Convenors: Michael Diercks, Ken Safir and Jenneke van der Wal
Contact: jennekevanderwal@gmail.com
Although object properties and object marking in Bantu languages are a longstanding
and elaborately studied research topic (see the start with Hawkinson and Hyman 1974,
Kisseberth and Abasheikh 1977, Morolong and Hyman 1977, Duranti 1979, Hyman
and Duranti 1982, the wellknown Bresnan and Moshi 1990 and much work after that),
recent research in this area has uncovered further data and interesting patterns. This is
mostly due to the increased amount of data available for individual languages, which
allows for comparative research within the Bantu languages (Riedel 2009, Marten and
Kula 2012, Zeller 2014, Zeller and Ngoboka 2014, Marlo 2014, to appear, Jerro 2015),
as well as a more systematic approach to single languages (Downing 2014, Bax and
Diercks 2012, Diercks and Sikuku 2015, Diercks et al. 2015, Baker et al. 2012, Zeller
2012, Murrell 2012).
- Partly complementary to the workshop proposed by Hannah Gibson and Eva-Marie
Ström (on approaches to morphosyntactic micro-variation), we propose a workshop
on objects and object marking in a comparative Bantu perspective. Selected papers
should address one or more of the following issues from a comparative perspective:
Symmetry. It has become clearer and clearer that symmetric behaviour of
multiple objects is never a property that holds for the whole language. Not all
tests may show the same results for symmetry, and the symmetry property
may disappear in passives (Adams 2010), in some types of derived verbs, or
for certain persons (Baker et al. 2012). Which patterns, if any, do we see in
these corners of asymmetry? How can we account for them? Work on linkers
of the sort addressed by Baker and Collins (2006) and Schneider-Zioga (2015)
is relevant in this context as well. - Object marking. The agreement-vs.-pronoun debate still doesn’t have a
winner, and it becomes even more interesting when taking into account
languages that seem to have both types (Ruwund, Nash 1992; Kuria, Ranero et
al. 2013). Is there a unified approach to object marking that can account for
the variation? Is this even desirable? How do we diagnose the two types of
object marking? - Reflexives. Do reflexive markers behave similarly to object markers language
internally, e.g., can they be doubled and do they introduce asymmetries
between multiple objects -or do reflexive markers show more consistency with
each other crosslinguistically than they do by comparison to object markers
language internally? Do the same sorts of diagnostics applied to distinguishing
types of object markers also apply for reflexive markers (where doubling is
with a DP anaphor)? What sorts of factors would lead us to expect different or
similar behavior between reflexive markers and object markers (e.g. Sikuku
2012)? - Discourse effects. Not just animacy and definiteness play a role in differential
object marking, but discourse factors as well. For example, Seidl and
Dimitriadis (1997) show that Swahili object marking is sensitive to givenness,
and Diercks and Sikuku (2015) discover that objects can be doubled by an
object marker to convey a verum focus. Which discourse effects are related to
object marking? How can we account for the relation between information
structure and syntactic object marking? The same questions can be asked for
applicative marking, which has also been related to discourse factors and
objecthood (Marten 2003, Creissels 2004, de Kind and Bostoen 2012).
We will invite abstracts for workshop attendees to present papers for 30 minutes with
10 minutes each of questions and answers.
References
Adams, Nikki B. 2010. The Zulu ditransitive verb phrase. PhD, University of Chicago.
Baker, Mark and Chris Collins. 2006. Linkers and the internal structure of vP. Natural
Language & Linguistic Theory 24, 307-354.
Baker, Mark, Ken Safir and Justine Sikuku. 2012. Sources of (a)symmetry in Bantu
double object constructions. In Arnett, N. and R. Bennett (ed.), Proceedings of the
30th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 54-64. Cascadilla Proceedings
Project.
Bax, Anna and Michael Diercks. 2012. Information structure constraints on object
marking in Manyika. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 30
(2), 185-202.
Bresnan, Joan and Lioba Moshi. 1990. Object asymmetries in comparative Bantu
syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 21 (2), 147-185.
Creissels, Denis. 2004. Non-canonical applicatives and focalization in Tswana. Talk
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de Kind, Jasper and Koen Bostoen. 2012. The applicative in ciLubà grammar and
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Diercks, Michael and Justine Sikuku. 2015. Pragmatic effects of clitic doubling: two
kinds of object markers in Lubukusu. Ms,
Diercks, Michael, Rodrigo Ranero and Mary Paster. 2015. Evidence for a clitic
analysis of object markers in Kuria. In Kramer, R., E. C. Zsiga and O. T. Boyer (ed.),
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