Class 17 as a non-locative noun class in Zulu

Buell, Leston

doi:10.1515/jall-2012-0001

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…In these cases, locative marking has typically spread beyond clearly locative contexts and is used as a, sometimes optional, marker of clause subordination in general. This is part of a wider tendency in southern Bantu languages to use class 17 agreement forms in default and impersonal contexts (Buell 2012, Marten 2010, and this presents, in terms of details, a different situation from the one found in Bemba substitutive marking, with less obvious similarity than the first example. The final example we present here is the case of (historic) locative markers being used to mark clausal negation, for example in Kikongo:…”

Section: Related Locative Grammaticalisation Processes In Bantumentioning

confidence: 73%

Benefactive and substitutive applicatives in Bemba

Marten

Kula

2014

Journal of African Languages and Linguistics

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Benefactive applicative constructions can encode a range of different meanings, including notably recipient, substitutive and plain benefactive readings, which are often distinguished in cross-linguistic studies. In Bantu languages, this distinction has not received much attention, in part because most Bantu languages do not formally distinguish between different readings of benefactive applicatives. In Bemba (Bantu M42, Zambia), by contrast, substitutive applicatives, where the action of the verb is performed by the agent instead of, on behalf of, or in place of someone else, are formally marked by applicative morphology in addition to a post-verbal clitic -kó, based on a grammaticalised locative demonstrative clitic. The paper provides a detailed discussion of the construction and proposes that the interpretation of substitutive applicatives results from the interaction of abstract applicative and locative semantics and depends on underlying metaphors of spatial and abstract location. Bemba benefactive applicatives thus provide an illustration of the complex function and interpretation of Bantu applicatives and locative markers more widely. The construction is interesting from a historical-comparative and typological perspective because of the particular grammaticalisation process from a locative source involved in the historical development of the construction, and because substitution is marked in addition to applicative marking.

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Section: Related Locative Grammaticalisation Processes In Bantumentioning

confidence: 73%

Benefactive and substitutive applicatives in Bemba

Marten

Kula

2014

Journal of African Languages and Linguistics

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“…Interestingly, however, this peculiar use of noun class 17 is comparable to a similar use of the neuter subject pronouns ce in French'' and het in Dutch (Buell 2012). The neuter subject pronoun in these languages can only refer to people when the predicate is nominal, as shown in (25) In this way, Zulu noun class 17 subject agreement is taken to correspond to the use of het and ce as subjects in Dutch and French.…”

Section: Use As Subject Of Nominal Predicationmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…As described in Buell (2012), the Bantu and Germanic families both have representatives of two types of languages. The mono-expletive languages use the same pronoun or subject agreement for all types of expletive pronouns, while the di-expletive languages use two different pronouns or agreements depending on the grammatical context.…”

Section: Expletive Usementioning

confidence: 99%

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Neuter gender in a sexless language

Dreu

Buell²

2012

AVT

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In some Germanic languages, neuter gender is used both as a lexical gender and for certain grammatical functions, while in Romance languages, neuter gender is only employed for grammatical functions. Zulu, a Bantu language, has a much more elaborate noun class system than those languages, but one not rooted in sex or animacy as in Germanic or Romance. However, it is shown that Zulu noun class 17 is used for the same range of grammatical functions as neuter gender in Indo-European. Specifically, Indo-European neuter gender and Zulu class 17 are used when the referent has no specific noun class properties, for expletive subjects, and as the subject of nominal predication, even when the referent is human. Aside from its use in some languages as a gender for nouns, then, neuter gender can be understood as a cluster of grammatical functions, independently of the way the lexicon is organized.

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“…the analysis of demonstratives in section 3.2.1. Unlike Buell (2009), I take the subject concord ku-in its various expletive uses to be of class 15 rather than 17, as indicated by its shape ku-rather than khu-. For this reason, I also remain agnostic with respect to Buell's claim that there is a non-locative class 17, which is largely based on the assumption that expletive ku-is class 17.…”

Section: The Noun Class Prefixesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The nanosyntax of Nguni noun class prefixes and concords

Taraldsen

2010

Lingua

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Class 17 as a non-locative noun class in Zulu

Cited by 15 publications

References 3 publications

Benefactive and substitutive applicatives in Bemba

Benefactive and substitutive applicatives in Bemba

Neuter gender in a sexless language

The nanosyntax of Nguni noun class prefixes and concords

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