( 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.
Conjunctive and disjunctive verb forms in Setswana
Setswana has a distinction between the so-called ‘short form’ and ‘long form’ of the Present Indicative (positive) which at first seems to be isolated in the system of this language. Its function has so far not been adequately identified. The aim of this paper is to show that: a) several other tenses of the Setswana verb have tonal variations carrying a distinction functionally identical to that between the short form and the long form of the Positive Present of the Indicative; and b) this distinction between what could conveniently be termed ‘disjunctive’ and ‘conjunctive’ verb forms, has a pragmatic function; the use of conjunctive forms implies that the verb is not in final clause position and that the noun phrase or the adverb which follows it provides some new information. Disjunctive forms have the opposite implication: if a disjunctive verb form is followed by a noun phrase or an adverb which seems to belong to the clause in which the verb in question fulfils the predicaste function, this element i...
Linear Modification
[Elements as they are added one by one to form a sentence progressively limit the semantic range of all that has preceded. This causes beginning elements to have a wider semantic range than elements toward the end. The concept of linear modification thus developed knits together a number of otherwise heterogeneous manifestations of sentence order in English, and provides a plausible theory of adjective position.] The linear geometry of the sentence imposes certain relationships upon the elements that compose it. These relationships are conveniently expressed as dichotomies. Two dichotomies are, figuratively, spatial: they are contiguous versus separate (A is next to B or is distant from B) and within versus without (A is contained within B or is outside B). Two dichotomies are temporal : first versus last and before versus after. While it does not follow that any of these pairs necessarily has linguistic importance, given their location at the very foundation of sentence structure it would be strange if they had not been seized upon for some use in communication. I think it can be shown that all of them have, probably in all languages, though I am concerned here only with the last two, the temporal dichotomies, and even with these, only in two languages.