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External possession in Chimwiini1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2014

BRENT HENDERSON
BRENT HENDERSON*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
*
Author's address: Department of Linguistics, University of Florida, 4131 Turlington Hall, PO Box 115454, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

Most discussion surrounding external possessors has centered around dative NPs or clitics in Indo-European or Semitic languages and focused on whether or not such structures are derived via movement. This paper examines external possessors in Chimwiini, a Bantu language that lacks datives. It will be shown that while these constructions share certain structural and semantic restrictions with their counterparts in other languages, these properties do not straightforwardly correlate with arguments for a movement or base-generation analysis. This suggests the derivational mechanics of the constructions involved are independent of the semantic restrictions placed on them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 297 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

[1]

Many thanks go to Charles Kisseberth for sharing his insights into Chimwiini phonology and syntax and unpublished data, as well as to Abdulrahman Banafunzi, Bana Banafunzi and others from the Wantu waMiini community for their native speaker insights. Thanks also to the audience at Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 3 (SOAS, London, December 2012) for their feedback on an earlier version of this work, and to three anonymous Journal of Linguistics reviewers for suggesting important revisions. This work is supported by a grant from the NSF/NEH joint program on Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL PD-50009-09).

List of abbreviations used in examples and glosses: Ø = null morpheme, 2sg = second person singular, 3pl = third person plural, 3sg = third person singular, acc = accusative, agr = agreement, app = applicative, asc = associative, fut = future tense, fv = final vowel, inf = infinitive marker, obj = object marker, p3 = distant past, pass = passive, poss = possessive marker, prep = preposition, pst = past, rel = relative marker, stat = stative. Underlined consonants in Chimiini transcriptions are dentals. Numbers on noun and agr glosses indicate noun class. Forward slash (/) in example line indicates the right edge of phonological phrase boundary. Equals sign (=) indicates clitic attachment.

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