|
|
 E-mail this message to a friend
|
|
Title:
|
Negation in Sesotho
|
|
Author:
|
Elias Malete
|
|
Email:
|
click here to access email
|
|
Degree Awarded:
|
University of Stellenbosch
, Deparment of African Languages
|
|
Degree Date:
|
2001
|
|
Linguistic Subfield(s):
|
Syntax
|
|
Subject Language(s):
|
Sotho, Southern
|
|
Director(s):
|
J. Du Plessis
|
|
|
Abstract:
|
|
This research project examines the syntax of negative sentence constructions in Sesotho and explores implications of the empirical data on negation within the framework of the Minimalist Program. According to Minimalist Program, language consists of a lexicon and computational system, where the operations Merge and Move genrates sets of structural descriptions. It is driven by the principle of Economy, which entails that movement should take place only when necessary for the purpose of Case checking.It is also concerned with the expansion of syntactic structures in terms of X-Bar theoretic properties, where functional categoriesmare given full categorial status.
This project further considered the morphology of negation in Sesotho,where Sesotho data is refined within the lexeme - morpheme based morphology. Bound grammatical morphemes such as the negative morphemes in Sesotho are defined in terms of morphological spelling operations.
Within these two theoretical frameworks,sentence constructions which realize negation by means of negative morphemes over a full range of tense, aspect and mood distinctios were examined,including sentence constructions that realize negation in subordinate clauses as well as those that entails issues of topic and focus, and scope of negation.
Constituent negation, with constituents such as NP subjects, NP objects and adjuncts are also investigated. Various ways of negating constituents in Sesotho were examined: Sesotho make use of cleft sentences, pseudo - cleft sentences, sentence construction with locative AGRS (ho) and sentence construction with subject inversion as well as sentences where constituents are negated within the VP.All these methods were considered with regard to non-copulative and copulative verbs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page Updated: 24-Nov-2009
Please report any bad links or misclassified data
LINGUIST Homepage | Read
LINGUIST | Contact us
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed
on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.
|
|
