Co-occurrence of valence increasing processes in Lutsotso
Keywords:
applicative, causative, instrumental, lutsotso, verbAbstract
Lutsotso has valence increasing operations like the applicative, causative and instrumental. It is possible to have argument changing processes co-occurring or combining on the verb. This paper discusses the effects of co-occurrences of several derivational affixes, the constraints that determine their order and their syntactic and semantic implication on the basic SVO sentence structure of Lutsotso. The mirror principle which states that ‘morphological derivations must directly reflect syntactic derivations and vice versa is applied. This principle shows that there is a certain order in which morphemes co-occur in a given derived verb. Data was collected through informal interviews, participant and non-participant observation, translation tests and texts written in Lutsotso. The study established that the Lutsotso verb consists of different morphemes expressing different grammatical meanings and that the derivational morphemes modify the syntactic and semantic structure of the sentence of Lutsotso. Further, the study also established that the valence increasing operations of the applicative, causative and instrumental affect the internal argument and can co-occur in a given derived verb. Additionally, this study will contribute to knowledge by revealing the richness and internal complexity of Lutsotso language. Correspondingly, a good description of the valence changing morphology of Lutsotso will provide useful insight into syntactic theory.
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