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[Draft, August 2020; to appear in Lutz Marten, Rozenn Guérois, Hannah Gibson & Eva-Marie Bloom-Ström (eds), Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu. Oxford: Oxford University Press.] The use of the augment in with special reference to the referentiality of the Eva-Marie Bloom Ström & Matti Miestamo

Abstract This chapter examines the use of the augment, a preceding the prefix, in a number of language varieties in the Nguni subgroup of . The study of these closely related varieties, which show striking similarities as well as differences in the use of the augment, gives new insights into developmental tendencies of the augment. All contexts in which the augment can be omitted are non-fact contexts. Contrary to what has previously been argued for some varieties, however, we find that the presence vs. absence of the augment does not mark a referentiality distinction. It is argued that referentiality constitutes a semantic and pragmatic explanation to the absence and presence of the augment in different contexts in a diachronic perspective, but that this function is eroded in present-day Nguni. What remains is a limited referentiality distinction for some speakers in some varieties. The loss of function explains why the augment is included in the noun in nearly all contexts in some varieties, and omitted everywhere in others. Due to its loss of function, the augment has become free to participate in sociolinguistic and stylistic variation in some Bantu languages. Key-words: negation, non-fact, referentiality, augment, morphosyntax, Nguni

1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to explore the connection between the use of a prefix in Bantu referred to as the augment1 and (non-)referentiality, such as has been claimed to exist in Swati: 2

(1) a. a-ba-hlab-i i-n-komo (ref, indef) [Swati] NEG-SM2-slaughter-NEG 9AUG-9-cow ‘They do not slaughter a beast.’

. a-ba-hlab-i n-komo (non-ref) NEG-SM2-slaugher-NEG 9-cow ‘They do not slaughter any beast.’

. a-ba-yi-hlab-i i-n-komo (ref, def) NEG-SM2-OM9-slaugher-NEG 9AUG-9-cow ‘They do not slaughter the beast.’ (Ziervogel 1952: 187)

1 Also referred to as pre-prefix or initial . 2 We use the following additional abbreviations in this paper: AS= associative; CONN= connective; IDEO= ; IT= itive; OBL= obligative mood; PRT= participial; RC=relative concord; REC= recent past; REF= referential demonstrative. When interlinear glossings are available in publications we have adhered to the categories used by the author in question, with slight adaptation to our abbreviations. In other cases, such as with Swati examples in Ziervogel and Mabuza (1976), we have added glossing based on their grammatical description, with additional help from the dictionary by Rycroft (1981). 1

In the negative and other irrealis contexts, the omission of the augment such as in ((1)b) gives a non-referential meaning as opposed to when the augment is present ((1)a). The cross- reference of the noun on the , in combination with the presence of the augment, gives a definite meaning ((1)c). Similar distinctions are reported for Xhosa, Zulu and many other Bantu languages, as we shall see below. We take a referential noun to be a noun that is used by the speaker when s/he has a specific referent in mind. With a non-referential noun this is not the case. In order to examine the connection between the augment and referentiality further, we zoom in on the Nguni subgroup (S40) of Bantu languages. The Nguni group consists of a number of closely related languages and varieties, some of which are relatively well studied. This makes this group especially well fitted for a micro- comparative approach to the use of the augment. In such an approach we can study minimally varying systems, most other things being equal. The Nguni group shows striking similarities as well as contrasts in the shape and the use of the augment across the varieties and is thereby optimal for a micro-comparative approach to the augment. The in Bantu languages are categorized in noun classes; each noun class is characterized by its specific noun class prefix. In a subset of Bantu languages this noun class prefix is preceded by a morpheme that often consists of a single vowel and is referred to as the augment (de Blois 1970). There has been considerable interest in this morpheme in the literature on Bantu languages. Its occurrence vs. non-occurrence “often involves an intricate interplay between phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic/pragmatic factors” (Hyman and Katamba 1993: 209) as well as perhaps sociolinguistic factors (Petzell and Kühl 2017). The contexts in which the augment is used vary across the and it has proved difficult to give a unified syntactic or semantic/pragmatic account of its function (van de Velde 2018; Halpert Forthcoming). The link between the augment and (non-)referentiality as exemplified in ((1)) and previously suggested for Bantu languages (Givón 1973; 1978; Ndayiragije et al. 2012) has in our view not been enough explored. In a recent typological survey, the presence vs. absence of the augment in nouns under negation was related to the way in which other languages mark a noun phrase as non-referential under negation (Miestamo 2014). In this paper we develop this idea and analyze the use of the augment in negation and other non-fact contexts in Nguni. We argue that in the contemporary Nguni varieties surveyed, the presence vs. absence of the augment on the clausal level is synchronically determined mainly by the morpho-syntactic construction used. There is a functional and semantic explanation as to why the augment is dropped in certain contexts, i.e. to signal non-referentiality, but this function of the augment has largely eroded and is no longer prominent in the varieties we have studied. The functional explanation of the synchronic distributions is thus mainly of a diachronic nature. The loss of this distinguishing semantic function of the augment can explain why its use has taken such wildly different courses in even very closely related varieties. It can also explain why the patterns underlying its (non-)use are sometimes hard to capture and why it has assumed sociolinguistic functions for speakers of some Bantu languages. We suggest that the results of this paper are indicative of a grammatical change reducing the of the augment, but it is outside our present scope to develop a comparative-historical analysis of such a change. However, a semantic/pragmatic distinction still remains in certain morphosyntactic environments, but possibly not for all speakers of the respective varieties. There is also a distinction present – at least for some speakers – relating to information structure, in that contrastive focus can be expressed by the use of the augment in the negative. Our study adds to the typological knowledge of how the languages of the world mark referentiality. Also, while not providing a systematic and detailed account of how

2 referentiality and definiteness are expressed in the Nguni varieties, it aims to contribute to solving the puzzle of how the Bantu languages – which lack articles – express these distinctions. The augment has long been assumed to play a large role in this, see section 2.2. Other elements with relevance for marking the referentiality of the nominal element in Bantu, although this is still an under-researched topic, include the demonstrative (e.g. Visser 2008; Asiimwe 2014) as well as the role of and different kinds of morphosyntactic constructions such as the existential (Bloom Ström Forthcoming 2020). Their role will only be discussed in this paper to the extent that it pertains to the discussion of the augment. The main languages covered in our survey are Xhosa, Zulu, Swati and Southern Ndebele3. For Southern Ndebele and Xhosa, most of our data comes from recent fieldwork, whereas for Zulu and Swati, data is taken from published sources. The Xhosa data, including data from its varieties such as Bhaca, is taken from a corpus of recorded, transcribed and glossed discourse, collected in different parts of the by the first author (Bloom Ström 2018). As there is very little morphosyntactic variation in the Eastern Cape – the existing variation is rather phonological and in the lexicon – examples from different parts of the province are used as instances of Xhosa in a wide sense (Bloom Ström 2018). The Nguni languages in general are for the most part mutually intelligible and rather form a continuum. For this reason – although we name the varieties as separate entities – we consider the data in this paper in a micro-variation perspective without aiming at determining dialect borders and isoglosses. The data we rely on here for Southern Ndebele has been gathered in the province by a team of researchers from the University of Helsinki and is published in Miestamo et al. (2019). Additional data for Southern Ndebele in the present paper (coded in the same way as the Xhosa examples, see footnote 6) is from the same fieldwork period, during which the two authors of this paper collaborated. The chapter is structured as follows. In section (2), we will first give a background to the different analyses offered in the literature with regards to the use of the augment in Nguni (2.1) and in Bantu languages more generally (2.2), and then discuss the theoretical preliminaries on which our proposal is based (2.3). In section (3) we present the results of our survey of the use of the augment and its relation to referentiality in Nguni languages. Section (4) provides a general discussion of the findings and concludes the paper.

2. The augment on argument nominals – some background

2.1 The augment in Nguni Those Bantu languages in which augments are found can be divided into default augmented and default augmentless languages (Halpert Forthcoming). Default augmented languages use the augment everywhere, except in certain limited environments that drop the augment. We shall see that this is the case for all Nguni languages apart from Northern Ndebele. Default augmentless languages such as Eton and Luguru, on the other hand, make no use of an augment except in very specific contexts. The structure of a typical Nguni noun is as given in ((2)) and exemplified by e.g. Xhosa a-ma-doda ‘men’ in noun class 6 in (3).

(2) AUGMENT (AUG) – NOUN CLASS PREFIX (NCP) – NOUN STEM In Southern Ndebele, Xhosa and Zulu, the augment consists of a vowel u-, i- or a-, and occurs in all noun classes except the locative ones. In contrast with this, the augment in Swati is not used for all noun classes. It only occurs with noun class containing a nasal.

3 Also called isiNdebele, Southern South African Ndebele or Southern Transvaal Ndebele; henceforth abbreviated as S. Ndebele in the examples. 3

The form of the augment in Swati is u-, i- or e-, and together with the noun class prefix it is realized as follows: 1 (u-mu-), 3 (u-mu-), 4 (i-mi-), 6 (e-ma-) and 9 (i-N-) (Ziervogel 1952). Class 10 is an exception in that it does not exhibit the augment even though the noun class prefix contains a nasal: the noun class 9 noun inkomo ‘cow’ has the augment but the noun class 10 noun tinkomo ‘cows’ does not. The augment is actually latent in the other classes as well, and surfaces in a few specific contexts, e.g. when the noun is preceded by instrumental nga-, such as in uhamba nge-li-hashi ‘he travels by horse’ (Ziervogel and Mabuza 1976: 214). Here, the vowel in nga- has presumably merged with a ‘ghost’ augment i-, that is not seen in other contexts when the noun lihashi ‘horse’ is used. The more remarkable differences between the Nguni varieties present themselves in the contexts in which the augment can be omitted. At end of the spectrum, Southern Ndebele does not drop the augment besides in very limited contexts (Miestamo et al. 2019). In Zulu and Xhosa, as will become evident from the results of this paper, the augment is dropped in more contexts than in Southern Ndebele. This is also the case for Swati, in which the augment is omitted e.g. following a demonstrative, in the vocative, preceding -onke ‘every’ and following the negative (Ziervogel 1952: 188-190). This can be noted for the noun classes mentioned above which exhibit an augment. In the other noun classes, there appear to be tonal differences in the contexts in which the augment can be omitted, indicating that the augment is tonal in these other classes. Apart from these obligatory contexts, the augment can be omitted due to speaker preference, according to Ziervogel (1952). Northern Ndebele4 occupies the opposite end of the spectrum in that there are no augments reported for this variety (Ziervogel 1959). The absence of segmental marking of the augment is confirmed in Miestamo et al. (2019). Tonal marking of this distinction can so far not be ruled out, however. We will not be able to include data from this variety in this chapter. 5 What, then, are the contexts in which the augment is present vs. omitted? In default augmented languages, argument nominals always occur with the augment in declarative statements. We see this with the object noun indlu ‘house’ in the following example, as well as with the noun amadoda ‘men’:

(3) a-ma-doda akh-a i-n-dlu [Xhosa] 6AUG-6-men SM6.build-FV 9AUG-9-9.house ‘The men are building a house.’ [NF151210E] 6 There are other contexts, however, in which a nominal that is an argument occurs without the augment. This is often the case following a negative verb, as in the following Zulu example. The noun umuntu ‘person’, loses the augment u- and receives a non-referential (negative polarity item, henceforth NPI) meaning:

(4) a-ngi-bon-i mu-ntu [Zulu] NEG-SM1SG-see-NEG 1-person ‘I don’t see anyone.’ (Halpert 2012: 89)

4 Northern Ndebele (also called seNdrebele, Northern South African Ndebele or Northern Transvaal Ndebele) is spoken around Polokwane in . It should not be confused with the related Ndebele language spoken in , which is also excluded from this survey. 5 Tonal representations of the augment in Nguni languages is left for future research. 6 Examples from our own fieldwork are coded with an abbreviation of the place name, plus the date of the recording and a letter indicating how the data have been obtained. E.g. D = dialogue, M = monologue, O = oral tradition, story, legend. Elicited examples have the initials of the speaker, and the last letter E indicates that the example is elicited. Examples from Mount Frere (coded MTF) concern the Bhaca variety and show some phonological differences from standard Xhosa. 4

It has also been noted that the augment can be dropped in other contexts, such as questions in Xhosa, and that this has been claimed to cause a difference in interpretation (Visser 2008; Carstens and Mletshe 2016). With the augment, there is a referential reading, definite or indefinite (5) while the version without the augment gives a non-referential meaning (5):

(5) a. Ingaba u-John u-fund-é i-ncwadi kule mpela veki? [Xhosa] 1AUG-1a.John SM1-read-REC.CJ 9AUG-9.book this end week ‘Did John read a/the book this weekend?’

b. Ingaba u-John u-fund-é ncwadi kule mpela veki? Q 1AUG-1a.John SM1-read-REC.CJ 9.book this end week ‘Did John read any book this weekend?’ (Carstens and Mletshe 2016: 762) In section (3), we will come back to the different contexts in which the augment can be dropped, and show that there is variation in the acceptance of augment-drop, as also pointed out by Carstens and Mletshe (2016). It is this variation that is the focus of the present study.

2.2 The augment in Bantu studies As numerous factors appear to influence the presence or absence of the augment in various default augmented Bantu languages, and there are different morphosyntactic contexts which need to be considered, it has proven difficult to give a unified explanation of its use. Different analyses accounting for the presence and absence of the augment have been offered for the Nguni languages and for Bantu languages in general. Semantic distinctions such as specificity (Bokamba 1971; von Staden 1973; Mojapelo 2007; Visser 2008; Asiimwe 2014) and definiteness (Doke 1935; Mould 1974; Patin et al. 2018) are mostly part of such explanations, leading some authors to conclude that the augment functions as an article (e.g. Bleek 1862/69; Bennie 1939; McLaren 1944: 153). A distinction between arguments with and those without the augment – whereby the ones lacking an augment have a non-referential meaning – has been reported for e.g. Bemba (Givón 1978), Dzamba (Bokamba 1971) and (Mould 1974). It has however also often been concluded that there are no one-to- one correspondences, that indefinite and non-specific nouns can occur with the augment and that semantics alone cannot account for the contexts in which the augment is present and where it is absent (Dewees 1971; von Staden 1973; Hyman and Katamba 1993; Adams 2010; Riedel 2011). Nevertheless, a majority of analyses argue for a correlation between the augment and specificity and definiteness in some way (for an overview see Halpert Forthcoming). However, in a comparative analysis of the use of the augment in the whole Bantu language family, van de Velde (2018: 250) points out that “the syntactic context is the most widespread conditioning factor for the presence or absence of the augment.” This mainly syntactic conditioning is also relevant in Nguni, as we shall argue below. In the analysis of Halpert (2012) for Zulu, the presence or absence of the augment depends on abstract case. The form of the nominal does not depend on the position of the nominal in the syntactic structure, as in typical case languages, i.e. there is no structural case (Halpert 2012: 81). In this and other accounts couched in the generative programme, argument nominals without augment are analysed as occurring low in the post-verbal field, possibly inside vP (Halpert Forthcoming). Such nominals need to be licenced by syntactic operators such as negation (Progovac 1993) and in the case of some Bantu languages like Luganda, also focus (Hyman and Katamba 1993). In augmented nominals, the augment has been analysed as occupying the D position in a determiner phrase for languages such as Zulu, Rundi and Nkore-Kiga (de Dreu 2008; Adams 2010; Ndayiragije et al. 2012; Asiimwe 2014), although this is argued against for other languages like Haya (Riedel 2011). The

5 demonstrative also occupies this position, and therefore the pre-nominal demonstrative cannot co-occur with the augment (de Dreu 2008). In sum, recent explanations for the use of the augment have been sought in a combination of semantic and syntactic aspects. A distinction is reported between specific argument nominals with an augment and non-specific nominals without an augment, but only in certain syntactic environments. Halpert (Forthcoming) notes the following correlation: default augmented languages are more likely to drop the augment in non-specific/indefinite contexts. On the other hand, nominals are much more likely to occur with the augment in definite/specific/ referential contexts in default augmentless languages. We will now give some background for a more functional-typological approach and compare the use of the augment in Bantu to related phenomena in the languages of the world. In light of this background we will then turn to a discussion of our data in section 3.

2.3 Non-fact, referentiality and the marking of NPs A key observation is that negatives constitute a prototypical context for the augmentless forms conveying non-referentiality. In this section, we provide a functional-typological background to the connection between non-referentiality and negation and between non- referentiality and non-fact contexts more broadly. Givón (1978; 2001) notes that the use of an object-taking verb typically implies the referentiality of an indefinite object in fact- modalities. Such fact-modalities are created, for example, by inherent realis in past or declaratives; the majority of verbs, including have, carry inherent realis modality. Thus in (6) the NP a dog receives a referential reading – there is a particular dog that Pat has:

(6) a. Pat has a dog.

b. Pat wants a dog.

c. Pat doesn’t have a dog. In non-fact modalities such as negation or the irrealis context created by the inherent irrealis verb want, the situation is different. The irrealis in (6) readily allows either a referential or a non-referential reading – there may be a particular dog that Pat wants or then Pat may just want to become a dog owner but has no particular dog in mind yet. Under negation (6), the indefinite NP gets a non-referential reading – Pat does not have any dog, there is no dog such that Pat has it. Note that we are talking about indefinites here – definites are referential under all modalities (unless interpreted generically). The connection between negation and non- referentiality can be explained by discourse factors, following Givón (1978): negatives are not used to introduce new participants into discourse. Referential NPs under the scope of negation have already been introduced by a preceding affirmative (or are otherwise known in the context) and are thus definite rather than indefinite. Examples found in the literature on Nguni languages, see above, strongly suggest that referentiality under non-fact plays a role in the presence or absence of the augment. A further example can be seen in (7), where the augment is omitted after a negative, which is a typical irrealis context. This can be compared with (7) with the inherent realis verb ‘complete’ in the recent past.7 The augment can never be omitted in such fact contexts. Examples such as these are often compared with a negated verb with object marking such as in (7), which mostly gives a definite reading (however see 3.3.1):

7 For an example with ‘want’, see 3.2. 6

(7) a. le ndoda a-yi-fez-anga m-sebenzi [Xhosa] 9.this 9.man NEG-SM9-finish.off-NEG.REC 3-work ‘This man never completed any work.’

b. le ndoda i-fez-e u-m-sebenzi 9.this 9.man SM9-finish.off-REC 3AUG-3-work ‘This man completed the work.’ (du Plessis and Visser 1992: 48)

c. le ndoda a-yi-wu-fez-anga u-m-sebenzi 9.this 9.man NEG-SM9-OM3-finish.off-NEG.REC 3AUG-3-work ‘This man never completed the work.’ [OS190417E] Thus, while in English the referentiality status of NPs under fact vs. non-fact does not show any overt grammatical effects, based on examples such as (7), the Nguni languages seem to show such effects in the distribution of the augment. However, this paper will show that the picture is not this straightforward. In a broader typological view, the Nguni languages are not alone in exhibiting such effects. Miestamo (2014) surveyed the effects of negation on the marking of NPs in a sample of 240 languages, showing that negation affects the marking of participants in a number of other languages as well: in some Finnic, Baltic and Slavic languages, NPs in the scope of negation tend to be marked with a case that has partitive semantics; in French, indefinite NPs under the scope of negation use the determiner de instead of the indefinite article un(e); and in many Oceanic languages indefinite NPs under the scope of negation are marked by determiners which have been termed partitive in many sources. What is common to many of the alternations is their connection to referentiality. Very often the marking that appears in indefinite NPs under negation can be identified as non-referential marking, and it appears in some non-negative contexts as well marking the non-referential status of the NP. Let us take one illustrative example from the Oceanic language Araki:

(8) a. nam les-i-a jau lo lep̈ a [Araki] 1SG.R see-OBJ.REF-3SG coconut.crab LOC ground ‘I've seen a/the coconut crab on the ground.’

b. nam je les re jau lo lep̈ a 1SG.R NEG see PAR coconut.crab LOC ground ‘I haven't seen a/any coconut crab on the ground.’

c. nam je les-i-a jau lo lep̈ a 1SG.R NEG see-OBJ.REF-3SG coconut.crab LOC ground ‘I haven't seen the coconut crab on the ground.’ (but not *‘I haven't seen a coconut crab on the ground.’) (Miestamo 2014, citing Alexandre François, p.c.) In realis affirmatives (8), objects are unmarked noun phrases and the verb shows referential object and person-number cross-reference. In the negative in (8), there is no cross-reference on the verb and the partitive marker re appears before the object. Referential object marking and cross-reference on the verb may occur in negatives, but then the result is a definite reading (8), and in this case re does not occur. The similarity is obvious between the Araki example and many of the Nguni examples discussed in this paper, e.g. Swati (example (1)) in which the absence of augment can be connected to non-referentiality and does not co-occur with object marking on the verb. For the purposes of the present paper, it is also interesting to

7 note that in Araki, in affirmative future tense contexts, another non-fact context, the partitive marker re is possible in the same way as in negatives. Miestamo’s (2014) study is a macro- typological study taking a world-wide perspective. As observed e.g. by Kortmann (2004), typological variation found in a large-scale perspective can often be observed between closely related languages, too, and it is in this perspective that we are conducting our micro- typological study of the variation in the use of the augment under negation and other irrealis contexts in the Nguni subgroup. With these typological facts in mind, looking at sentences with indefinite NPs as arguments, we expect to find variation in the presence vs. absence of the augment in certain irrealis contexts. If the augment was fully sensitive to referentiality, we would expect realis contexts to show the presence of the augment and negatives to show its absence, whereas non-negative irrealis contexts would often show variation depending on which reading, referential or non- referential, is intended. In the following section, we test our expectations against the available data.

3. The use of the augment under negation and other non-fact contexts

3.1 Introduction This section presents the results of our survey of how the use of the augment varies under non-fact in Nguni languages. We restrict our analysis to clause-level environments (cf. Halpert Forthcoming) for the moment. We therefore exclude noun internal environments where variation can also be observed; for example, the second member of nominal compounds tends to lack an augment (Buell 2009) and there is also an interaction between the augment and the presence of modifiers within the noun phrase, such as demonstratives (van de Velde 2005; Buell 2009; Halpert Forthcoming). Our argumentation is structured as follows. We show in 3.2 that, except for Northern Ndebele where the augment has disappeared altogether, the augment is not omitted in affirmative declaratives, which, as a default realis context, will serve as a point of comparison for the non-fact contexts. Our main focus is on negative contexts, section 3.3. In synchronic analysis, the use of the augment does not show the neat and regular pattern described e.g. by Ziervogel (1952); Visser (2008) and exemplified by example (1) and (7), and the augment cannot be argued to be productively used for a referentiality distinction in the negative. In 3.4 we note that in elicitation interviews some speakers make a distinction between referential and non- referential nouns in non-negative irrealis contexts using the augment, but the augment is not found to be productively exploited for expressing such a distinction in the languages at present. In contemporary usage, it is with a very limited set of nominals that the non- augmented form always conveys a non-referential reading, i.e. NPI’s (see section 3.3.1). Referentiality does not, thus, play any significant role in explaining the distribution and use of the augment in contemporary Nguni languages, but we can evoke it as a diachronic explanation for the fact that the contexts in which the augment is more commonly (or even obligatorily) absent rather than present, are those in which NPs tend to have non-referential readings. The absence or presence of the augment, then, is mainly dependent on which morpho-syntactic construction is used. That the augment has to be dropped in certain morpho-syntactic constructions is most clearly evidenced by its absence in the negated predication; here, as will be evident in 3.3.3, the augment is absent in all varieties, even in Southern Ndebele in which the augment is present in all other contexts. The results of section 3 are summarized in 3.5.

8

3.2 Background: Affirmative declaratives As already established above and illustrated in example (3) for Xhosa, the augment is obligatorily used on all arguments in realis contexts. The same goes for the other Nguni languages such as Swati. As mentioned in section 2.1, many noun classes in Swati do not exhibit a (segmental) augment in any context, e.g. noun classes 1a ‘mother’ and 15 ‘food’ in example (9), but examples from the noun classes that do exhibit an augment show us that also in this language, the augment is used in declarative affirmatives, as expected (10):

(9) make u-phek-e ku-dla [Swati] 1a.mother SM1-cook-REC 15-food ‘Mother has cooked food.’ (Ziervogel and Mabuza 1976: 138)

(10) u-m-shini wa-m-jub-a u-mu-nwe [Swati] 3AUG-3-machine SM.PST3-OM1-amputate-FV 3AUG-3-finger ‘The machine cut his finger off.’ (Ziervogel and Mabuza 1976: 225) The augment is obligatorily present, for external (e.g. umshini ‘machine’ in example ((10))) as well as internal arguments (umunwe ‘finger’ in example (10)). As for Zulu, the situation is the same, i.e. the augment is used in affirmative declaratives and is never omitted on subjects, either pre-verbal or post-verbal:

(11) a.U-m-ntwana u-cul-ile [Zulu] 1AUG-1-child SM1-sing-REC ‘The child sang.’ ‘*A child sang.’

b. Ku-cul-e u-m-ntwana SM17-sing-REC 1AUG-1-child ‘A child sang.’ (Buell 2005: 156) As noted by Buell (2005), agreeing subjects in the Nguni languages are mostly definite or referential (11), while non-agreeing subjects are non-topical and often indefinite (11). We may also note that in affirmative declaratives, even clearly non-referential nouns are marked with the augment, as in the following example with -funa ‘want’:

(12) (uku)b(a) u-fun-a i-nyam(a) (y)e-nkomo [Xhosa] if SM2-want-FV 9AUG-meat 9AS-9.cow ‘if you want beef…’ [BLN150924D_b] In conclusion, the augment is always present in declarative affirmatives, regardless of the referentiality of the nominal arguments.

3.3 Negatives

3.3.1 The augment following a negated verb The discussion of the (non-)use of the augment has often centred around the context following a negative verb form. This is where examples can easily be found in the literature and in which a meaning difference has been reported for several varieties. Unsurprisingly so, as the negative is the most prototypical of non-fact contexts. We argue here, however, that a previous productive distinction has eroded in these languages. A first argument for this comes from the wide variation within this otherwise tightly knit language group. As mentioned in the background in 2.1, the augment is retained in nearly all

9 contexts in Southern Ndebele and omitted everywhere in Northern Ndebele. This shows that the augment has lost its semantic importance, the presence vs. absence of the augment is no longer relevant in these languages. The following Southern Ndebele examples illustrate this. The augment remains in all our elicited examples as well as those that we have taken from spoken texts. Unfortunately, we do not have older sources to compare our findings with. The elicited example (13) and the corpus example (14) give two different negation strategies in the recent past:

(13) A-zange ba-fuman-e i-ncwadi izolo [S. Ndebele] NEG-aux.NEG SM2-find-SBJV 9AUG-9.book yesterday ‘They didn’t find a book yesterday.’ (Miestamo et al. 2019) (Context: Did they find something yesterday? They didn’t find a book yesterday.)

(14) Wena a-w(u)-thol-i a-be-ntwana 2SG.PRO NEG-SM.NEG2SG-get-NEG 2AUG-2-child

a-si-k(u)-fun-i thina emzini ka-baba NEG-SM1PL-OM2SG-want-NEG 1PL.PRO LOC.homestead of-1a.father ‘You, you don’t get kids, we don’t want you at father’s homestead.’[MPU160618O]8 A second argument for the erosion of a semantic/pragmatic distinction in the use of the augment is that in a corpus of recorded, transcribed and glossed spoken Xhosa as under development by the first author9, the object noun is without the augment in all cases where we have a negated verb without object marking, see e.g. (7). If there were a productive distinction between the use of the augment and referentiality/non-referentiality, it would certainly be noticed here. In our – much smaller – data collection for Southern Ndebele, on the other hand, the object noun includes the augment following all negative verb forms. On the other hand, and as an argument that the use of the augment is syntactically determined, nominals following a negative verb form with object marking are obligatorily augmented. All encountered examples include the augment, regardless of whether the nominal is referential (15) or not (16)-(17):10

(15) a.Xelela uThembani ukuba ma-ka-thethe [Xhosa] tell 1a.Thembani that HRT-SM.HRT1-speak-SBJV

no-titshala we-sikolo. CONN-1a.teacher 1AS-7.school

b. A-ka-m-az-i u-titshala. NEG-SM.NEG1-OM1-know-NEG 1AUG-teacher ‘Tell Thembani to speak to the teacher of the school.’ ‘He doesn’t know (the) teacher.’ [OS190405E]

8 In the natural spoken examples, parentheses indicate segments that are not (or barely) heard by the transcriber, but expected. 9 9 hours of recordings, 6,5 hours of which are transcribed to date, with 5,500 tokens glossed. Recordings are made from 2015. 10 Following comments from a reviewer that all our examples concern animate nouns, we made use of transformational elicitation (with a standard Xhosa speaker), and could confirm that the same applies to inanimate nouns: e.g. example (17) can be transformed to the (semantically rather dubious) inanimate iinkomo aziyidli ingca ‘cattle don’t eat grass’. 10

(16) Lowo ku-gcina lo be-ka-nga-ba-thol-i a-ba-ntwana [S. Ndebele] DEM.REF 15-last DEM.PROX REC-SM.NEG1-NEG-OM2-get-NEG 2AUG-2-child

ngitjho na-ba-magwababa be-ka-nga-thol-i neks even CONN-2COP-bed.children REC-SM.NEG1-NEG-take-NEG nothing

‘The last one (wife) didn’t have children even ‘bed-children’11, she didn’t have anything.’ [MPU160618O]

(17) tinkhomo a-ti-yi-dl-i i-nyama [Swati] 10.cows NEG-SM10-OM9-eat-NEG 9AUG-9.meat ‘Cattle don’t eat meat.’ (Ziervogel and Mabuza 1976: 176) Object marking has been claimed to give a definite reading to the object noun (e.g. Ziervogel 1952; Visser 2008). However, it has convincingly been shown that object – in combination with an augmented object noun – is needed in at least some Nguni languages when the object noun phrase is extraposed/dislocated (Buell 2005; Adams 2010; Halpert 2012; Zeller 2012; Halpert 2015) for information structural reasons. The object is often (but not necessarily) topical, which leads to a definite reading, but it can also be indefinite. The position of the noun phrase is evidenced by phonological phrasing, in that there is a phonological phrase break following the object marked verb and the object noun phrase (van der Spuy 1993; Cheng and Downing 2009). In the following examples, parentheses indicate a phonological phrase, as evidenced by penultimate lengthening (indicated with colon) of the last word in the phrase:

(18) a.(ba-vúl’ íncwa:dí) [Xhosa] SM2-open 9.book ‘They open the book.’

b. (bá-ya-yi-vú:l’) (íncwa:dí) SM2-DJT-OM9-open 9.book ‘They open it, as for the book.’ (Jokweni 1995: 31) Reversely, object marking cannot co-occur with augmentless nouns as has been shown for e.g. Zulu (von Staden 1973; Buell 2009; Adams 2010; Zeller 2013):

(19) A-ngi-(*m-)bon-anga mu-ntu. [Zulu] NEG-SM1SG-OM1-see-NEG.REC 1-person ‘I didn't see anyone.’ (Buell 2009: 9) In the analysis of (Halpert 2012), this is due to a syntactic restriction of augmentless nominals to occur inside the vP. As object marking can only occur with dislocated nominals, and such nominals have to include the augment, example (19) is ungrammatical with object marking. Hence, the augment does not have a referential function following an object marked negative verb form in Nguni, but its presence depends on the morphosyntactic construction used. The following is an example from Zulu, with object marking and a non-referential noun:

(20) a. u-bon-e i-zi-ndlovu ezi-ngaki eBoston? [Zulu] SM2SG-see-REC 10AUG-10-elephant 10RC-how.many LOC.Boston ‘How many elephants did you see in Boston?’

11 According to the story-teller, ‘bed-children’ are children that look like beds. 11

b. a-ngi-zi-bon-anga i-zi-ndlovu. A-zi-kho NEG-SM1SG-OM10-see-NEG.PST 10AUG-10-elephant NEG-SM10-exist

laphaya over.there ‘I didn’t see any elephants. There aren’t any over there.’ (Halpert 2015: 75-76) Examples of an augmented nominal following a negative verb form occur in the literature. A distinction is reported to be accepted by speakers of Xhosa consulted in the study of Carstens and Mletshe (2016) for Xhosa, with the presence of the augment giving a referential reading (21) and its absence a non-referential reading (21):

(21) a.A-ndi-bon-anga ba-ntwana. [Xhosa] NEG-SM1SG-see-NEG.REC 2-child ‘I didn’t see any children.’

b. A-ndi-bon-anga a-ba-ntwana. NEG-SM1SG-see-NEG.REC 2AUG-2-child ‘I didn’t see (the) children.’ (Carstens and Mletshe 2016: 762) In fieldwork elicitation by the first author in the Eastern Cape, several speakers have rejected the distinction in referentiality as in the examples above, with different kinds of nouns. This discrepancy could be explained if (21) is actually an example of contrastive focus, see 3.3.2. In any case, the distinction is not made by all speakers of Xhosa. The results of Carstens and Mletshe (2016) match with reports from older literature, or literature based on older data. The referential/non-referential distinction has for example been described for Zulu, in which the arguments lacking augment are reported to have a non- referential meaning, much like in the Xhosa examples (de Dreu 2008). The data used by de Dreu is from von Staden (1973):

(22) a.A-ka-limaz-a ba-ntwana. [Zulu] NEG-1SM.NEG-hurt-FV 2-child ‘He doesn’t hurt any children.’

b. A-ka-limaz-a a- ba-ntwana. NEG-1SM.NEG-hurt-FV 2AUG-2-child ‘He doesn’t hurt (some particular) children.’ (de Dreu 2008: 18) A similar distinction is claimed to exist with intransitives in which the subject follows the negative verb:

(23) a.A-ku-fik-anga a-ba-hambi. [Zulu] NEG-SM17-arrive-NEG.REC 2AUG-2-travelers ‘No (particular, individual) travelers arrived.’

b. A-ku-fik-anga ba-hambi NEG-SM17-arrive-NEG.REC 2-travellers ‘No (nothing like) travelers arrived.’ (von Staden 1973: 166) Newer publications indicate that a change is taking place in the use of the augment. Especially younger speakers of Zulu are reported to not accept the nominal without augment in e.g. negatives (Halpert 2012; 2015). These speakers judge the omission of the augment on an argument nominal as marked and even “rude” (Halpert 2012: 87; 90).

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The differences in use of the augment between younger and older speakers as reported on by Halpert (2012) and mentioned above form an additional argument that an erosion of semantic/pragmatic function has taken place, we argue. Also in other Bantu languages, a tendency to reduce the functional load and the use of the augment can be noted (Petzell and Kühl 2017). We proposed above that a referential/non-referential distinction is not made using the augment in present-day Nguni languages. However, there is a context in which the augmentless nominal is always non-referential; i.e. when the noun following the negative verb is umuntu ‘person’, into ‘thing’ or indawo ‘place’. The form without the augment appears to have developed a meaning relating to negative polarity, i.e. muntu ‘anybody’, nto ‘anything’ and ndawo ‘anywhere’:

(24) a-ndi-y-anga ndawo [Xhosa] NEG-SM1SG-go-NEG.REC 9.place ‘I didn’t go anywhere.’ [OM180628] The forms without the augment only have this meaning following a negative verb form, however. In Zulu, muntu, lutho and ndawo can also be used independently to mean ‘nobody’, ‘nothing’ and ‘nowhere’ (Zeller 2009; Carstens and Mletshe 2016).

(25) u-bon-é bani? Mu-ntu! [Zulu] SM2SG-see-REC who 1-person ‘Who did you see?’ ‘Nobody!’ (Carstens and Mletshe 2016: 772) Other nominals without the augment cannot be used as fragment answers in Zulu (Carstens and Mletshe 2016). The younger speakers of Durban Zulu mentioned above who judge augmentless nominals as inappropriate following a negative verb form (without object marking), do accept the generic NPI forms muntu ‘anyone’ and lutho ‘anything’ in all registers (Halpert 2015: 70). We assume that an earlier distinction in referentiality for all nouns is now used in a more limited way with these specific nominals. In Xhosa, the use of a bare noun as NPI is not accepted and very marked, as noted by (Carstens and Mletshe 2016) and confirmed in fieldwork by the first author:

(26) Ngu-bani o-be-fowun-ile? *M-ntu! [Xhosa] 1COP-who 1RC-AUX-call-REC.DJ 1-person ‘Who called?’ [Intended: Nobody!] (Carstens and Mletshe 2016: 772)

(27) U-funa ntoni? A-ndi-funi nto. SM2SG-want-FV what NEG-SM1SG-want-NEG 9.thing ‘What do you want? I don’t want anything.’

*Nto! [Intended: Nothing!] [NJ190217E_j] Summarizing this section, we see that the augment is always retained in Southern Ndebele, as well as for some speakers of Durban Zulu. In standard Zulu and Xhosa it is mostly present, except in a restricted set of morphosyntactic constructions. In Northern Ndebele, as mentioned in 2.1, the augment appears to have been completely lost. This shows that the languages can manage without the distinction. We propose that the variation encountered is evidence of a reduced semantic-pragmatic function of the augment. The instances in which the augment is present in negatives in Xhosa are limited and examples in the literature are often from older sources. The findings by Carstens and Mletshe (2016) for Xhosa and e.g. de

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Dreu (2008) for Zulu show us that a distinction in referentiality is accepted by some speakers in elicitation interviews. Further information about the speakers consulted are not given in these sources. We claim that these observations, taken together, show that the absence vs. presence of the augment does not signal a referentiality distinction in the modern Nguni languages.

3.3.2 Contrastive focus in the negative However, another semantic distinction exists in negatives in which the nominals retain the augment even when there is no object marking on the verb, namely one of contrastive focus. The following example is from a focus translation task of the Potsdam Questionnaire on Information Structure (Skopeteas et al. 2006). After the translation task in (28), the speaker is asked to follow up by correcting the verb as well as the object argument (the instruction is: ‘not ate (the beans), but drank the water’):

(28) a.ba-dl-e ii-mbotyi [Xhosa] SM2-eat-REC 10AUG-10.beans ‘They ate (the) beans.’

b. a-ba-dl-anga ii-mbotyi, ba-sel-e a-ma-nzi NEG-SM2-eat-NEG.REC 10AUG-10.beans SM2-drink-REC 6AUG-6-water ‘They did not eat beans, they drank water.’ [NJ150928E] According to our consultant (not the speaker of the phrases), the sentence in (28) cannot refer to specific beans, but implies ’(any) beans’, with or without augment. Rather, there is a semantic difference in that using the augment on iimbotyi in (28) implies that something else is eaten or in this case drunk instead. The same consultant accepts a distinction between the presence vs. absence of the augment after negative verb forms. Although she claims that she would hardly use the form with the augment, the example in (29) implies that there is something else that you want, rather than tea:

(29) a.a-ndi-fun-i i-ti [Xhosa] NEG-SM1SG-want-NEG 9AUG-9.tea

b. a-ndi-fun-i ti NEG-SM1SG-want-NEG 9.tea ‘I don’t want tea/any tea.’ [OM180628] In the corpus data, we find one example of this in which the speaker implies that she should wear something else, and the augment is present following the negative form:

(30) Ndi-nga-nxib-(i) net i-nt(o) etihombi [Xhosa] SM1SG-NEG.SBJV-wear-FV just 9AUG-9.thing 9RC.traditional ‘I must not just wear something traditional.’ [MTF170609D_c] A contrastive focus function has also been proposed for the presence of an augment in Runyankore-Rukiga in exactly the same context as for Xhosa, i.e. following a negative verb form (Asiimwe 2014: 139-141). Moving further away from Nguni, we can note that even in French, where, as mentioned in Section 2.3, indefinite objects change the indefinite article un/une/des to the partitive determiner de under negation, see example (31), this change is not effected in the case of contrastive focus, see (31). These are constructed examples:

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(31) a.Elle voit un chien [French] she see.3SG INDEF dog ‘She sees a dog.’

b. Elle ne voit pas de chien she NEG see.3SG NEG PAR dog ‘She doesn’t see a dog.’

c. Elle ne voit pas un chien mais un chat she NEG see.3sg NEG INDEF dog but INDEF cat ‘S/he doesn’t see a dog but a cat.’ Furthermore, we can note a connection to the behaviour of polarity items under metalinguistic negation: as noted e.g. by Horn (1989), positive polarity items are often found in metalinguistic negation instead of negative polarity items, e.g. Chris didn’t manage to solve {some/*any} problems – he solved them easily (Horn 1989: 368) (for the relationship between contrastive and metalinguistic negation, see also Silvennoinen (2019)). Several consulted speakers do not accept or recognize the construction with a negated verb, without object marking, followed by a non-augmented form. The distinction occurs with some speakers and in some contexts and brings an interesting further perspective to our findings in 3.2.1. The distinction of contrastive focus has to our knowledge not been explored for the Nguni languages and is a topic for further research.

3.3.3 Negation of possessive and existential predication with the associative copula The negation of possessive predication shows that the augment has to be dropped in certain morpho-syntactic constructions, regardless of a referentiality distinction. All Nguni languages discussed here omit the augment in this context. Predicative nominals in Nguni are often introduced by means of copulative morphemes. These elements are not verbal in their morphosyntactic properties. Different elements are found in different functions, e.g. identifying, descriptive or associative. The associative copulative na- indicates ownership or association (Jokweni 1997) and is exemplified in the first nominal predicate in example (32). The vowel in the copulative coalesces with the vowel in the augment of u-mntwana ‘child’ and becomes no-. The subject referred to in this example in noun class 5 is izim ‘giant/ogre’:

(32) Li-no-m-ntwan(a) o-yi-ntombazana. [Xhosa] SM5-AS.COP.AUG-1-child REL-9COP-9.girl ‘It has a child who was a girl.’ [PSJ150517O] The occurrence of the augment and its coalescence with the preceding vowel is seen in the other Nguni varieties as well. The negative associative copulative, however, is pervasive in terms of omission of the augment. None of the languages allow any variation in this construction and the augment has to be dropped. For Southern Ndebele, this is the only context in the data in which there is omission of the augment, as it remains intact in all other cases. The following example shows this; here the associative copula is used for existential predication. The noun incwadi ‘book’ occurs without the augment i-, as evidenced by the form of na- in which no vowel coalescence takes place:

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(33) a-ku-na-ncwadi etafuleni [S. Ndebele] NEG-SM17-AS.COP-9.book on.table ‘There is no book on the table.’ (Miestamo et al. 2019) Also in Xhosa (34), Swati (35) and Zulu (36) the augment is obligatorily omitted. Retaining the augment makes the phrase in (37) ungrammatical:

(34) u-m-bona ku-funek-(a) u-nga-bi-na-khul(a) [Xhosa] 3AUG-3-maize SM17-require-FV SM3-NEG-be-AS.COP-11.weeds ‘The maize must not have weeds (should not be with weeds).’ [GX150515M_b]

(35) a-ka-b-anga na-lu-tfo [Swati] NEG-SM.NEG1-AUX=be-NEG.REC AS.COP-11-thing ‘He had nothing; he was without anything.’ (Ziervogel and Mabuza 1976: 152)

(36) Leli pheshana a-li-na-gama. [Zulu] 5.this 5.small.paper NEG-SM5-AS.COP-5.name

(37) *alinegama ‘This little paper has no name.’ (von Staden 1973: 174) The fact that the augment is always retained is a further argument for the proposal that the augment does not indicate a referentiality distinction in modern Nguni languages. The examples show us that it is the specific morphosyntactic construction with an associative copulative that demands the omission of the augment, not a distinction in referentiality.

3.4 Other non-fact contexts The preceding section focused on the augment in negatives. In this section we will take a look at the behaviour of the augment in some other non-fact contexts, paying specific attention to whether it shows any sensitivity to referentiality. Starting with interrogatives, we may note that a distinction between referential and non-referential readings expressed by the presence vs. absence of the augment has been proposed to exist in Xhosa. When there is no object marking, the absence of the augment gives a non-referential reading (38), according to Visser (2008):

(38) a.U-ya-m-azi u-titshala apha? [Xhosa] SM2SG-DJ-OM1-know 1AUG-1a.teacher here ‘Do you know the/a teacher here?’

b. W-azi titshala apha? SM2SG-know 1a.teacher here ‘Do you know (any) teacher here?’ (Visser 2008: 15) A non-referential meaning in the absence of the augment is also reported for Zulu in interrogatives, according to Halpert (2015) this concerns polar questions:

(39) U-bon-a muntu nje na? [Zulu] SM2SG-see-FV 1.person just Q ‘Do you see anybody at all? or any person?’ (Mzolo 1968: 203)

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(40) U-ke w-a-funda ncwadi ku-le-mpelasonto? SM2SG-occasionally.do SM2SG-PST-read 9.book LOC-DEM-9.weekend ‘Did you read any book on the weekend?’ (Halpert 2015: 70) In our fieldwork, the speakers consulted did not accept such phrases without the augment and examples do not occur in the corpus. The augment is retained in interrogatives, also with non-referential meanings. Cross- referencing of the object on the verb is also possible, again showing that object marking does not correlate with referentiality/definiteness (see section 3.3.1). In Xhosa, the question in (41) was given as a translation both in the context ‘They were looking for animals. Did they find a lion yesterday?’ as well as ‘They were looking for the lion. Did they find the lion yesterday?’ The same is found in Southern Ndebele, see Miestamo et al. (2019):

(41) Ba-yi-fumene i-ngonyama izolo? [Xhosa] SM2-OM9-find.REC.DJ 9AUG-9.lion yesterday ‘Did they find a lion yesterday? [SM170605E] Available examples in Swati also occur with the augment:

(42) Ni-fun-a i-ntjintji na? [Swati] SM2PL-want-FV 9AUG-9.change Q ‘Do you (pl) want change?’ (Ziervogel and Mabuza 1976: 219) In Southern Ndebele, we also find the augment in interrogatives with a non-referential meaning, in this example with the existential -khona ‘be present’:

(43) Ekadeni kwa-ku-khona i-kosi [S. Ndebele] long.time.ago SM.PST17-IPFV17-be.present 9AUG-9.king

ni-ya-yazi i-kosi? SM2PL-DJ-know 9AUG-9.king ‘Long time ago there was a king, do you know what a king is?’ [MPU160518O] Interrogatives without the augment are acceptable in some cases or for some speakers. A case in point is example (5) above. Carstens and Mletshe (2016) report that only two out of their six interviewed speakers accept this distinction between referential and non-referential meanings in conditionals as well as questions, and that it is not accepted by any of the Zulu speakers in their study. It is however reported to be accepted by at least some Zulu speakers in Halpert (2012: 91). In fieldwork in the Eastern Cape, one speaker does accept such a distinction. Notably, this speaker is somewhat older as well as well-educated. The example in (44) has a non- referential reading. However, to express this, the speaker prefers a construction with the existential without the augment to express a non-referential meaning, as in (45):

(44) Ingaba uThandi u-thengis-e lokhwe kusasa nje? [Xhosa] Q 1a.Thandi SM1-sell-REC.CJ 9.dress in.morning just.now ‘Did Thandi sell any dress this morning?’ [SM180626E]

(45) kukho lokhwe i-thengisw-e ngu-Thandi kusasa nje? [Xhosa] there.is 9.dress SM9-sell.pass-REC.CJ 1COP-Thandi in.morning just.now ‘Was there any dress sold by Thandi this morning?’ [SM180626E]

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As for negative interrogatives, in the spontaneous examples that we find in our data, such as in the following from the Bhaca speaking region, the augment is retained:

(46) A-wu-zi-khel-el-(i) i-tea? [Xhosa] NEG-SM.NEG2SG-REFL-pour-APPL-NEG 9AUG-tea ‘Are you not pouring tea for yourself?’ [MTF170609D_c]

(47) Ba-nga-bikh(o) a-ba-ntu? [Xhosa] SM.PST2-NEG-be.present 2AUG-2-person ‘There were no people present?’ [MTF170609D_c]12 Further examples of negative interrogatives in the different varieties are needed in order to be able to conclude anything from this data. The modality marker nga- can express possibility/potentiality in Xhosa, translating as ‘can/may’. Visser (2008) argues that a non-specific reading can be achieved by the exclusion of the augment on the object head noun following this potential marker, and gives one set of examples, which are also interrogatives:

(48) a.Ndi-nga-fuman-a i-si-selo? [Xhosa] SM1SG-can-get-FV 7AUG-7-cold.drink ‘May I get a/the cold drink?’

b. Ndi-nga-fuman-a si-selo? SM1SG-can-get-FV 7-cold.drink ‘May I get (any) cold drink?’ (Visser 2008: 15) This distinction is not accepted by the speakers consulted for Xhosa, and is reported also not to be accepted in the study by (Carstens and Mletshe 2016). In the corpus, an object following a verb with the potential marker always retains the augment. This is also the case in Southern Ndebele, in which the augment is always present in translations of phrases with ‘may/can’ (49). Different strategies are used to express ‘any’ such as enye nenye in (50), but omission of the augment is not part of this:

(49) Ngi-nga-thol-a i-namanedi [S. Ndebele] SM1SG-POT-get-FV 9AUG-9.drink ‘May I get a/the cold drink?’

(50) ngi-nga-thol-a i-namanedi enye nenye na? SM1SG-POT-get-FV 9AUG-9.drink one and.other Q ‘May I get any cold drink?’ [Z160518E] The prefix nga- occurs as a potential as well as a conditional in Swati (Ziervogel and Mabuza 1976). The augment of the noun is retained following this form:

(51) ni-nga-nats-a i-nkantini ni-tawu-dzakw-a [Swati] SM2PL-POT-drink-FV 9AUG-9.liquor SM2PL-FUT-get.drunk-FV ‘If you drink liquor, you will get drunk.’ (Ziervogel and Mabuza 1976: 170)

12 The noun can also have a referential reading and translate as ‘were the people not present?’ according to our consultant, but in the context of the dialogue from which this example is taken, the meaning is non-referential as indicated in the translation. 18

Visser (2008) also gives examples in which the augment is optional following a future verb form, another non-fact context, giving a meaning difference related to (non-)referentiality:

(52) a.Yi-ya esikolweni. Wo-fuman-a a-ba-fundi apho [Xhosa] IMP-go school.LOC SM.FUT2SG-find-FV 2AUG-2-students there ‘Go to school. You will find (the) students here.’

b. Yi-ya e sikolweni. Wo-fuman-a ba-fundi apho IMP-go school.LOC SM.FUT2SG-find-FV 2-students there ‘Go to school. You will find (some) students there.’ (Visser 2008) This also fits with an analysis of referentiality in non-fact modalities, as future events have not taken place yet. These are however the only examples of this given in the literature. Such instances could also not be reproduced in elicitation or found in the data. Also Carstens and Mletshe (2016) point out that the speakers in their study did not accept these distinctions. In the Southern Ndebele data, all future sentences occur with the augment (53) and we also only find Swati examples of the future with the augment, as in (54):

(53) ba-zo-ku-thol-a i-bhubezi kusasa [S. Ndebele] SM2-FUT-INF-find-FV 5AUG-5.lion tomorrow ‘They will find a lion tomorrow.’ (Miestamo et al. 2019)

(54) na-wu-taku-hlanyel-a i-nhlanyelo u-bo-mel-a imvula [Swati] if-SM2SG-FUT-sow-FV 9AUG-9.seed SM2SG-OBL-wait-FV 9AUG-9.rain ‘If you are going to sow seed you must wait for the rain.’ (Ziervogel and Mabuza 1976: 180) We thus reach the conclusion that the referentiality distinction cannot be made by the augment in the future in the modern Nguni varieties. All in all, the augment is rarely found to be omitted in any of the varieties in other non-fact modalities than the negative.

3.5 Summary of results The following table summarizes our findings for the Nguni languages. The presence of the augment is indicated with a + sign in the relevant row for each language. Obligatory absence is marked with a – sign. A reported contrast between the presence vs. absence of the augment is indicated with +/– (for alternation), however limited this alternation is. When we have not been able to establish such an alternation in our own fieldwork, we indicate this with + (+/–) (we find the augment everywhere, but alternation is reported in the literature):

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Table 1 The augment in clause-level environments in the Nguni languages

Xhosa Zulu Swati S. Ndebele Affirmative declarative + + + + Transitive negative with object marking + + + + Future + (+/–) + + + Interrogative + (+/–) +/– + + Nouns following a negated verb +/– +/– +/– + Negative associative copula construction – – – –

This table suggests that the development whereby the distinction is lost has proceeded the furthest in Southern Ndebele, as the augment is never omitted in several contexts in which the other varieties show alternation. Xhosa shows greater variation than the other varieties and could be considered more conservative, having retained a distinction that we argue was previously more productive. The available data does not allow us to argue for a solid diachronic path. Rather, it shows that non-fact contexts have an alternation that is dependent on the variant concerned and, as outlined and exemplified in section (3), also on the individual speaker. It shows that the presence or absence of the augment is due to the morphosyntactic construction used; i.e. always present in the transitive negative with object marking, and never present in the negative associative copula construction. The negative of the associative copula constructions, used most notably for possessive predication, is the only context in which the augment is consistently absent in all Nguni varieties. In nouns after negative verbs, the augment is absent in most cases for all varieties apart from Southern Ndebele and possibly Durban Zulu. When there is an alternation, such as with contrastive focus, this is used in a limited way and/or not by all speakers. Also, the alternations in the interrogative and the future are individually determined and possibly, as they occur less with younger speakers, a sign of a previously more productive distinction.

4. Discussion and conclusion We propose that the augment in Nguni was earlier used to express referentiality whereas its absence indicated non-referentiality. The contexts in which the augment can be omitted in attested Nguni varieties are all non-fact contexts, and we propose that these are remnants of the earlier, more productive, distinction between referentiality and non-referentiality that the augment was able to express in these contexts. Fact contexts, on the other hand, do not normally induce non-referential readings, and the universal presence of the augment in these contexts is thus to be expected. In Nguni at least, the augment is not used to distinguish non- referential and referential nouns in fact contexts, and to a very limited extent in non-fact contexts. Our results suggest that a referentiality distinction may have been more relevant in the not so distant past. In light of this, it would be interesting to investigate current trends in other Bantu languages for which referentiality distinctions have been argued to exist such as Dzamba (Bokamba 1971). Also for Bemba, Givón (1973) argues that only referential nominals with the augment occur in fact environments, and that the augment distinguishes referential and non-referential nouns in non-fact environments. In Nguni, there appears to have at least existed (and still exist in some cases and for some speakers) such a distinction in

20 non-fact environments, as reported for e.g. conditionals in Xhosa (Carstens and Mletshe 2016) and indicated in Table 1. However, the results from our data for Xhosa and Southern Ndebele show that such a distinction can only marginally be made. What remains, is a much more restricted set of contexts in which the augment can be dropped in all Nguni languages. The most persistive context, in which the augment is absent in most Nguni languages, is under negation. The Nguni languages pattern with some other languages in different parts of the world, in which indefinite noun phrases under negation are marked as non-referential. In modern Nguni languages, we see that the connection with referentiality is being lost, in that almost all noun-phrases in the relevant contexts lack the augment, or, in the case of Southern Ndebele, include the augment. Another factor that plays a role for the presence vs. absence of the augment is contrastive focus, but this is a topic for further research. In other contexts, all noun phrases have the augment and its absence is only very marginally accepted. We propose that there is an ongoing grammatical change in the use of the augment in the Nguni languages and other Bantu languages, as also suggested by Carstens and Mletshe (2016: 780). A previous link between the absence of the augment and non-referentiality is eroding, and the augment is losing its earlier semantic function, leading to the micro-variation within the Nguni group that we have observed in this chapter. The current situation is presented in Table 1, based (partly) on analysis of our own recently collected data, compared with the situation reported on in the literature. As noted in our discussion in section 3, publications based on data collected a few decennia ago and/or based on the speech of mostly older people13 (von Staden 1973; Visser 2008) indicate a more extensive role for the (non-) use of the augment. Most speakers consulted by us could not reproduce these distinctions, and they were not found in analysis of natural speech either. Further support for this scenario are reports in the literature that the use of the augment differs between younger and older speakers, (Petzell and Kühl 2017; van de Velde 2017). As discussed in 3.3.1, Halpert (2012: 90) notes that for younger speakers of Durban Zulu, a negative verb is always followed by a nominal including its augment. Omission of the augment is not accepted, and it is considered informal and even rude. This is interesting as there are other studies that indicate a more stylistic and/or sociolinguistic explanation for at least some of the uses of the augment in Bantu languages. In the Tanzanian language Kagulu, it is noted that younger speakers use the augment to a lesser extent than older speakers (Petzell 2008: 67), while in closely related Luguru the augment appears to be reintroduced by younger speakers due to covert prestige (Petzell and Kühl 2017). We interpret this sociolinguistic variation as a consequence of the loss of functional/sematic load of the augment. Due to this loss, the augment can more freely be exploited for stylistic purposes. As the augment has lost its previous function of marking a referential noun, the speakers of the different Nguni varieties have either opted for maintaining the augment everywhere except in very specific contexts, as in Southern Ndebele, or for omitting the augment everywhere, as in Northern Ndebele. The system in Xhosa and Zulu is more variable and retains a referentiality distinction in some contexts and for some speakers. The Nguni languages are mostly mutually intelligible and sometimes considered as one unit in linguistic literature. Although similarities are pervasive, this chapter shows the relevance of using a micro-variation approach in order to obtain new insights in long-standing debates such as regarding the use and meaning of the augment.

13 The speakers consulted by Visser (2008), for example, were for the most part somewhat older (and of course well educated) colleagues at her department (p.c. Marianna Visser). 21

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