Pre-nominal DP modifiers and penultimate lengthening in Xitsonga

Abstract

Bantu languages generally have noun-initial DP word order but they typically allow for demonstratives, and in some languages also the quantifier meaning ‘each, every’, to precede the noun. Beyond this, Bantu languages generally allow changing the relative order of the post-nominal modifiers, which leads to subtle (focus-related) changes in meaning. Bantu languages generally do not allow for adjectives, numerals, and possessives to appear before the noun. However, Xitsonga allows such orders and these orders trigger lengthening effects. In this paper, we discuss DP word order alternations in Xitsonga and their effects on prosody in terms of penultimate lengthening. We show that there is a stable, statistically significant effect on length which can be demonstrated experimentally.

Keywords

• nominal modifiers
• penultimate lengthening
• xitsonga
• bantu
• syntax-prosody