The Anaphoric Relations in Jita: A Government and Binding Perspective

Abstract

This paper delves into anaphoric relations in Jita, a Bantu language spoken in the Majita area in Mara region, Tanzania. Majita is situated to the southwest of Musoma town and on the southeast bank of Lake Victoria, specifically in the Butata and Makojo villages where the study was conducted. The study drew inspiration from Universal Theory of Government and Binding, focusing on Binding theory. It employed a qualitative research approach and snowball sampling technique to select informants. Data collection methods included sentence questionnaires and grammaticality judgments, and the data were analysed descriptively using a code system and geometry tree. The findings reveal that in Jita, reflexive and reciprocal anaphors are expressed as verbal affixes (<i>-i-</i> and <i>-an-</i>) respectively, and also subject markers such as <i>ni- </i>‘I’, chi- ‘we’, <i>a-</i> ‘he/she’, mu-/u- ‘you’ and bha- ‘they’ behave like anaphors while pronominal can be realized as both verbal affixes such as <i>chi-</i> ‘us’, <i>m-</i> ‘me’, <i>mu-</i> ‘him/her’ and <i>bha-</i> ‘them’ and personal pronouns such as<i> anye ‘me’, awe ‘you’, amwe</i> ‘you’ in syntactic constructions. The paper also delves into the relationships between the anaphors and their antecedents in syntactic constructions, shedding light on the intricate nature of anaphoric relations in Jita.