Gibson, Hannah Cameron (2012) Auxiliary placement in Rangi: a dynamic syntax perspective. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/16637 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. Auxiliary placement in Rangi: A Dynamic Syntax perspective A dissertation submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Hannah Cameron Gibson 2012 Declaration I hereby certify that this thesis is the result of my own research and that none of the chapters included have been submitted to any other institution for the fulfillment of a degree. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated. Signed:____________________________ Date:__________________ 2 Abstract The Tanzanian Bantu language Rangi is unusual in that it exhibits a construction in which an infinitival verb form precedes an inflected auxiliary. This ordering of the infinitive with respect to the auxiliary is marked within the context of East African Bantu. It also contradicts Greenberg’s (1963) proposed linguistic universal that Subject Verb Object languages exhibit auxiliary-infinitive order. Whilst the infinitive precedes the auxiliary in main declarative clauses, auxiliary- infinitive order is found in negative, interrogative and cleft constructions, as well as in relative and subordinate clauses. This thesis examines infinitive-auxiliary order in Rangi, providing a detailed description of the structure and contexts in which the construction is used. Based on this, a formal analysis is developed from the perspective of Dynamic Syntax (Kempson et al. 2001; Cann et al. 2005b) – a framework which models the establishment of propositional structure by focusing on the dynamics of the parsing/production process in a time-linear manner. The infinitive-auxiliary order is captured by adopting an analysis in which infinitival verb forms are projected onto an unfixed predicate node. In contrast, auxiliaries project fixed minimal predicate-argument structure and introduce temporal information. The alternation auxiliary-infinitive order is subsequently analysed as resulting from the presence of an unfixed node. The analysis presented depends on the independent restriction operative in the Dynamic Syntax framework under which two unfixed nodes of the same modality cannot co-exist. This restriction is the result of the two nodes being defined identically in terms of tree logic. The presence of an unfixed node is taken as a trigger for the auxiliary-infinitive order, whilst the infinitive-auxiliary order is found in the absence of this trigger. A formal definition of the rule of PREDICATE ADJUNCTION is presented. The analysis provides further support for the availability of the building and re-building of the same structure within a semantic tree which is permissible in Dynamic Syntax. The thesis interrogates the extent to which similar syntactic contexts can be seen to motivate, and inform, distributional properties of similar (and distinct) elements in languages in unrelated language families. 3 Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award which made this research possible. I also acknowledge the Central Research Fund of the University of London and the Additional Award for Fieldwork granted by the School of Oriental and African Studies, both of which contributed towards the cost of field research I conducted in Tanzania. I am grateful for the support of the Conference Allowance for Research Students awarded by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, which contributed towards the cost of presenting the findings of my research at conferences. My thanks go to all of those who made this possible, either by helping with the thesis or by helping with me. Many thanks to Phil Jaggar for getting me into linguistics in the first place. To Kirsty Rowan and Monik Charette who held my interest. To Yuhki King and Maryam De Groef who held me together. To Peter Sells and Irina Nikolaeva whose comments and insights were invaluable throughout the MA and PhD process. To Martin Orwin – the reason I came to SOAS – for reminding me what it was all really about. To my fellow PhD-ers, who know what this is like. My heartfelt thanks to Lutz Marten without whom I would be somewhere else and only dreaming of doing this. Your enthusiasm and creativity are infectious, your attention to detail quite extraordinary and your moments of genius, just that. Thank you for your faith. In Dodoma, my thanks go to Margaret Beckett for giving me a roof over my head and electricity when I needed it. To Paulo Kijuu and Yovini Maingu for invaluable insights into their language. To Amelia Issaka for always assuming I would understand. To the Dodoma SIL team with whom I drank numerous cups of tea. In Kondoa, my thanks go to Mzee Gervais Vita and Mzee Michael Andrew, who know everyone. To Fransisca Dossa and Angela Aloisi Kitula who have sharp ears and even sharper tongues. To Beth Lewis for always having an open door. 4 In Haubi, I am indebted to Padre Sha Kijuu, Padre Sokoi and all the masista. I cannot thank you enough for putting me up and for putting up with me. To Marta, Maria, Esta and Mama Marselina – the hours spent talking in the dark and digging in the fields will not be easily forgotten. To Marselina, ever joyous, for songs with actions at times of uncertainty. To Mzee Leo who was patient and tireless when I asked him the same question over and over again. And then once again, just to check. To Mama Seba for showing me what it really means kunyuntera and for cooking pancakes, just when they were needed. Thanks to Vanessa Nyere who was my mulaangi in Preston – who would have thought?! Many thanks also go to Oliver Stegen whose research piqued my interest in the first place. Thank you for being so generous with your data and for steering me in the right direction. I’m sure we’ll meet in person one day! To Margret Dunham for sharing her Rangi corpus with me and for paving the way. To Vera Wilhelmsen for invaluable thoughts on Mbugwe. Numerous people have housed me and fed me and reminded me I was not in it alone over the last few years. My thanks go to my brother Serge Sagna, who I met on my first day at SOAS and who has been my rock ever since. To Naira Antoun for too many late nights, never enough time and friendship like this. To Faiza Bashe for unconditional. To Kamariyah Mbamba and Sami Said for being themselves. To the goats, you know how you are, and you know why. To Abubakar ‘Babu’ Musa, for raha! To the Doubts (the whole clan), who followed. To my brother Richard Bowen, who tuned in at just the right time. To Jenny Doubt, my home from home. To my mother Jill Gibson, who thought nothing of taking my eight-year-old self to Chinese School every Sunday. Some things never change. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my grandparents – Dorothy Gibson, who loved us all from the very start and John Cameron Gibson, who was with me every step of the way. 5 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................12 1.1 The Rangi language........................................................................................... 12 1.2 Previous studies ................................................................................................. 15 1.3 Auxiliary placement in Rangi............................................................................ 16 1.4 Objectives of the thesis...................................................................................... 18 1.5 Methodology and corpus ................................................................................... 19 1.6 Structure of the thesis ........................................................................................ 20 2 A grammatical sketch of Rangi...................................................................22 2.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 22 2.2 Phonology.......................................................................................................... 22 2.2.1 Consonants ................................................................................................. 22 2.2.2 Vowels........................................................................................................ 23 2.2.3 Tone............................................................................................................ 26 2.2.4 Syllable structure........................................................................................ 27 2.3 Nominal morphology........................................................................................