External Possession Meets Bare Nouns in Malagasy

This paper examines apparent noun incorporation in Malagasy that is the result of external possession (possessor raising). It is shown that such incorporation is not derived via head movement or via compounding. Instead, it is argued that this is an instance of pseudo noun incorporation (Massam, 2001): the possessum is merged as an NP sister to the predicate. As for the structure of external possession, a non-movement analysis is proposed: the apparent possessor is generated as the specifier of a null possessive head and binds an empty argument position within the possessum. The resulting structure and meaning are shown to be parallel to experiencer ‘have’ constructions in English.