Left dislocation in Zulu

This paper examines left dislocation constructions in Zulu, a Southern Bantu language belonging to the Nguni group (Zone S 40). In Zulu left dislocation configurations, a topic phrase in the beginning of the sentence is linked to a resumptive element within the associated clause. Typically, the resumptive element is an incorporated pronoun (cf. Bresnan & Mchombo 1987), as illustrated by the examples in (1) and (2). In these examples, the object pronoun (in italics) is part of the verbal morphology and agrees with the noun class (gender) of the dislocate. This situation is schematically illustrated in (3), where co-indexation represents agreement: ..

Particle verbs and the conditions of projection

In this paper I discuss the properties of particle verbs in light of a proposal about syntactic projection. In section 2 I suggest that projection involves functional structure in two important ways: (i) only functional phrases can be complements, and (ii) lexical heads that take complements and project must be inflected. In section 3, I show that the structure of particle verbs is not uniform with respect to (i) and (ii). On the one hand, a particle always combines with an inflected verb; in this respect, particle verbs look like verb-complement constructions. On the other hand, the particle is not a functional phrase and therefore is not a proper complement, which makes the combination of the particle and the verb look more like a morphologically complex verb. I argue that syntactic rules can in fact interpret the node dominating the particle and the verb as a projection and as a complex head. In section 4, I show that many of the characteristic properties of particle verbs in the Germanic languages follow from the fact that they are structural hybrids

Word-level and phrase-level prefixes in Zulu

This article investigates two strategies of relative clause formation in Zulu, a Bantu language spoken in South Africa. The standard way of forming a relative clause in Zulu involves a prefix (a so-called 'relative concord') which is attached to the predicate of the relative clause. In this strategy, the relative concord expresses agreement with the subject of the relative clause. In a second strategy, the relative concord seems to be prefixed to the first word of the relative clause; in this position, it agrees with the head noun. The main claim of this article is that the second strategy of relative clause formation in Zulu is an example of phrasal affixation. I show that the relative concord does not merge morphologically with the first word of the relative clause, but is attached to the whole relative clause. Following Anderson (1992), I analyse this kind of phrasal affixation as an inflectional process; the relative clause is a predicate, and the relative concord in the second strategy expresses agreement between this phrasal predicate and the head noun

Mobility as a feature: Evidence from Zulu*

This paper provides evidence for the view that syntactic movement of an element Y to a position X is not driven by features of the target X, but by features of the moving element Y. The data that constitute evidence for this type of analysis come from A-bar movement constructions (object left and right dislocation; object relativisation) in the Bantu language Zulu. As I show, only object-DPs that move out of the VP in Zulu are active Goals for Agree-relations and can trigger object agreement with the verb. The fact that the functional head responsible for object agreement must be able to identify a DP in its c-command domain as an active Goal entails that the “mobility” of this DP must be encoded as a property of the DP. Based on this conclusion, I also discuss two proposals about the nature of the feature that activates a DP for movement in Zulu and examine the conditions that determine how this feature is checked and deleted through movement.Keywords: syntactic movement; EPP-features; Zulu; dislocation; relative clause

On clitic left dislocation in Zulu.

No abstract available

Against overt particle incorporation.

Proceedings of the 21st Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium.No abstract available

The subject marker in Bantu as an antifocus marker.

No abstract available

Derived subjects in Kinyarwanda locative constructions.

No abstract available