Abstract
In a number of Bantu languages, object marking is correlated with a definite or specific interpretation of the agreeing object DP, and similar claims about the semantic effects of object marking have also been made for Zulu (Nguni; S42). This paper examines these claims by applying a range of diagnostic tests for (in)definiteness and (non-)specificity to sentences with object-marked objects in Zulu. The paper’s first finding is that agreeing objects in Zulu can violate the uniqueness requirement that holds for definite expressions, and can therefore appear in contexts in which definite DPs are not tolerated. The second finding is that object-marked objects in Zulu can take narrow scope in relation to intensional verbs and negation, in which case they are interpreted as (scopally) non-specific. Object marking in Zulu therefore cannot be regarded as a morphosyntactic device to mark definiteness or specificity. Rather, it is suggested that the interpretative effects of object marking follow from information structure: agreeing DPs in Zulu are obligatorily dislocated and hence appear outside the focus domain (the vP). Consequently, an agreeing object in Zulu is incompatible with semantic focus, which implies that it can (but crucially, does not have to) be interpreted as denoting a discourse-familiar referent.
Funding source: Vetenskapsrådet
Award Identifier / Grant number: Dnr. 2017-01811
Acknowledgments
The results reported here were presented at the workshop “Definiteness and Specificity in Languages with Bare Nouns: The Case of Bantu” (Bantu8 conference, University of Essex), at the 2021 conference of the Southern African Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Society (Stellenbosch University), and in an online seminar at the University of Rochester. I thank the audiences at these events and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, and my Zulu informants for providing the data presented here. Special thanks to Vicki Carstens for many stimulating discussions, and to Vicki, Loyiso Mletshe, and Veneeta Dayal for sharing their work on (in)definiteness with me prior to publication. All errors are mine. The research for this article was conducted as part of the research project “The Role of the Verb Phrase and Word Order in the Expression of Definiteness in Bantu Languages”, funded by the Swedish Research Council (Dnr. 2017-01811).
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