Magister Artium - MA / The purpose of this study is to investigate how subject PRO of the infinitive in Sesotho is assigned an antecedent The general framework which is assumed is the Government Binding theory of generative grammar, in particular one of its subtheories, namely the
Control theory which is concerned with the assignment of an antecedent to the subject PRO in the infinitive. A survey of the work done by various linguists on the Infinitive in Bantu languages shows that much has been written on the properties of the infinitive. In the Nguni languages, especially in Xhosa, considerable research has been done to establish the syntactic nature of the infinitive in the various constructions that it may occur. The Infinitive in Sesotho has, however, not been studied extensively. The central issue of this study relates to establishing the antecedent of the subject PRO of the infinitive in the various constructions in which it may appear. It is demonstrated that in
some instances it is possible for two different NP arguments in a sentence to serve as a possible antecedent of the empty category PRO.
This examination of control of the subject PRO in the infinitive in Sesotho has revealed the following: The subject PRO in the infinitive must have antecedent. In such cases the empty category PRO which is obligatory control is considered to behave like an anaphor, because as an empty of the clausal complement it must take its referential index from either the subject or object argument of the matrix sentence.
This implies that the empty category PRO has no capacity for independent reference. 2. The subject PRO in the infinitive may have an In such cases the empty category PRO which is subject to non-obligatory control is considered to behave like a pronoun, because the empty category PRO may either refer to individuals independently or co-refer to individuals already named on a given sentence. Finally the subject PRO in the infinitive can at times have no antecedent at all In such cases the empty category PRO is subject to arbitrary control, because its
antecedent may be implicit This has been established in the following instances: 3.1 There are cases where the infinitive is a complement of a Verb or a Copulative with the subject position occupied by an empty existential pronominal which is associated with the existential morpheme Ho. This pronominal is an empty category just like PRO, but is in a non-argument position, for it lacks a thetha-role. This is attributed to the fact that the existential pronominal associated with Ho, which signifies "it" or "there" is a dummy element and has therefore no semantic role. Therefore the antecedent of the subject PRO in the infinitive can be "anyone in general". The
interpretation thereof is known as arbitrary control. It has also been established that, the Nominal infinitive, which has in Sesotho, like
all other nominals, a class prefix which is morphologically marked with a prefix Ho, is subject to arbitrary control (see 3 above). This is attributed to the fact that its subject NP-argument has a non-referential expression which is thus ungoverned, because it has no agreement (-AGR) and can therefore not be assigned Case.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uwc/oai:etd.uwc.ac.za:11394/8202 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Motaung, Patric Serame |
| Contributors | du Plessis, J.A |
| Publisher | University of the Western Cape |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | University of the Western Cape |
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