Bantu word order between discourse and syntactic relations

Linguistique et langues africaines, vol. 9(1)

Abstract

Discourse function has often been noticed to be a strong factor in conditioning Bantu word order. The importance of discourse function for determining the word order of Bantu languages is visible for example in locative inversion and dedicated focus positions. As a result of such phenomena, it has been proposed that Bantu word order is best captured by reference to discourse roles, e.g. Topic-Verb-Nontopic. Nevertheless, we typically see statements describing Bantu word order in relation to grammatical roles (e.g. “SVO”), and the notions “subject” and “object” remain core in analyses of Bantu. In this paper we present the result of a study reconsidering Bantu word order from a discourse-configurational perspective, asking how far we can get without reference to grammatical roles. We use a parametric approach to investigate this syntactic variation, presenting new discourse-oriented field data collected on 9 Bantu languages. We show how these parameters highlight variation within the family, with each language sitting at a different point on a continuum between grammatical role-oriented and discourse role-oriented. We therefore argue against a one-size-fits-all account of Bantu word order and advocate for approaches that include both grammatical and discourse roles.

Authors 6

1. Elisabeth J. Kerr Aachen

   Leiden University · Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique · Langage, langues et cultures d'Afrique

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University

   Llacan UMR 8135 CNRS/Inalco

2. Allen Asiimwe

   Makerere University

   Affiliation as printed

   Makerere University

3. Patrick Njue Kanampiu

   University of Edinburgh

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Edinburgh

4. Zhen Li Aachen

   Leiden University · Université du Burundi

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University

   Leiden University Ernest Nshemezimana University of Burundi

5. Ernest Nshemezimana

   Université du Burundi

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Burundi

6. Jenneke van der Wal Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University