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- Title
Auxiliaries, grammaticalization, and word order in Mande.
- Authors
Kastenholz, Raimund
- Abstract
Languages of the Mande family are known fur their "split predicate syntax", involving auxiliary elements that are often called "'predicate markers" in literature. Word order in Mande (disregarding the auxiliaries at this point) is S 0 V, with adverbs and oblique case objects following tile verb. This structure has given rise w a number of questions concerning historical syntax, and the grammaticalization of the auxiliary elements in the light of evidence from Central Mande, the possibility of a verbal origin (vs. non-verbal sources) of these elements is discussed in the present article, l shall argue that auxiliaries for TAM categories central to the systems (imperfective, perfective) cannot convincingly be shown to be derived from verbs. Conversely, there is reasonable evidence for a non-verbal origin of the perfective markers in the Manding dialect continuum, and beyond, hi the view adopted here, the emergence of auxiliaries cannot be argued to have caused word order change in the early history of Mande.
- Subjects
GRAMMATICALIZATION; VERB phrases; SYNTAX (Grammar); LITERATURE; PHILOLOGY
- Publication
Journal of African Languages & Linguistics, 2003, Vol 24, Issue 1, p31
- ISSN
0167-6164
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/jall.2003.003