Joash Gambarage will give a research seminar. This talk will happen online. Please fill out the RSVP form for Zoom information.
Title: Selection and Projection of Tense and Aspect in Bantu: data from Swahili and Nata
Abstract: This talk provides a syntactic analysis of Tense and Aspect of two Eastern Bantu languages, Swahili and Nata. Traditionally, Tense and Aspect are presented as inflectional prefixes corresponding to the head INFL (see Krifka 1995; Keach 1995). I propose that in both languages, Tense and Aspect are functional heads, with T selecting V in affirmative clauses (cf. Ngonyani 1996, Deen 2001). Despite this parallel, the two languages differ in the realization of Aspect. In Swahili, Aspect is realized preverbally, while in Nata it is always realized post-verbally. I propose a unified syntactic account by invoking head movement in Nata. I extend this analysis to ‘compound verbal structures’ and show that the common notion of ‘compound tense’ in Bantu is a misnomer.
