved in the complex verbal expressions in these languages. This dissertation studies and analyzes the morphologies of these expressions from a perspective based on a theory of morphology, Distributed Morphology. I adopt two basic ideas from the theory: (i) the phonological realization of a morpheme is after spell-out; (ii) the selection of a phonological exponent for a functional element is determined by the morpho-syntactic environment. This dissertation claims that the derivational morphemes that appear in the morphological transitive/causative and applicative constructions are functional elements: nu* in the morphological transitive/causative constructions and p in the applicative constructions. The presence of morphological variations of these constructions are delivered by the fact that their derivational morphemes have a set of different phonological exponents. The selection of exponents for these morphemes is determined in the morpho-syntactic environment in which the derivational morphemes are placed.