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Vortrag: New interface boundary, who this?

Alternation of verb phrases in Bantu

Bantu verbs can and cannot form a phono-syntactic domain with their post-verbal element, coined the conjoint/disjoint alternation by Meeussen (1959). Despite the conjoint and disjoint form showing distinct surface structures in terms of phonological (vowel lengthening, high tone spreading, phrasing), morphological (object agreement, tense allomorphy, augment marking) and syntactic phenomena (valency, intervention), it remains unclear, what point in the derivation this divergence originates in (Van der Wal & Hyman 2016). In this talk, in which I present the findings of my MA thesis, I investigate how the alternation of phonological domains in Bantu verbs is conditioned by different structural boundaries in the syntax. I break down the surface phenomena listed above into which are triggers and which are consequential symptoms in a sample of Bantu languages. I argue that Meeussen's alternation depends on whether the post-verbal element constitutes its own computational phase (disjoint form) or forms one phase together with the verb (conjoint form). By dissecting what conditions what through the process ordering at the interfaces, I resolve the conjoint/disjoint alternation into a broader phenomenon of contextual modular boundaries in sentence building.

Keywords: Bantu, verbs, conjoint/disjoint, tone, phase theory

References:
- Meeussen, A. E. (1959). Essai de grammaire rundi (Vol. 24). Musée royal du Congo belge.
- Van der Wal, J., & Hyman, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). The conjoint/disjoint alternation in Bantu (Vol. 301). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

Info

Tag: 14.11.2025
Anfangszeit: 12:15
Dauer: 00:30
Raum: M17.23
Track: Theoretische Linguistik
Sprache: en

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