Mixed Categories in Hausa: Between Morphology, Syntax and Semantics

Berthold Crysmann

In this talk I shall address the notion of basic category in Hausa, investigating in particular a range of mixed categories, including gerunds, action nouns, adjectives and prepositional nouns. I shall investigate their morphology, morphosyntax, as well as local and non-local syntax, and suggest to define lexical categories along morphological and semantic criteria. I shall discuss their representation in HaG, a computational grammar of Hausa, and argue that grammar implementation provides an indispensible tool for validating theories of categorial underspecification.