Verb raising and subject inversion in Bantu relatives

Verb raising and subject inversion have long been topics of theoretical linguistic interest in Romance and Germanic languages, amongst others. Bantu languages also exhibit verb raising and subject inversion, though there has been no comprehensive investigation of these phenomena, nor an explanation of crosslinguistic differences. This paper provides a unified account of verb raising and subject inversion in Bantu languages. It shows that subject inversion in Bantu matrix clauses resembles that found in Romance languages. In contrast, however, verb raising to C (similar to V2 in German matrix clauses) occurs only in embedded relative clauses, and only in some Bantu languages. A natural explanation for these phenomena comes from the fact that verb raising interacts with the prosodic status of the relative complementizer, and that Bantu matrix clauses are IPs not CPs. The paper points to the importance of competing interactions between different aspects of the grammar (e.g. prosodic words, syntax) and provides support for the notion of extended projections (Grimshaw 1993, 1997).

[1]  Luigi Rizzi,et al.  Issues in Italian Syntax , 1981 .

[2]  Kasangati Kikuni Wabongambilu Kinyalolo,et al.  Syntactic dependencies and the SPEC-head agreement hypothesis in Kilega , 1991 .

[3]  Paul Smolensky,et al.  Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar ; CU-CS-696-93 , 1993 .

[4]  Richard S. Kayne,et al.  Stylistic Inversion, Successive Cyclicity and Move NP in French , 1978 .

[5]  Eyamba G Bokamba,et al.  Question formation in some Bantu languages , 1976 .

[6]  J. Bresnan,et al.  Topic, Pronoun, and Agreement in Chicheŵa@@@Topic, Pronoun, and Agreement in Chichewa , 1987 .

[7]  SUBJECTS , 1988 .

[8]  Noam Chomsky.  Some notes on economy of derivation and representation , 2013 .

[9]  'MALILLO 'MATSEPO MACHOBANE,et al.  The Sesotho locative constructions , 1995 .

[10]  Yoshihisa Kitagawa.  Subjects in Japanese and English , 2018 .

[11]  Graziella Saccon.  Post-verbal subjects : a study based Italian and its dialects , 1993 .

[12]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Lectures on Government and Binding , 1981 .

[13]  Ur Shlonsky,et al.  Complementizer-cliticization in Hebrew and the empty category principle , 1988 .

[14]  David M. Perlmutter.  Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis , 1978 .

[15]  K. Demuth,et al.  LOCATIVES, IMPERSONALS AND EXPLETIVES IN SESOTHO , 1990 .

[16]  K. Demuth.  Questions, Relatives, and Minimal Projection , 1995 .

[17]  J. Grimshaw.  Projection, heads, and optimality , 1997 .

[18]  Carolyn Harford Perez.  LOCATIVE PSEUDO-SUBJECTS IN SHONA , 1983 .

[19]  Joan Bresnan,et al.  On Topic, Pronoun, and Agreement in Chichewa. , 1985 .

[20]  K. Demuth.  Maturation and the Acquisition of the Sesotho Passive , 1989 .

[21]  K. Demuth,et al.  Interaction between Discourse Functions and Agreement in Setawana , 1989 .

[22]  U. Shlonsky.  Null and displaced subjects , 1987 .

[23]  K. Demuth,et al.  Presentational focus and thematic structure in comparative Bantu , 1997 .

[24]  Joan Bresnan,et al.  Locative inversion in Chichewa: a case study of factorization in grammar , 1989 .

[25]  Jonni Kanerva.  Focus and phrasing in Chicheŵa phonology , 1990 .