The Bantu-Romance-Greek connection revisited: Processing constraints in auxiliary and clitic placement from a cross-linguistic perspective

Abstract

This paper explores a connection between Romance and Greek on the one hand, and Bantu on the other. More specifically, we look at auxiliary placement in Rangi and clitic placement in Tobler Mussafia languages, with a special emphasis on Cypriot Greek, and argue that a common explanation for their distribution can be found once a move into a dynamic framework is made. Rangi exhibits an unusual word order alternation in auxiliary constructions under which the position of the auxiliary appears to be sensitive to an element appearing at the left periphery of the clause. A similar sensitivity to a left-peripheral element can be seen to regulate clitic placement in Cypriot Greek (and generally in the so-called Tobler Mussafia clitic languages). The paper presents a parsing-oriented account of these two phenomena in the Dynamic Syntax framework, arguing that the similarities in syntactic distribution are the result of the encoding in the lexicon of processing strategies that were potentially pragmatic preferences in earlier stages of the respective languages. The account thus leans on the role played by the lexical entries for auxiliary and clitic forms, as well as the assumption that underspecification is inherent in the process of establishing meaning in context. The account is further supplemented by possible pathways of diachronic change that could have given rise to the systems found in present day varieties.

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

“…In the case of the intransitive predicate, this results in the construction of a Ty(e→t) node and the annotation of this predicate node with the formula value Fo(lʊ́ʊ́s'). The lexical entry for the infinitive lʊ́ʊ́sa ‘speak’ is shown below (based on Chatzikyriakidis & Gibson ()).…”

“…The question here is therefore how best to capture the auxiliary‐verb order associated with the future tense in these contexts, and how to model the fact that these constructions exhibit an alternation between pre‐verbal and post‐verbal auxiliary placement. The proposal developed in Gibson () and Chatzikyriakidis & Gibson () and the one adopted here is that the elements that appear in the left periphery in these contexts are all projected onto an unfixed node. As a result, it is the presence of this unfixed node that enables the auxiliary to be parsed as the next element in the string and which ultimately ‘triggers’ the auxiliary‐verb order.…”

“…Gibson () proposes that infinitives are always parsed on an unfixed node. However, a different approach was taken in Chatzikyriakidis and Gibson () in which it was assumed that it is only in the verb‐auxiliary order that the infinitive is projected onto an unfixed node. In contrast, when the auxiliary appears before the verb, the infinitive can be associated with a fixed tree node address as soon as it is parsed.…”

“…Subordinate clauses in Rangi are commonly introduced by an overt morphological subordinator. Following the account proposed by Chatzikyriakidis & Gibson (), subordinators in Rangi are taken here as projecting an unfixed node which provides the necessary triggering conditions for parsing the auxiliary – thereby yielding the auxiliary‐verb order.…”

“…Although this verb‐auxiliary order is typologically unusual, the main consideration in the Dynamic Syntax approach is how to capture this alternation in formal terms. It has been proposed that in the verb‐auxiliary order, the verb is projected onto an unfixed predicate node and that first instance of fixed structure is introduced into the tree once the auxiliary is accessed (see Chapter 6; Gibson ; Chatzikyriakidis & Gibson ). The contexts in which the auxiliary appears before the verb all involve the presence of an unfixed node as part of the processing strategy.…”