Object marking restrictions on Shona causative and applicative constructions

Abstract

Bantu languages, Shona included, are well noted for their agreement systems that morphologically mark grammatical relations in the verbal structure in the form of subject and object agreement. While researchers agree that subject-verb agreement is obligatory and co-occurs with subject pro-drop, object marking is more ambiguous and widely treated as pronominal. This article focuses on the restrictions that characterise object marking in relation to causatives and applicatives in Shona, looking particularly at double objecthood that is characteristic of these constructions. This article argues that there are various kinds of restrictions that object marking exhibit, namely, the restrictions as to which of the two objects can attract a corresponding object marker, the co-occurrence restrictions of the object marker with either of the objects in causative and applicative constructions, the morphosyntactic implications of such restrictions, and passivisation possibilities – where we argue that passives block object marking; and also that subjectivising the theme is blocked in both causative and applicative constructions. The objective of this article is to contribute to accounting for variations of the object dropping phenomenon.