Selected Proceedings of the 43 rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics : Linguistic Interfaces in African Languages

Adjectives in Basaá [ɓasaá] (Bantu, A43: Cameroon) are morphologically nominal: they possess inherent noun class and distinguish singular and plural (Dimmendaal 1988, Hyman 2003). Additionally, adjectives in Basaá function as the head of their noun phrase, in a sense to be made precise below. This challenges the standard assumption that noun phrases or DPs are projected (or headed) by nouns. This paper provides an analysis of adjectives in Basaá which takes seriously the categorical status of Basaá adjectives as nouns, but proposes that these adjectives are syntactic predicates of the noun they modify, moving to their position as nominal heads by Predicate Inversion. The status of adjectives as nominal heads can be seen in the example below, in which the adjective occurs in the position of the head noun and controls concord on its dependents, including the phrase containing the noun it modifies (Hyman 2003):