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Swahili coordinated infinitives and non-canonical case-marking

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Published/Copyright: December 2, 2017

Abstract

Swahili exhibits a construction where a tensed and an infinitival clause are coordinated. This is an example of “unbalanced” coordination insofar as one verb is tensed and the other is not. Furthermore, the licensing of an overt subject in the infinitival clause problematizes Case Theory because infinitival clauses do not assign nominative case. The construction is also puzzling because although it bears some characteristics of pseudo-coordination it also has properties reminiscent of true coordination. Despite the theoretical questions this raises, the construction has not been adequately addressed in the literature: to our knowledge, this paper presents the first-ever theoretical analysis of this construction. We argue that the conjuncts are at least coordinated AgrSPs (the subject agreement phrase) dominated by TP (the tense phrase) which licenses case-marked subjects in both conjuncts.

Abbreviations

Appl

Applicative

Assoc

Associative

Cop

Copula

Dem

Demonstrative

Fut

Future tense

Hab

Habitual

Imp

Imperative

Inf

Infinitive

Loc

Locative

Neg

Negation

Om

Object marker (numbers refer to noun class)

P

(person) plural

Pass

Passive

Perf

Perfective

Poss

Possessive

Pres

Present tense

Pst

Past tense

Rc

Relative concord

Rec

Reciprocal

Refl

Reflexive

S

(person) Singular

Sit

Situative

Sm

Subject marker (numbers refer to noun classes)

Stat

Stative

Subj

Subjunctive

Subs

Subsecutive tense

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Rhodes University Distinguished Visiting Scholar Trust Fund and the audiences at the annual conference of the Linguistics Society of Southern Africa (University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, 25–29 June 2012) and the 5th International Conference on Bantu Languages (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, France, 12–15 June 2013).

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Published Online: 2017-12-2
Published in Print: 2017-12-20

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