article · Studies in African Linguistics
Object marker doubling, where an object marker co-occurs with a lexical object noun phrase, is typically infelicitous in neutral pragmatic contexts within various Bantu languages. However, specific contextual settings permit this structure, leading to distinct emphatic interpretations that contrast sharply with standard, non-doubled constructions. Focusing primarily on Lubukusu spoken in Kenya and Cinyungwe spoken in Mozambique, alongside initial observations from Tiriki, Wanga, and Ikalanga, the investigation identifies four main categories of emphatic readings: verum focus, mirativity, exhaustivity, and intensity. These emphatic effects appear widespread across the Bantu language family. To examine these structures systematically, strategies for identification and syntactic analysis are outlined. Additionally, these emphatic interpretations can be analysed as conventional implicatures, drawing parallels with similar emphatic meanings generated by focus fronting in Indo-European languages.
Understanding how Bantu languages convey emphasis, surprise, or certainty expands knowledge of human communication and linguistic diversity. By mapping how grammatical markers express pragmatic nuances such as mirativity and exhaustivity, this research enriches global linguistic theory, demonstrating subtle grammatical mechanisms that function differently from those typically found in widely studied Indo-European tongues.
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This paper investigates emphatic interpretations of object marking in various Bantu languages. We focus on Lubukusu (spoken in Kenya) and Cinyungwe (spoken in Mozambique) in particular, but we also report initial evidence from other Bantu languages (mainly Tiriki, Wanga, and Ikalanga). In these languages, OM-doubling—the co-occurrence of an object marker with a lexical DP object—is infelicitous in neutral pragmatic contexts. However, we show that certain contexts make OM-doubling possible. In these contexts, OM-doubling constructions receive particular emphatic interpretations that are very different from interpretations of non-doubling object marking constructions. We identify at least four types of these interpretations: verum, mirativity, exhaustivity, and intensity. We show that emphatic interpretations of OM-doubling are widespread among Bantu languages, and we provide strategies for identifying and analyzing them. While this paper is primarily descriptive, we discuss a possible analysis of these interpretations as conventional implicatures, influenced by recent work on a similar range of emphatic interpretations arising from focus fronting in Indo-European languages.
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DOI: 10.32473/sal.52.supplement.14.129936
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