Argument alternations are an empirical mainstay in studying the building blocks of verb meaning and how such meanings link to a verb’s grammatical properties. Event structures are widely adopted for exploring these questions, where a verb’s meaning is decomposed into an event template (defining grammatically coherent verb classes) and a root (filling in idiosyncratic verb-by-verb details). An alternation is analyzed as one root occurring in two templates, the latter supposedly predicting most of the properties of the alternation. Yet, idiosyncratic roots also have a significant effect in determining which alternations they occur in and the two variants’ interpretations. Beavers and Koontz-Garboden (2020) proposed that roots can also introduce the same templatic information as templates, in ways that explain such root-specific effects through compositional interactions of root and template meanings. We explore the explanatory power and limits of this ‘root semantic’ approach by expanding its empirical scope to an alternation similar to a dative alternation in Kinyarwanda (Bantu JD61; Rwanda), which are derived via the applicative morpheme -ir. The broad productivity of -ir in forming ditransitives, coupled with the significantly wider range of root-specific interpretative and grammatical effects, provides an ideal case study for the role of idiosyncratic verbal meaning in governing argument alternations. We show that a root semantic approach naturally captures the diversity of root-specific effects in Kinyarwanda, justifying it as part of a general theory of alternations. However, ingredients from work that has syntactified constraints on alternations or posited allosemic variation in templatic meaning are also needed, resulting in a multifactorate understanding of alternations with root semantics at its core.

Across languages, words with the meanings of adjectives in English (property concept lexemes; Thompson 1989) often have translational equivalents that are nominal or verbal instead (Dixon 1982). Regardless of category, all languages have ways of describing changes into property concept states, which generally bear some derivational relation to the word describing the state the change is into. This paper offers a study into the typology of property concept state/changeof-state derivation, showing that variation in the category of the state word correlates with differences in the nature of this derivation. In particular, we show on the basis of a statistical analysis of state/change-of-state derivation using data from the "Verbal Roots Across Languages" database that a lack of morphological marking from state to change of state (lability) is more likely when the simple state is verbal in category. We argue that this finding follows from the idea that only verbs can describe change-of-state events (even if not all verbs do), and implement this formally as the claim that only verbs can lexicalize relations between individuals and dynamic eventualities.

Unlike the gender-based systems of noun categorization in many European languages, numerous semantic categories contribute to Bantu noun class systems. Kinyarwanda, the focus of our study, has a rich inventory of noun class prefixes, but it is unknown to what degree the semantic and morphological systems underlying these noun classes influence how speakers mentally categorize nominals in their language. To investigate this, speakers of Kinyarwanda (n = 46) were recruited to take part in an online triadic comparison experiment. Across 144 trials, participants were asked to identify the item most different from a written list of three nouns. These lists were constructed based on morphological similarity (from noun classes 3, 5, 7, or 9), semantic overlap (from the domains of ‘mammals’ and ‘tools’), or both. Results show an overall preference for semantic grouping in the triads, although the strength of these preferences differed across individuals. This variation turned out to be systematic and predictable: speakers of Kinyarwanda who spoke Kiswahili as an additional language generally preferred categorizing on the basis of noun class, while those who did not speak Kiswahili as an additional language were more likely to base their decisions on the shared semantic domains of the nouns. These data suggest that noun categorization choices in Kinyarwanda can be influenced by knowledge of other linguistic systems, highlighting the impact that learning additional languages may have on first-language lexical knowledge.

This article explores the role of semantics in argument realization by providing a lexical semantic account of the contribution of applicative morphology in the Bantu language Kinyarwanda (Rwanda). I propose that applicativization is best analyzed through a constraint on the paradigmatic relationship between applied and non-applied variants of a verb. Specifically, I argue that the applied variant requires an increase in lexical entailments associated with an internal argument of the predicate, and verb classes have varying lexicalized strategies for how they satisfy this constraint. Building on earlier work on Bantu applicatives, I argue that the syntactic and semantic contributions of an applicative operate independently but with all outputs being subject to the constraint on applicativization that I propose. Taking these facts together, this predicts a typology of three possible outputs for applicativization: one in which the applicative adds a new argument and associated thematic role (the function that is most frequently discussed), one in which the applicative has the effect of giving license to an unrealized participant entailed by the meaning of the verb, and one in which the applicative does not increase valence but rather modifies the thematic role of an existing internal argument. I describe three verb classes in Kinyarwanda which exemplify these three predicted types of output of applicativization. This approach thus subsumes previous observations about the varied functions of applicative morphology under a single analysis as well as builds on earlier work on paradigmatic argument alternations (such as the oblique alternations) by extending such approaches to valency-changing morphology.

What are the basic building blocks of verb meanings, how are they composed into more complex meanings, and how does this explain the grammatical properties of verbs and their relationships to other words with related meanings? These questions are fundamental to the study of verb meaning, and some of the most fruitful attempts to answer them have come from event-structural theories, wherein verb meanings are assumed to be decomposed into an event template, which captures the verb’s broad temporal and causal contours, and an idiosyncratic root shared across templates, which describes specific actions and states for a given verb. An open question is what the division of labor is between the template and the root in a given verb’s event template, and whether their meanings are bifurcated: are broad eventive lexical entailments introduced only by the templates, never the idiosyncratic roots? Since event templates and not roots are the primary semantic correlates of a verb’s grammatical properties, bifurcation would make strong predictions about the correlation of a verb’s broad temporal and causal semantics and its syntax and morphology. We argue against this bifurcation by comparing translation equivalents of Levin’s (1993) nondeadjectival vs. deadjectival change-of-state verb roots in English (e.g. result vs. property concept roots) across languages. A broad-scale typological study reveals that property concept roots tend to have unmarked stative forms and marked verbal forms, while result roots have the opposite pattern. Semantic studies of several languages confirm that terms built on result roots always entail change, while terms based on property concept roots do not. This supports a theory wherein result roots entail change independent of the template, contra bifurcation. This supports a more complex, albeit still principled, theory of possible event-structural meaning and its grammatical correlates, one that takes subclasses of roots into account, while showing the value of this type of crosslinguistic methodology for testing the predictions of event-structural approaches

Previous work has investigated various syntactic and semantic properties of locative PPs, but a lesser-studied set of facts is so-called ‘locative orientation’—the variable locating of participants in the location described by the locative. In Kinyarwanda (Bantu; Rwanda), the presence/absence of the applicative morpheme – ir corresponds to an alternation in orientation: with the non-applied variant, the locative only necessarily describes the object’s location; with the applied variant, all participants must be at the location described by the locative. I argue that Kinyarwanda locatives are neither prepositions (but rather noun class prefixes) nor adjuncts, and therefore cannot be analyzed as intersectional (adjunct) modifiers. On the view that locatives are (internal) arguments, I instead propose that locative applicatives in Kinyarwanda mark a paradigmatic relationship between applied and non-applied variants in which there is an increase in the number of entailments associated with an internal argument.

This paper investigates the syntax–semantics interface within the domain of the realization of applied objects in Bantu languages, and I argue that the syntactic structure and semantic contribution of a given argument-licensing functional head (here, the applicative) do not covary. Specifically, I show that in principle, both high and low applicatives can (and should) be available with any type of applicative and not tied to a specific semantics (such as transfer of possession) or thematic role, as proposed in earlier work. Furthermore, I reject the centrality of thematic roles as a component of grammar that determines the grammatical function of applied objects, and I propose instead a typology of Bantu applied objects based on their semantic and morphological properties. This approach makes several predictions about applied objects: (i) syntactic and semantic diagnostics for high and low applicatives need not pattern together, (ii) syntactic asymmetry (such as c-command) can arise for applied objects which pattern symmetrically with other diagnostics (such as passivization), and (iii) the type of an applied object does not universally capture symmetry properties cross-linguistically. The view put forward in this paper provides a framework that can better capture this type of variation with object symmetry in Bantu languages as well as language-internal facts about applied objects; more generally, this paper sheds light on the nature of the syntax–semantic interface by showing that the meaning of a functional head is not necessarily determined by its syntactic position.

This paper addresses the question of linguistic complexity in Swahili, a Bantu language spoken in East and Central Africa. Literature on linguistic complexity in other languages has argued that high levels of second-language learning affect linguistic complexity over time. Swahili serves as an ideal case study for this question because it has been used as a lingua franca for several centuries. I compare the phonological and morphological systems in Swahili to five other related Bantu languages, as well as compare all six languages to the original Proto-Bantu systems. The results of the study show that there is no decrease in phonological or morphological complexity in (standard) Swahili when compared to other closely related Bantu languages, though the grammar has strongly diverged from the other related languages.

This article investigates the derivational relationships among members of verbal paradigms in Kinyarwanda (Bantu JD61; Rwanda) by pursuing two interrelated goals. First, I describe a variety of derivational strategies for marking transitive and intransitive variants in change-of-state verb paradigms. Second, I focus on the detransitivising morpheme -ik which serves as one possible marking for intransitive members of these paradigms. Ultimately, I argue that this morpheme is a marker of middle voice, and the variety of readings which appear with this form can be subsumed under a single operation of argument suppression. Finally, I provide a discussion of reflexives and the apparent lack of a reflexive reading with -ik by arguing that this reading is blocked by either lexical reflexives or the reflexive prefix i-.

Research into object symmetry compares the grammatical function of two objects in a ditransitive predicate. Of particular interest are derived ditransitives where a valency-changing morpheme increases the valency of a transitive verb. The central question is whether an object licensed by the base verb and an object licensed by, say, an applicative morpheme have the same grammatical function. Several aspects of grammar have been proposed to account for object (a)symmetries: for example, syntactic differences, especially the height of argumentlicensing heads (Baker 1988, Ngonyani 1996, McGinnis 2001, Harley 2002, McGinnis and Gerdts 2003, Jeong 2007); differences in thematic role (Bresnan and Moshi 1990, Alsina and Mchombo 1993); and the animacy and person features of the two objects (Morolong and Hyman 1972, Aranovich 2009, Baker, Safir, and Sikuku 2012). In this squib, I make the novel claim that verb meaning is an additional component in determining symmetry.1 I present a case study from Lubukusu (Bantu; Kenya) where the general pattern with morphological causatives is asymmetry, but caused ingestive verbs are symmetrical.I sketch a brief analysis of these facts by building on the observation that ingestive verbs in many languages behave distinctly under causativization (Masica 1976, Amberber 2002, Næss 2007, 2009, Krejci 2012). I propose that the symmetry of caused ingestives in Lubukusu follows from a principled difference in the lexical semantics of these verbs; adopting an approach from Krejci (2012), I analyze ingestive verbs as inherent reflexive events wherein an agent causes him- or herself to digest something. With caused ingestives, there is a delinking of the reflexive relationship between the causer and the ingester, and thus caused ingestives already have a causal relationship in their event structure. This contrasts with other verbs for which causativization adds a wholesale new causal subevent. It is this difference in the lexical semantic nature of the verb that provides a starting point for explaining the divergent behavior of caused ingestive verbs with respect to object symmetry.Lubukusu is a Bantu language spoken in western Kenya (Mutonyi 2000, Wasike 2007, Sikuku 2011). Causatives in Lubukusu are marked by the morpheme -esy (or the allomorph -isy, determined by vowel harmony), and with many verbs the objects are asymmetrical. For example, with the verb khu-pa 'to hit' in (1), the causee object can be the subject of the passive in (2a), but the verbal object cannot in (2b).2The data in (2) parallel the symmetry facts for several other elicited verbs, such as khu-khala 'to cut', khu-funa 'to break', and khu-ombakha 'to build'. Here, I focus on passivization as a diagnostic, though various other diagnostics are cited in the literature, such as object marking, relativization, and word order (Baker 1988, Rugemalira 1991, Alsina and Mchombo 1993, Marantz 1993, Schadeberg 1995, Ngonyani 1996, 1998, Moshi 1998, Thwhala 2006, Zeller and Ngoboka 2006, Marten, Kula, and Thwhala 2007, Reidel 2009, Jerro 2015, 2016b).With the ingestive verbs khu-nywa 'to drink' and khu-lia 'to eat', on the other hand, both objects can appear as the subject of the passive, as shown in (4) for the former verb and in (6) for the latter.3The difference in symmetry between ingestive verbs and other transitive verbs is evidence that verb meaning plays a role in the argument realization facts of object symmetry—a fact not previously noted in the literature. The question that arises, then, is why this particular class of verbs behaves differently with respect to object symmetry. In what follows, I outline a preliminary account based around the lexical semantics of ingestive verbs, which in many languages behave differently with respect to causativization.4A number of unrelated languages treat ingestive verbs distinctly from other syntactically transitive verbs, such as Malayalam (Mohanan 1983:105–106), Berber (Guerssel 1986:36ff.), Tariana (Aikhenvald 2000), Jarawara (Dixon 2000), Cora (Vázquez Soto 2002), and Hindi (Masica 1976:46) (see also Nedjalkov and Silnitsky 1973, Shibatani 2002, and Shibatani and Pardeshi 2002). Consider an example from Amharic (Semitic; Ethiopia), which has two distinct causative morphemes: a- and as- (Amberber 2000, 2002). The causative a- is reserved for intransitives, as shown in (7), where the prefix cannot appear with the transitive verb k'wərrət'ə 'cut'.The prefix as-, on the other hand, appears with both transitives and intransitives.Given that the verb bəlla 'eat' is syntactically transitive, it is not expected to appear with the prefix a-, but in fact it can.This pattern is found with other predicates describing both literal and figurative ingestion, such as lasə 'lick', t'əba 'suck', k'əmməsə 'taste', lək'k'əmə 'pick up', twərrəsə 'take a mouthful', and gat'ə 'graze' (Amberber 2002:3). In sum, ingestive verbs pattern distinctly from other transitive verbs despite their syntactic transitivity.To capture the divergent syntax of ingestive verbs, Krejci (2012) makes the case that ingestive verbs are semantically reflexive, drawing on both crosslinguistic and lexical semantic evidence. First, ingestive verbs in some languages, such as the Bolivian language Movima (Haude 2006), pattern with inherent reflexives in appearing with middle morphology. Further, Krejci shows that while the default in many languages is for inherent reflexive verbs (e.g., to wash) to be derived from causatives via reflexivization (such as Spanish lavarse 'to wash' (intr.) from lavar 'to wash' (tr.)), in other languages inherent reflexives are the base form that causatives are derived from (such as the Hindi causative uṭh-aa 'to raise' from the intransitive uṭh 'to rise'; Masica 1976:319). For these latter languages, causative morphology does not add a new periphrastic causative subevent to the verb; rather, it delinks the reflexive nature of the base verb. Krejci shows that crosslinguistically, ingestives often pattern with inherent reflexives in the directionality of marking with respect to causatives. Finally, Krejci looks at lexical entailments of ingestive verbs in English and Marathi and concludes that there is a bieventive, reflexive meaning in the event structure of ingestive verbs (see also Jackendoff 1990:53–55, 253, Amberber 2002). In other words, the single subject of eat is associated with various lexical entailments (e.g., the manipulation of food and the chewing of the food) that are split across two arguments in the predicate feed.I extend Krejci's (2012) analysis of ingestive verbs to Lubukusu, as a starting point for understanding their distinct pattern with respect to object symmetry. Specifically, caused ingestives retain the ditransitive event structure of their corresponding noncausative verbs; these are distinct from the causatives of most verbs, where the causal morpheme is a productive operator that adds a new causal subevent to the event structure of the verb. I outline this account using a typed lambda calculus in which hierarchical relationships of the verb's meaning are defined via lexical entailments of the verb (adopting the formal approach in Jerro 2017). I assume a domain of discourse U that consists of two major sorts: the subsets UI of individuals and UE of eventualities. Variables in the set UI are x, y, and z. The variables v, s, and e represent events.5 The event variable e represents a complex event that is the summation of all subevents of the predicate, and each subevent is causally linked to the other subevents in e. Finally, subevents within e are causally ordered with respect to one another as specified by the lexical entailments of the verb. These constraints are indicated by the relations init′ and fin′, which state that a particular named event must be initial or final in the event e, respectively. Consider the denotation of khu-lia 'to eat' in (10), adapted from Krejci 2012:42, (37a).6In (10), there are two subevents: a causing event v of manipulating food and a caused change of state s of prospective digestion. Crucially, the agent of the causing event (the manipulator of the food) and the agent of the change of state (the ingester) are the same individual— hence the reflexive nature of these verbs.7 The change of state s must be final in the causal chain, as specified by fin′(s, e). Consider the Lubukusu sentence in (11a) and its semantics in (11b).This sentence means that Wafula acted to manipulate food and, as a result of this action, he (potentially) digests the rice.The analysis of khu-lia 'to eat' as a bieventive, causative verb predicts that it should be possible to separate the causing event from the result state (unlike in the case of a noncausative, monoeventive verb such as khu-chekha 'to laugh', where such a division is not possible). A classic diagnostic for this is ambiguity under modification by 'again' and its crosslinguistic counterparts (Morgan 1969, McCawley 1973: 342–343, Dowty 1979:250ff., Beck and Johnson 2004:106ff., Krejci 2012:61–71). A bieventive predicate should be ambiguous between two possible readings: a restitutive reading where 'again' has scope over just the result and a repetitive reading where 'again' has scope over the entire event.8The sentence in (12) has both readings. On the repetitive reading, lundi 'again' takes scope over the entire event (i.e., Wekesa performing the entire eating event again). Crucially, (12) also has the restitutive reading: Wekesa did not eat the rice the first time (e.g., Wekesa's friend Wafula ate the rice, and then the rice regenerated to its original state), and then Wekesa ate it a second time. The ambiguity in scope over the subevents supports the analysis of khu-lia 'to eat' as having a bieventive, causal structure. By means of comparison, consider the monoeventive verb khu-chekha 'to laugh' in (13).This sentence has only the repetitive reading: Wekesa laughed before and then laughed again.Causation can be diagnosed with modifiers meaning 'by oneself'— crucially, on the reading that the event occurred without external help (Siewierska 1984:78–79, Chierchia 2004:42–44, Koontz-Garboden 2009:106–110, Krejci 2012:87–90, Beavers and Zubair 2013: 15–16).9 The ability of omwene 'by oneself ' to appear with khu-lia 'to eat' in (14) is further evidence of a bieventive analysis of the verb khu-lia 'to eat'.The infelicity of omwene 'by oneself ' with the monoeventive verb khu-chekha 'to laugh' in (15) is evidence that the modifier indeed probes causation. From these diagnostics, I conclude that ingestive verbs in Lubukusu have a bieventive, causative semantics, as described by the denotation of khu-lia 'to eat' in (10).Returning to caused ingestives, let us consider the causative khul- isy-a 'to feed'. Following Krejci's (2012) analysis of antireflexivization, there are crucially no subevents added to the event; instead, the causer and the ingester (which are the same individual for khu-lia 'to eat') are two distinct individuals in the causative in (16).10The event structure in (16) is the same as the one in (10), the crucial difference being that the agent of the event of manipulating food is not the same as the participant that prospectively digests it. Consider the reading of khu-l-isy-a 'to feed' in (17).In (17), the reading is that Wafula is feeding the rice to the child—for example, by taking the rice and putting it directly into the child's mouth. Crucially, the agent of the manipulation of the food and the prospective digester are distinct. Note that the reading is not that of a periphrastic causative, that is, where someone caused the child to eat rice. Thus, the event structure of khu-l-isy-a 'to feed' has no additional causal subevent, as compared to the event structure of the base verb, and the nature of causation is the same as for the noncaused variant khu-lia 'to eat'.Turning to transitives like khu-funa 'to break', I assume a periphrastic causation analysis for these verbs where the causative adds a new causer subject (via an additional causal subevent) to the clause. Consider the meaning of the causative morpheme in (18), developed from an analysis of the cognate morpheme -ish in Kinyarwanda (Jerro 2017).11Here, the causative morpheme licenses a new causative subevent that precedes the subevents described by the verb. I assume the denotation in (19) for the verb khu-funa 'to break', where there is an agent x that is linked to the causing event v, which causes the result s of the object y being broken.Composing the meaning of the verb khu-funa 'to break' and that of -esy gives (20).The denotation in (20) corresponds to a sentence like that in (21).Here, there is a causing event e′ in e that precedes the subevents described by the verb khu-funa 'to break', as is typical of periphrastic causatives. Thus, khu-l-isy-a 'to feed' and khu-fun-isy-a 'to cause to break' differ in the nature of causation: with the former, there is no additional causal subevent, and the ditransitive event structure is not derived; with the latter, however, a new causal subevent (and associated causer argument) is added to the event structure, deriving a ditransitive event structure. I propose that it is this difference in how the causative verbs arise that corresponds to the two classes' distinct symmetry properties.Because caused ingestive verbs have a nonderived ditransitive event structure, it is expected that other semantically ditransitive verbs should pattern similarly with respect to symmetry. This is borne out with the verb khu-wa 'to give', which—parallel to caused ingestives— is symmetrical under passivization.12The symmetrical behavior of khu-wa 'to give' fits with the analysis of caused ingestives as ditransitive verbs, as these verbs pattern the same as a lexically ditransitive verb in the language.13In this squib, I have presented evidence that in Lubukusu, causation with ingestive verbs is an operation of antireflexivization, which is distinct from the general causative operation in the language that adds a wholesale new causal subevent. I have proposed that this distinction in the semantics of causation provides a starting point for analyzing the difference with respect to object symmetry. More broadly, I have shown that object symmetry can vary according to verb class, an empirical fact that has not been considered in previous work on object symmetry. Furthermore, verb meaning has been shown to determine the thematic role and syntactic function of other valence-increasing morphemes such as locative applicatives in Kinyarwanda (Jerro 2016a) and to influence whether a full object or an object prefix will appear, as in the Bantu languages Kinyakyusa (Lusekelo 2012) and Kiluguru (Marten and Ramadhani 2001). Thus, the influence of verb meaning on argument realization is an important factor to consider in future work on valency-changing morphology.Many questions remain—in particular, what determines the sizable variation in object (a)symmetries across languages. However, what both this squib and other studies are bringing to light is that a comprehensive theory of object symmetry requires a mixture of several interrelated factors in addition to syntax, such as the noun cast of the objects (Morolong and Hyman 1972, Aranovich 2009, Baker, Safir, and Sikuku 2012), the thematic role of the applied object (Baker 1988, Bresnan and Moshi 1990, Alsina and Mchombo 1993, Ngonyani 1996, McGinnis 2001, McGinnis and Gerdts 2003, Jeong 2007), and—as I argue here—the meaning of the base verb. The interrelation of these different aspects of grammar opens up a rich domain of inquiry for future work.I am grateful to John Beavers, Bonnie Krejci, Justine Sikuku, Mike Diercks, Moses Egesa, and Michael Marlo for their input and support in the writing of this squib and collecting the data within. I am deeply indebted to Benson Sindani, Krispinas Wafula, Tetas Wekesa, Rogers Wanjala, Benson Masai, Matthews Wekesa, Wekesa Wafula, Joseph Barasa, Sikuku Barasa, Obadiah Wafula, Antony Makokha, Christine Watoka, and especially Hesborn Sumba Wandabwa for judgments of the Lubukusu data provided here. Thanks especially to the Sifuna family and Hellen and Justine Sikuku for their hospitality in Kenya. Nasimile. This research was funded in part by NSF grant 1451566. All errors are, of course, my own.

I investigate the paradigms of change of state verb roots in Kinyarwanda, comparing the simple state, inchoative, causative, and result state members of 81 root paradigms. I show that the morphological shape of the causative/inchoative members of the paradigm and whether there is a simple state term are both contingent upon root semantics. Certain change of state roots in Kinyarwanda lack simple state meanings and always give rise to change entailments; this correlates with the lack of the simple state in the paradigm. I further show that verb meaning also partially determines which of several derivational strategies are used by a given change of state paradigm.

Event structural theories decompose verb meanings into an event template and idiosyncratic root. Many mainstream theories assume a bifurcation in the kinds of entailments contributed by roots and templates, in particular that lexical entailments of change of an individual in change-of-state verbs are only introduced by templates, not roots. We argue against such theories by comparing Levin's(1993) non-deadjectival vs. deadjectival change-of-state verb roots (e.g. crack vs. red roots). A broad-scale typological study reveals that red-type roots tend to have simple (e.g. non-deverbal) stative forms, but crack-type roots do not. Semantic studies of Kakataibo and English show that terms built on crack-type roots always entail change, while terms based on red-type roots may not. We thus suggest that crack-type roots entail change-of-state, contra Bifurcation.

Causative and applicative morphemes have been central in work on the morphosyntax of argument structure. However, several genetically unrelated languages use a single, syncretic form for both functions, which complicates the traditional view that a causative adds a new subject and an applicative adds a new object. In this paper, I propose an analysis of a morphological syncretism found in the Bantu language Kinyarwanda where the morphological causative and instrumental applicative are both realized by the morpheme –ish. I argue for Kinyarwanda that both causation and the introduction of an instrument are analyzable as two outgrowths of the same semantic notion of introducing a new link into the causal chain described by the verb. The different causative and instrumental readings derive from underspecification of the position of the new link in the causal chain, although its placement is restricted via general constraints on possible event types as well as constraints on verb meaning and argument realization. This analysis provides an explanation for the presence of the causative–instrumental syncretism as well as provides insight into the interface between verb meaning and valency-changing morphology.

Person agreement is usually restricted to verbal categories.However, Bantu languages permit person agreement on certain adnominal quantifiers.We propose an account of the evolution of person agreement that constrains the cliticization of pronominals to specifier-head relationships.This diachronic view captures the presence of person agreement in Bantu on adnominal quantifiers as well as verbs.

Work on copula systems has been a rich field of inquiry in syntax and semantics, with a particular interest in languages with multi-copula systems. In such languages, different forms are used for specific syntactically and/or semantically distinct copula constructions. To date, however, there is no discussion of the copula system in Kinyarwanda, a Bantu language spoken in Rwanda. In this paper, I provide a description of the distribution of the two copulas in Kinyarwanda, showing that their use does not fit previous typologies of copula constructions. I argue that the choice of copula hinges on both the predication of a location as well as the semantics of central coincidence, which is tied to the neutralization of the contrast of the two copulas in the firstand second-person.