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Marten, Lutz (2010) 'The great siSwati locative shift.' In: Breitbarth, Anne, Lucas, Christopher, Watts, Sheila and Willis, David, (eds.), Continuity and Change in Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 249-267.

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Abstract

In siSwati the accumulation of a number of changes in the morphology and syntax of locative phrases has led to a more fundamental shift of restructuring of the underlying grammatical system 13 the great siSwati locative shift 13 so that locatives in siSwati are no longer, as in Proto-Bantu and most other present-day Bantu languages, part of the noun class system, but are prepositional. This shift explains aspects of changes in the siSwati locative system which are not otherwise independently motivated, including the degrammaticalization of a historic noun class marker into a preposition and distinct relative clause marking of locatives, and provides an example of a complex, systematic historical change of a sub-system of the grammar.

Item Type: Book Chapters
SOAS Departments & Centres: Legacy Departments > Faculty of Languages and Cultures > Department of Linguistics
ISBN: 9789027288073
Date Deposited: 09 Mar 2012 15:10
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/13225

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