A unified dynamic account of auxiliary placement in Rangi

Hannah Gibson

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2016.06.003

Abstract

The Tanzanian Bantu language Rangi exhibits a comparatively and typologically unusual word order alternation in the future tense. Whilst declarative main clauses exhibit post-verbal auxiliary placement, the auxiliary appears pre-verbally in wh-questions, sentential negation, relative clauses, cleft constructions and subordinate clauses. This paper examines this alternation from the perspective of Dynamic Syntax (Cann et al., 2005; Kempson et al., 2001). Dynamic Syntax (DS) is a parsing-oriented framework which aims to capture the way in which meaning is established incrementally as a result of lexical input encountered in context. The paper presents a unified analysis of this construction found in Rangi, locating it within the wider workings of the language. It shows that this seemingly idiosyncratic constituent order is in fact predictable on the basis of a general constraint operative in the DS framework which prohibits the co-occurrence of more than one unfixed node, thereby also confirming the claim of Dynamic Syntax to constitute a grammar framework rather than merely a parsing device.

Highlights

Bantu languages are known for their agglutinative morphology, noun classes and complex systems of agreement which are apparent in the verbal domain
This paper presents an account of the word order alternation found in Rangi from the perspective of Dynamic Syntax (DS, Cann et al 2005; Kempson et al 2001; 2010)
This paper has presented an analysis of Rangi auxiliary-main verb constructions with a focus on the word order alternation found in the future tense

Summary

Introduction

Bantu languages are known for their agglutinative morphology, noun classes and complex systems of agreement which are apparent in the verbal domain. One or more auxiliary form carries temporal information and This is the accepted version of an article first published online by Elsevier in Lingua 6 July 2016. Despite exhibiting the otherwise head-initial syntax associated with SVO Bantu languages, Rangi has constructions in which the auxiliary appears after the main verb. Post-verbal auxiliary placement is restricted to the immediate and general future tense forms. This can be seen in example (3) below where the auxiliary -íise appears after the main verb kánya ‘fell’.

The following abbreviations are used throughout the paper

Conclusion