Intermediate steps of lowering in Tigrinya

Abstract This paper presents a pattern of complementizer displacement in the Ethio-Semitic language Tigrinya (Ethiopia, Eritrea) that argues for the existence of a morphosyntactic operation of lowering that may involve successive steps (Embick and Noyer 2001; Arregi and Pietraszko 2021). In Tigrinya, underlyingly clause-final complementizers may displace leftward and downward throughout a head-final verb cluster. This displacement is associated with morphological consequences, in the form of stem allomorphy and the spreading of relative morphology. Importantly, these effects show up obligatorily in intermediate positions, on auxiliaries that are crossed by lowering. As a result, the morphosyntax of Tigrinya complementizers provides evidence for intermediate steps of lowering, and against proposals in which lowering effects do not involve the dislocation of a morpheme (e.g., Brody 2000; Adger et al. 2009; Platzack 2013; Svenonius 2016).