Academic Forum: Object marking in Shekgalagari by Mical Hilbert
Nov. 12, 12:20 – 1:15, Mahler 5/7
Mical’s paper will focus on a common synatactic problem in Bantu languages.
A long-standing question in Bantu languages is if the object markers are agreement prefixes or incorporated pronouns (Bresnan & Mchombo 1987). Givón (1976) claimed that these processes were fundamentally the same. I provide evidence that in Shekgalagari, a Zone S Bantu language, they are incorporated pronouns with an anaphoric function and that this is crucially different from agreement. When an object occurs as a noun phrase, it represents new information in discourse. As soon as the object marker is used, the object is considered old information.
