On the number of object markers in Bantu languages

Abstract

This paper describes the morphosyntactic diversity among Bantu languages in the number of pre-stem and post-stem object markers (OMs) that are allowed and discusses the factors responsible for this diversity. The number of OMs is sometimes highly restricted and sometimes seemingly unrestricted. Some languages have only pre-stem marking of objects; some have only poststem marking; and some have both pre-stem and post-stem marking. Personnumber, animacy, and locative noun classes are the basis for a number of morphosyntactic asymmetries in individual systems in whether objects are marked before or after the stem, though other factors such as grammatical relations are also involved. A handful of types of OMs, including locatives and the 1sg and reflexive markers, commonly allow languages to circumvent restrictions on object marking, allowing one more OM than usual. The number of OMs is also restricted by certain syntactic configurations such as passivization. A number of other issues that are important general considerations in the syntax of Bantu languages are shown to have at most a secondary role in determining the number of OMs that are allowed.

A Featural Typology of Bantu Agreement

“…Taking Roberts (2010) proposal of Agree with defective Goals as a point of departure, then, and considering the convincing analysis of Bembe object marking, the question is whether the defective goal approach can account for object marking across the Bantu languages. There is a large amount of variation in Bantu object marking (see the overviews in Marlo 2014Marlo , 2015bBeaudoin-Lietz et al 2004;Riedel 2009;Marten & Kula 2012), two aspects of which are discussed in this chapter. These are the challenges of local object doubling (Section 2.3) and differential object marking (Section 2.4).…”

“…high on the animacy hierarchy (Denny & Creider 1976;Claudi 1997). Furthermore, it would explain why we only find systems with restrictions to class 1/2 (Marlo 2015b) and not other classes as well: there are no languages where only class 5 and 6, or 9 and 10 can be object-marked, for example.…”

Building meaning in context: A dynamic approach to Bantu clause structure

“…For example, whilst multiple clitics are possible in a number of contexts in Romance languages, many Bantu languages have a restriction on the number of object markers that can appear in the verbal template and it is common for a maximum of one object marker to be permitted in a verb form although there is variation in this regard (see e.g. Marlo )…”

“… For more on the precise nature of the variation in object marking across the Bantu languages, the reader is referred to Marlo (). Marten et al.…”

The middle as a voice category in Bantu: Setting the stage for further research

“…As can be seen in (2), most suffixes have a -VC-shape (Schadeberg 2003: 72). The common Bantu reflexive marker, reconstructed in Proto-Bantu as *-(j)i- (Meeussen 1967: 109-110), is to be distinguished from the derivational root extensions in that it is a prefix occurring in the verb morpheme slot that is reserved for object markers (Marlo 2015). The names of these morphemes are adopted from Schadeberg (2003).…”