The disjoint verb form and an empty immediate after verb position in Makhuwa

  • The Bantu language Makhuwa makes a distinction between cojoint and disjoint verb forms. Two hypotheses are made from generalisations on the distribution of the conjoint and disjoint verb forms in Makhuwa. 1) The verb appears in its conjoint form when a focal element occupies the Immediate After Verb (IAV) position; 2) the verb appears in its disjoint form when the IAV position is empty. A syntactic analysis is provided that accounts for these hypotheses if the IAV position is defined in terms of structural rather than linear adjacency between two heads in a direct c-command relation. In the syntactic analysis two focus projections are proposed: one under TP (Ndayiragije 1999) hosting the disjoint morpheme and one under vP, to whose specifier focal elements move. Non-focal elements remain in-situ. This analysis accounts both for the strong adjacency requirement of a cojoint verb form and its focal object and for the empty IAV position that requires a verb to appear in its disjoint form.

Download full text files

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:Jenneke van der Wal
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-309576
URL:http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/189.html
ISSN:1435-9588
ISSN:0947-7055
Parent Title (English):Papers in Bantu grammar and description / editors: Laura J. Downing, Lutz Marten & Sabine Zerbian, Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin, 2006, : ZAS papers in linguistics ; Nr. 43
Publisher:Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung
Place of publication:Berlin
Document Type:Part of a Book
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2013/11/14
Year of first Publication:2006
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2013/11/14
GND Keyword:Makua-Sprache; Syntax
Volume:43
Page Number:24
First Page:233
Last Page:256
HeBIS-PPN:381258165
Sammlungen:Linguistik
Linguistik-Klassifikation:Linguistik-Klassifikation: Syntax
Linguistik-Klassifikation: Morphologie / Morphology
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte:ZAS papers in linguistics : ZASPiL / ZASPiL 43 = Papers in Bantu grammar and description
:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-306854
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht