Structural Properties of Rutooro Ditransitive Constructions: a lexical functional analysis
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Date
2021
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Linguistica Atlantica
Abstract
Ditransitive verbs in Rutooro (JE12, Uganda) are mainly realized multimorphemically in the
double object constructions (DOC), while there are a few cases of prepositional phrase
constructions (PPC). Couched within the Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) formalism, the
current study shows that despite the existence of both the DOC and the PPC in Rutooro, it seems
implausible to posit that the derivation process of the verb in the DOC involves the permutation of
grammatical functions by rearranging semantic participants of the base verb to different
grammatical relations, as Ndoleriire & Oriikiriza (1996) suggest in consonance with Kroeger's
(2004) applicative rule. Rather, this study reverts to Alsina & Mchombo's (1993) applicative rule,
and augments it so as to accommodate both the DOC and PPC, whereby all multimorphemic
ditransitive verbs in Rutooro are derived from monotransitive verbs which have the potential of
introducing a third argument (Harford 1993) by means of a verb extension mechanism or provided
that such verbs can be used with appropriate prepositional phrases. Since the Rutooro goal PPC is
constrained by the 'locomotional criterion' (Isingoma 2012), there are very few occurrences of goal
PPCs in Rutooro, which moreover are ambiguous. While structural ambiguity is usually resolved
in LFG by providing a different constituent structure for each meaning, the ambiguity of the
Rutooro PPC cannot be resolved at this level, since one interpretation contains a non-overt NP that
would appear here as an empty category in contravention of LFG axioms. Thus, a functional
structure that treats the non-overt NP as 'higher structure' (cf. Attia 2008) is posited in one of the
interpretations.
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Keywords
Derivation, Ditransitive, Monotransitive, Ambiguity, Non-overt NP
Citation
Isingoma, B. (2021). Structural Properties of Rutooro Ditransitive Constructions: a lexical functional analysis. Linguistica Atlantica, 39(1).