( SWL 1 ) Leipzig , 5-8 August 2004 Non-canonical applicatives and focalization in Tswana
This paper examines non-canonical uses of Tswana applicative verb forms that support the hypothesis of a prototypical relationship between the syntactic role of object and the pragmatic role of focus. In its canonical use, the applicative suffix of Tswana can be defined as licensing the presence of a direct object representing a participant that cannot figur in the construction of the same verb in its non-derived form. One of the non-canonical uses of applicative verb forms examined in this paper involves no change in the valency of the verb: in Tswana, as in other Southern Bantu languages, the use of the applicative form of the verb may simply indicate the focalization of a locative complement or adjunct. This non-canonical use of applicative verb forms must be related to other facts of Tswana, and more generally of Bantu languages, suggesting that in Bantu syntax the immediate post-verbal position, grammaticalized as the obligatory position of the objects of transitive verbs, is primarily a focus position.
Valence verbale et voix en tswana
Cet article decrit les proprietes syntaxiques des affixes verbaux encodant des operations sur la valence verbale en tswana, langue bantoue parlee au Botswana et en Afrique du Sud. Dans cette langue, six types d'operations sur la valence verbale sont regulierement encodes au moyen d'affixes verbaux speciaux: reflechi, reciproque, causatif, decausatif, applicatif et passif, mais ces affixes apparaissent aussi dans des constructions qui s'ecartent de leur emploi canonique; en particulier, le reflechi a developpe des valeurs moyennes de type autocausatif et decausatif, certains emplois du reciproque impliquent une modification de valence de type antipassif, la forme applicative du verbe peut s'utiliser pour focaliser un complement locatif dans des constructions n'impliquant aucun changement de valence, et les passifs impersonnels sont tres communs en tswana, en liaison avec des contraintes relativement strictes quant a la topicalite et a la referentialite des constituants nominaux en fonction de sujet.
Presentational focus and thematic structure in comparative Bantu
Locative inversion has often been treated as an unaccusativity phenomenon in languages as typologically different as English and Chichewa (e.g. Bresnan 1990). Yet Bantu languages show some diversity in the thematic structure of verbs that can occur with locative inversion and related expletive/impersonal constructions. This paper provides a detailed examination of locative inversion and expletive constructions in Setswana, showing that this class of presentational focus constructions exhibits morphological, syntactic, agreement, and discourse characteristics that differ from those of Chichewa and other Bantu languages. It shows that these differences, the result of morphological loss during historical change, can best be understood synchronically within a theory of partial information structures (Bresnan 1982).