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The Bantu relative agreement cycle

  • Mark L. O. Van de Velde ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 23. Juni 2021

Abstract

This article presents the Bantu relative agreement (BRA) cycle, a scenario of recurrent morphosyntactic change that involves the emergence of relativizers, which are subsequently integrated into the relative verb form, where they can ultimately replace the original subject agreement prefix. All logical outcomes at every stage of the cycle are amply attested in the languages of the Bantu family. The BRA cycle makes sense of many of the puzzling characteristics of relative clause constructions in the Bantu languages, especially in the domain of agreement.


Corresponding author: Mark L. O. Van de Velde, LLACAN (UMR 8135 du CNRS – INALCO - EPHE), 7, rue Guy Môquet - BP 8, 94801Villejuif, France, E-mail:

Funding source: French National Research Agency (ANR)

Award Identifier / Grant number: ANR-10-LABX-0083

Acknowledgments

This work is partially supported by a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the program “Investissements d’Avenir” (reference: ANR-10-LABX-0083). It contributes to the IdEx Université de Paris – ANR-18-IDEX-0001. I wish to thank Denis Creissels, Larry Hyman, and Dmitry Idiatov, as well as the audiences at CALL in Leiden (2017) and Reconstructing Proto-Bantu Grammar in Ghent (2018) for their comments.

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Received: 2019-04-01
Accepted: 2020-08-22
Published Online: 2021-06-23
Published in Print: 2021-07-27

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 18.11.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/ling-2021-0113/pdf?lang=de
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