Things and places: The case of the Zulu locatives

Abstract

This paper addresses some semantic and syntactic aspects of Zulu locatives. Practically every noun (and pronoun) in Zulu can be locativised. The semantic effect of locativisation is to convert a thing-concept into a place-concept. In many Bantu languages, locatives are fully-fledged nominals; as such, they can function as subjects and direct objects, and control the full range of concordial agreements. Zulu locatives, however, fail to behave like regular nominals. At the same time, the locatives cannot be assimilated to any of the other syntactic categories that are standardly recognised, such as prepositional or adverbial phrases. In view of the fact that the locatives designate places, it is proposed that the locatives should be recognised as a distinct syntactic-semantic category of place-referring expressions.

Keywords:

• Applicatives
• concord
• locatives
• place-expressions
• prepositions
• subcategorisation
• syntactic categories