Jabetza-genitiboaren sintaxia eta erkatze anizkuna

Abstract

After characterizing the so called possesive genitive as a case mark on nominal DP arguments, this article proposes that Basque structural genitive case is checked in the specifier of the head possessive, right below DP. This position attracts both subject and object genitives thus creating a multiple specifier configuration. As a result, Basque multiple genitive constructions display the features described by Richards (2001) for multiple A-specifiers (superiority, lack of scope ambiguity) and provide the basis to analyze several word order restrictions observed in Eguzkitza (1993); moreover, the derived order SO(X)N shows Person Case Constraint effects. The main consequences are that: (a) DP raising is pervasive in Basque noun phrases; and (b) we confirm that UG allows multiple case (here genitive) checking but disallows multiple person checking (Boeckx 2003, Jeong 2004, Ormazabal and Romero 2007, Rezac 2008).