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Relative clauses in Bantu: affixes as relative markers
No full textIn this work I am going to investigate relative clauses in Bantu languages, with special regard to Tshiluba and Swahili. In particular, in these languages the relative marker is not an independent element, but rather a morphologically bound affix. This does not come as a surprise, in that all unstressed pronominal elements encoding syntactic relations, like subject, object or locative, have affixal status in Bantu. However, the fact that the relative marker is a bound affix bears non-negligible consequences on the morphology of the verb contained in the relative clause (RC).
RCs are noun modifiers, like attributive adjectives; thus a RC must be prefixed in agreement with the antecedent DP, like all modifiers. Consequently, the prefix of the modified DP must show up in the (morphologically complex) structure of the verb of the RC, thus interfering in various ways with the other affixes which may be present. Furthermore, the situation will be different according to the syntactic relation (subject or object) holding between the modified DP and the predicate.
To complicate the picture even more, different Bantu languages encode RCs in different ways. In particular, the picture offered by Swahili and Tshiluba in this regard looks rather variegated. It will be the scope of this work to show how a unitary analysis can be provided, in spite of the notable superficial differences existing between the two languages
Advanced English Syntax
No full textThis work, together with the previously published Basic English Syntax (2019), contains a discussion of the core syntactic phenomena which characterize the English language and proposes a principled explanation for them. In particular, this volume tackles rather complex syntactic constructions, such as infinitival clauses, relative clauses or clauses with a marked word order. Furthermore, the theory outlined will be applied to some specific areas, like cohesion and telegraphic language, which are generally tackled by other related disciplines. We will argue that a formal syntactic approach can help to solve some of the puzzles typically related to these fields of analysis.
We will adopt the theoretical approach known as Generative Grammar (since Chomsky 1957). The basic idea is that a Universal Grammar is innate in our brain, a fact which renders all languages similar despite appearances. Therefore, English will often be contrasted with other languages, in order to show how phenomena that look different may be given a common explanation, based on a diverse parametric choice
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