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Argument structure and the typology of causatives in Kinyarwanda : explaining the causative-instrumental syncretism

In the Bantu language Kinyarwanda, the morpheme –ish can be used to mark both causation and the instrumental applicative. This report pro- poses an explanation for this causative-instrumental syncretism, arguing that both causation and the introduction of an instrument are—at their core—two outgrowths of the same semantic notion. Fitting with other morphological causatives in Bantu, the causative use of –ish patterns as a lexical causative marker. The analysis presented here captures the lex- ical nature of the causative use of the morpheme by arguing that the new causal link is added sub-lexically, situating Kinyarwanda into a cross- linguistic typology of morphological causatives. / text

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/24090
Date22 April 2014
CreatorsJerro, Kyle Joseph
Source SetsUniversity of Texas
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Formatapplication/pdf

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