Thesis (M.A. (Translation studies and linguistics)) --University of Limpopo, 2009 / This mini-dissertation describess the phonological structure of Tshimanḓa dialect, comparing it with the standard Tshivenḓa. The study shows the historical background of Tshimanḓa dialect and also points out that Tshimanda is a dialect spoken by Vhalaudzi of Lwamondo, Gwamasenga, Tshimbupfe and Luonde in Limpopo Province, South Africa. The study has revealed two aspects which characterise Tshimanda dialect. Tshimanda dialect is characterized by the omission of two speech sounds, namely, ‘l’ and ‘w’. In some instances the omission of the speech sound ‘l’ in Tshimanda dialect gives a word a different meaning than the one in standard Tshivenda.

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The central issue in this thesis is configurationality, which has broadly been defined in terms of a division of the world's languages based on their core syntactic structure. Specifically, languages are traditionally divided into so-called configurational and non-configurational languages. Configurational languages are assumed to be languages with many restrictions on word order, and non-configurational languages are assumed to be languages with very few or no word order restrictions. Many linguists posit a strict division between the two different types of languages. In this thesis I propose a non-derivational approach to configurationality, and I discuss in detail three posited characteristics of non-configurational languages (in comparison to configurational languages): free word order, discontinuous expressions and subject-object asymmetries in binding. I propose a four-way classification of languages instead of a two-way one, based on constraints on annotations on phrase structure nodes, both for argument functions and for information structural roles (such as topic and focus). I propose that this four-way distinction is what underlies configurationality. I show that discontinuous expressions and potentially subject-object symmetries follow from the nature of languages that have traditionally been classified as non-configurational. For my analysis I employ Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), a non-derivational framework which is particularly well-suited to account for languages in which grammatical functions are not tied to specific phrase structural positions, due to its parallel architecture. This characteristic of LFG enables me to provide a straightforward classification of languages, by the ability to separate the influence of grammatical functions and information structural roles on word order and phrase structural configuration.