Gikuyu Morphosyntax

Gikuyu is a Bantu language (< Niger-Congo) spoken by approx. 8 million people in central Kenya. Like other Bantu languages, Gikuyu is head-marking at the sentence level but dependent-marking at the level of the phrase (e.g. reference phrase, modifier phrase). Concerning the head-marking vs. dependent-marking division, the volume addresses major topics. First, it explores the exact conditions of head-marking in Gikuyu, addressing issues like argument linking as well as voice operations affecting argument realization. Second, it investigates the so-called associative construction. This is a dependent-marking strategy used for the expression of possessive relations, spatial locations, as well as adnominal modification. Although the use of the same morphosyntactic strategy for the expression of possession and adnominal modification is frequently attested among the world’s languages, this issue has not been addressed from an RRG perspective yet.

Although Gikuyu already received some attention within the RRG framework, the above-mentioned topics have not been in their main focus. Thus, the volume extends the previous analysis of Gikuyu and presents a coherent account on the language’s morphosyntax along the lines of head- and dependent-marking. The analysis builds on the latest theoretical developments within RRG and combines a detailed analysis of a single language within a broader cross-Bantu perspective.