What the Bantu languages can tell us about word order and movement

Buell, Leston; Riedel, Kristina; Wal, Jenneke van der

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2010.10.015

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(6 reference statements)

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“…The oral corpus data presented in this article confirm that the mono-clausal argument focus constructions elicitated in Mbuun also exist in its close relative Nsong. As in Mbuun and in Kikongo (De Kind et al forthcoming, De Kind this volume), but unlike in many other Bantu languages (Buell et al 2011), narrowly focused arguments are moved to the Immediate Before the Verb (IBV) position. This focus site can host arguments conveying either identification or information focus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Proceedings of the Workshop BantuSynPhonIS: preverbal domain(s)

Hamlaoui¹

2014

Zaspil

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The papers in this volume take up some aspects of the preverbal domain(s) in Bantu languages. They were originally presented at the Workshop BantuSynPhonIS: Preverbal Domain(s), held at the Center for General Linguistics (ZAS), in Berlin, on 14-15 November 2014. This workshop was coorganized by ZAS (Fatima Hamlaoui & Tonjes Veenstra) and the Humboldt University (Tom Güldemann, Yukiko Morimoto and Ines Fiedler).

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unlike in many other Bantu languages (see Buell et al 2011 for an overview), a focused argument cannot occur in the Immediate After the Verb (IAV) position in Mbuun . Focalising a non-verbal constituent in Nsong also involves deviations from SVO word order within the main clause.…”

Section: Conclusion and Issues For Further Researchmentioning

confidence: 96%

Proceedings of the Workshop BantuSynPhonIS: preverbal domain(s)

Hamlaoui¹

2014

Zaspil

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“…The oral corpus data presented in this article confirm that the mono-clausal argument focus constructions elicitated in Mbuun also exist in its close relative Nsong. As in Mbuun (Bostoen & Mundeke 2011 and in Kikongo (De Kind et al forthcoming, De Kind this volume), but unlike in many other Bantu languages (Buell et al 2011), narrowly focused arguments are moved to the Immediate Before the Verb (IBV) position. This focus site can host arguments conveying either identification or information focus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In an earlier version of this paper, presented at the Workshop on the Syntax/Phonology/Information Structre of Preverbal Domains in Bantu Languages Unlike in many other Bantu languages (see Buell et al 2011 for an overview), a focused argument cannot occur in the Immediate After the Verb (IAV) position in Mbuun (Bostoen & Mundeke 2011. Focalising a non-verbal constituent in Nsong also involves deviations from SVO word order within the main clause.…”

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confidence: 99%

immediate before the verb focus position in Nsong (Bantu B85d, DR Congo)

Muluwa¹,

Bostoen²

2014

Zaspil

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Nsong is a western Bantu language spoken in the neighbourhood of Kikwit (5°2'28"S 18°48'58"E, Kwilu District, Bandundu Province, DRC) and encoded as B85d in the New Updated Guthrie List (Maho 2009). To this B80 or Tiene-Yanzi group also belongs Mbuun, encoded as B87 by Guthrie (1971: 39) and spoken in the wider vicinity of Idiofa (4°57'35"S 19°35'40", Kwilu District, Bandundu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo). Both languages are closely related. They share a high percentage of fundamental and other vocabulary as well as several rather atypical phonological innovations (Bostoen & Koni Muluwa 2014; Koni Muluwa 2014; Koni Muluwa & Bostoen 2012). Preliminary elicitation-based research on Mbuun has pointed out that the pre-verbal domain plays a crucial role in the marking of argument focus in Mbuun (Bostoen & Mundeke 2011, 2012). In this paper, we assess whether this is also the case in Nsong on the basis of a text corpus which the first author has been collecting, transcribing and annotating in 2013 and 2014 as part of an endangered language documentation project funded by the DoBeS program of the Volkswagen Foundation through a 3-year grant (2012-2015). More information on the project can be found on http://www.kwilubantu.ugent.be/. This Nsong text corpus exclusively consists of oral discourse and currently counts 48.022 tokens and 11.973 types. The team’s 2013 fieldwork aimed at documenting Nsong speech events in as many different cultural settings as possible. As a result, the corpus comprises different text genres, such as political speeches, historical traditions, folk music, tales, proverbs, hunting language, ceremonial language used during circumcision and twin rites, and popular biological knowledge. In line with previous research on Mbuun, we concentrate here on mono-clausal argument focus constructions, even if preliminary research has pointed out that bi-clausal focus structures are more common in the Nsong corpus.

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“…These features were selected based on their relevance for encoding information structure 6 and phrasing in other Bantu languages (c.f. Buell et al, 2011a, and articles/chapters in Buell et al, 2011b; van der Wal and Hyman, 2016) but excluding phonological indicators such as tone and other prosodic information, such penultimate lengthening, which are not marked in the DSC. The aim of this additional coding was to obtain parameters for the morphosyntactic and pragmatic functions of the narrative past, including focus marking or phrasing and, potentially, marking the status of objects that appear with t ∧ np forms as arguments/topics.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Narrative Past Inflection in Sesotho Child and Child-Directed Speech

2019

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This study investigates a low-frequency verbal inflection called the "narrative past" in child and child-directed speech in the Bantu language Sesotho. Since the function of the Sesotho narrative past is not well-described, this study aimed to illuminate both function and acquisition trends in the Demuth Sesotho Corpus (Demuth, 1992). The narrative past form has been assumed to be under-specified for tense, comparable in function to the better-known Swahili-ka-inflection. The Swahili form, in turn, has been said to function in "clause chains" that are functionally and structurally similar to such chains in Papuan and other languages. We expected that, if the Sesotho narrative past is indeed functionally similar to Swahili-ka-, its distribution in child-directed speech and acquisition by children may pattern similarly to tense-less verb forms in non-Bantu clause chaining languages such as the Papuan language Nungon, where such verb forms can comprise over 20% of all verb tokens in child-directed and child speech at age 3;3. This study thus examined the conversational interactions of four children acquiring Sesotho in a village setting, aged 2;1-4;7. All 492 tokens of the narrative past form were coded for syntactic and discourse categories. Results show that the Sesotho narrative past generally occurs in much "looser" discourse chains than the clause chains of languages like Nungon; for Sesotho, other turns or elements can intervene between narrative past-framed mentions of previously-introduced topics. Further, the Sesotho narrative past has very low frequency in both child and child-directed speech, representing <3% of all verb tokens for both registers. There is possible evidence that one of the target children uses the Sesotho narrative past in increasing proportions as his linguistic sophistication increases, but there is no significant corresponding proportional increase in child-directed speech. Thus, in function and distribution, in both child-directed and child speech, the Sesotho narrative past form differs greatly from tense-less forms in more canonical clause chaining languages.

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What the Bantu languages can tell us about word order and movement

Cited by 5 publications

References 17 publications

Proceedings of the Workshop BantuSynPhonIS: preverbal domain(s)

Proceedings of the Workshop BantuSynPhonIS: preverbal domain(s)

immediate before the verb focus position in Nsong (Bantu B85d, DR Congo)

The Narrative Past Inflection in Sesotho Child and Child-Directed Speech

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