Tense marking in the nominal domain

The aim of this paper is to argue that temporal marking in the nominal domain should not be taken as evidence for the existence of a syntactic category TP within the extended projection of the noun phrase. On the basis of two unrelated languages, Somali and Halkomelem, the paper re-interprets the role of temporal morphology as being linked to specificity in the former case and as being adverbial in the latter. Building on an analysis of Halkomelem, according to which the language lacks a syntactic category TP (Wiltschko 2003), the paper derives from this property the lack of a categorial distinction between nouns and verbs in Halkomelem. This is based on the proposal that becoming verbal necessarily requires a combination between some primitive predicative head and an Agreeing T in the syntax.