Michael Diercks

Information structure constraints on object marking in Manyika

Abstract Object markers in Bantu languages have commonly been analysed as either agreement morphemes or incorporated pronouns. This paper documents a number of empirical facts concerning object marking in Manyika (chiShona), showing that the distribution of object marking does not fit the predictions of either the agreement or pronominalisation accounts. Specifically, we show that doubling of the object marker and the noun phrase object is in principle possible, but is constrained in a number of instances by the information structure status of the object. This paper therefore makes two distinct claims: first, Manyika object markers (and perhaps other object markers in Bantu languages) ought to be analysed under the rubric of clitics, rather than as agreement morphemes or incorporated pronouns. Second, we claim that the constraints on clitic-doubling are not dependably syntactic in nature; instead, co-occurrence of an object marker and an object is licensed (or not) based on whether the object is in a non-focus domain.

Agreeing How? Implications for Theories of Agreement and Locality

In Lubukusu and Lusaamia, the wh-expression ‘how’ agrees in φ-features with the subject of its clause. We show that agreement on ‘how’ is not always identical to subject agreement on the verb: the two diverge in certain locative inversion and subject extraction environments. On the basis of these facts, we argue that ‘how’ is a vP adjunct with downward-probing uφ independent of the uφ that underlies subject agreement. We also explore locality paradoxes that arise in connection with agreeing ‘how’ in locative inversion constructions. These present challenges to the traditional notion of equidistance from a probe as an explanation for inversion, show that operators may have ‘‘active’’ φ-features even while they are Ā-opaque, and offer insight into the mechanisms making locative inversion possible.