Phonological phrasing in Northern Sotho (Bantu)

The prosody of ‘dislocation’ in selected Bantu languages

“…As Zerbian (2006Zerbian ( , 2007 points out, this kind of phrasing asymmetry is so common, cross-linguistically, that the Edge-based phrasing theory developed in work like Selkirk (1986Selkirk ( , 1995Selkirk ( , 2000 and Truckenbrodt (1995Truckenbrodt ( , 1999Truckenbrodt ( , 2005Truckenbrodt ( , 2007 is designed to account for it. The basic prosodic parsing algorithm in this theory requires: one edge (right or left) of a syntactic constituent -either lexical XP or a phase, nP/CP[ 3 _ T D $ D I F F ] ,[ 4 _ T D $ D I F F ] 5 to coincide with one edge (right or left) of some post-lexical prosodic constituent -Phonological Phrase or Intonation Phrase.…”

“…(Buell (2008) provides independent evidence that right dislocations are adjoined below CP in Zulu.) However, in Northern Sotho, Zerbian (2006Zerbian ( , 2007 argues that right dislocations are most plausibly adjoined at the level of CP (the root clause, or InflP in the framework she adopts) to account for the fact that in this language adverbials are not preceded by a prosodic phrase break, as shown in (7c), while right dislocations are, as shown in (7d). The right dislocated elements are underlined in these examples:…”

“…6 The asymmetric prosodic phrasing pattern is then straightforwardly optimized by the constraints in (8). Constraint (8a) is satisfied when there is an Intonation Phrase break before a 4 See Zerbian (2007) for detailed discussion of disjoint verb morphology in Northern Sotho, and see Buell (2005) for detailed discussion of disjoint verb morphology in Zulu. 5 Following Chomsky (2001) I take CP to be a phase.…”

“…The Edge-based model can refer to either the right edge or the left edge of lexical XPs or phases (nP/CP) in defining the position of prosodic phrase breaks, so it cannot explain Zerbian's (2006Zerbian's ( , 2007 generalization that, in the Bantu languages she surveyed, right dislocations are always phrased separately from what precedes. Cross-Bantu variability in phrasing is only found at the left edge in the languages surveyed.…”

3. Locating the Bantu conjoint/disjoint alternation in a typology of focus marking

“…However, in many Bantu -and indeed African -languages, stress or corresponding forms of prosodic prominence such as vowel lengthening do not play a direct role in focus marking (cf. Hyman 1999;Zerbian 2007;Downing 2013, see also other Chapters in this volume, especially by Kula, by Halpert, and by Zeller, Zerbian & Cook).…”