Speaker: Jenneke van der Wal (Harvard)
Title: The AWSOM and RANDOM in Bantu object marking
Time: Thursday, December 8/12:30pm-1:50pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:
Many Bantu languages mark objects on the verb by a prefix agreeing in noun class:
(1) N-a-va-et-eaa anca mUhUmba. [Nyaturu, Hualde 1989]
1SG.SM-PAST-2OM-bring-APPL 2.girls 1.boy‘I brought the girls a boy.’
However, object marking (OM) shows fascinating microvariation across Bantu, along the following parameters:
1. the nature of the OM: doubling / non-doubling
(OM and DP can co-occur in the same domain in Nyaturu = doubling);
2. the behaviour in ditransitives: asymmetric / symmetric
(only benefactive and not theme can be OM-ed in Nyaturu = asymmetric);
3. the number of object markers allowed: one/two/multiple
(Nyaturu is restricted to one).This talk maps the parameter settings of 50+ Bantu languages, revealing two gaps:
Asymmetry Wants Single Object Marking correlation (AWSOM)
? Almost no language has multiple markers that are doubling.
Relation between Asymmetry and Non-Doubling Object Marking (RANDOM)? No language has non-doubling asymmetrical object marking.
I argue that these gaps are in fact not random, but can be understood as obligatory marking of salience, in the form of a [Person] feature in either the non-clausal domain (doubling) or the clausal domain (symmetry)
(The abstract can also be read here.)