Verb Agreement and the Structure of the Clause in Karaja

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the subject and object agreement systems in Karaja, a Brazilian indigenous language of the Macro-Je stock, with relation to the Feature Specification Constraint (FSC) proposed by Murasugi, 94. We then analyze the implementation of the SOV order in Karaja. We present evidence in Karaja for the existence of a single functional phrase - not necessarily an AgrO - which must be postulated in order to handle the OV word order and check the object structural case. We then contrast object clitic constructions with object verb-internal affixes and main verbs with auxiliaries. Finally, we offer some concluding remarks on the structure of the clause and the parametrization of the functional category of Agreement.