A Cartographic Approach to State Alternation in Tashlhit Amazigh Subjects

Abstract

This paper looks at subjects in Tashlhit Amazigh (TA) and more precisely the alternation attested in TA subjects according to their position in the sentence. Specifically, post-verbal subjects take the Construct State (CS) form, while pre-verbal subjects take the Free State (FS) form when they are not preceded by a modifier. In the previous accounts, the essential concern is to explain the factors which make the subject noun take the CS form in pre-verbal positions, and the FS form in post-verbal and in object positions. The fact that CS nouns can also appear in pre-verbal and object positions is almost always overlooked. For this reason, the objective of the current analysis is to account for the ungrammaticality FS nouns yield in post-verbal subject positions. Findings show that Cartography provides substantial grounds to capture FS-CS alternation given the rich left periphery of TA clauses.