Locative inversion in Bantu and predication

Jochen Zeller

doi:10.1515/ling-2013-0046

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Locative inversion in Bantu and predication

Jochen Zeller

Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 12. November 2013

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Aus der Zeitschrift Linguistics Band 51 Heft 6

Abstract

In generative grammar, locative inversion in Bantu languages is typically analyzed in terms of A-movement of the locative from a VP-internal position to the subject position. I present an alternative analysis, according to which the locative subject-DP is introduced above the νP/VP, in the specifier of a functional category whose head selects the νP/VP as its complement. I suggest that this category is Pr (for “predication”), i.e., the same category that also introduces the subject argument of adjectival or nominal predicates in non-verbal predication constructions (see Bowers 1993, and especially Baker 2003a for Bantu). In locative inversion, Pr establishes a non-canonical predication relation between a νP/VP that expresses a state or event, and a DP that denotes the location of which this state/event is predicated as a property. My analysis is developed on the basis of a detailed discussion of “semantic” locative inversion in the Bantu language Zulu (Buell 2007), a construction in which the inverted subject-DP is not formally marked as a locative, but receives its interpretation solely by virtue of the locative semantics of its head noun.

Keywords: locative inversion; non-verbal predication; Bantu; phases; event composition; passivization; object marking; relativization

Published Online: 2013-11-12

Published in Print: 2013-11-15

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Artikel in diesem Heft

https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2013-0046

Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel

locative inversion; non-verbal predication; Bantu; phases; event composition; passivization; object marking; relativization