A Syntactic Analysis of Raising Structures in Kĩmũthambĩ

Abstract

This paper provides a syntactic analysis of noun phrase movement in raising predicates in Kĩmũthambĩ, a Bantu language, spoken in Kenya. Kĩmũthambĩ belongs to the larger Kikuyu-Kamba group (E50) and is classified as E531 Mwimbi-Muthambi by Eberhard et al. (2022). The study is guided by the Minimalist Program developed by Chomsky (1995). This theory recognizes that there is always a trigger movement which is the need to check features at an appropriate landing site. The paper demonstrates that Raising in Kĩmũthambĩ is triggered by the need to check case features. Since raising verbs cannot assign case to a NP, the NP must move to a position in a sentence where it can be assigned case. This according to Carnie (2007) is due to the fact that the NP and the case assigner must be local in such a way that it must be the specifier or the complement of the case assigner, in order to check the feature of case. Case therefore becomes a mandatory trigger for movement of NPs that are not in positions that can be assigned case as in the case of raising predicates. The paper also demonstrates that unlike in English where raising occurs on non-finite clauses only, Kĩmũthambĩ allows raising of subjects out finite clauses a situation referred to as hyper-raising. This study contributes to the study of Kĩmũthambĩ, a language that has had little research attention. It also contributes to the body of knowledge on raising structures in Bantu languages.