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ABSTRACT
This article discusses the phonosyntactic behaviour of person-gender-number (PGN)Footnote
2 The following symbols and abbreviations are used in this paper: Ø = null, 1C = first person common, 1F = first person feminine, 1M = first person masculine, 1MASC+FEM. SG = first person singular masculine and feminine, 2C = second person common, 2F = second person feminine, 2M = second person masculine, 3C = third person common, 3F = third person feminine, 3M = third person masculine, 3Pl.C = third person plural common, 3SG = third person singular, 2FEM.SG = second person singular feminine, 3FEM.SG = third person singular feminine, 3MASC.SG = third person singular masculine, 3NEUT.SG = third person singular neuter, 3SGSCL = third person singular subject clitic, ADVZ = adverbialiser, CL = clitic, COP = copula, du = dual, EXCL = exclusive, f = feminine, FUT = future, Gen = gender, INCL = inclusive, JNCT = juncture morpheme, m = masculine, n = neuter, NEG = negative, NP = noun phrase, Num = number, Pers = person, PGN = person-gender-number, pl = plural, PostP = postposition, PRS = present, PST = past, REL = relativiser, rV = rə (past tense marker), sg = singular, V = underspecified vowel.
Letsholo and Saul (2015, 225) give credit to Hagman (1977) for the use of the abbreviation PGN to refer to person, gender and number marking morphemes in Khoesan languages.
markers in Naro, noting that first person singular masculine/feminine, third person singular masculine and third person singular feminineFootnote3 The discussion is restricted to PGN markers referring to first person singular masculine/ feminine, third person singular masculine and third person singular feminine. Reference is not made to PGN markers referring to second person, whether masculine or feminine, because unlike the PGN markers under consideration, those referring to second person do not have forms without a vocalic element that will necessitate their attachment to an adjacent leftward element to form a prosodic unit with that element.
PGN markers have full and reduced forms, and that full forms of PGN markers are used when the noun in sentence-initial position is the logical subject of the sentence while reduced forms are used when the noun or an element in sentence-initial position is not the logical subject of the sentence. Furthermore, the article notes that reduced forms of PGN markers cannot exist independently but attach as enclitics to a variety of morphosyntactic categories and form a prosodic unit with them, and that such behaviour is not consistent with the behaviour of genuine morphological affixes. On the basis of the phonosyntactic behaviour of reduced forms of PGN markers, the article concludes that these intriguing, prosodically-deficient, hermaphroditic elements are clitics in Naro.Notes
1 Naro is a Khoesan language spoken in southern Africa, in the Republics of Botswana and Namibia. Other Khoesan languages spoken in the southern African sub-continent include Nama, ||Gana, |Gwi, Tswaa, and !Xoo. The population of Naro speakers in Botswana is estimated at 10 000 (Lewis, Simons and Fennig 2014). In addition to the Republics of Botswana and Namibia, Khoesan languages are spoken in the Republic of South Africa. The variety of Naro described in this article is the one spoken in the Republic of Botswana. This is a revised version of a paper presented at the International Conference on African Languages and Literatures in the 21st Century, held at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya, from 6–8 August, 2014.
We are immensely thankful to Mr Isaac Saul, a graduate student of the University of Botswana and native speaker of Naro from D'Kar community, with whom we verified the data and who also provided supplementary data on Naro.
2 The following symbols and abbreviations are used in this paper: Ø = null, 1C = first person common, 1F = first person feminine, 1M = first person masculine, 1MASC+FEM. SG = first person singular masculine and feminine, 2C = second person common, 2F = second person feminine, 2M = second person masculine, 3C = third person common, 3F = third person feminine, 3M = third person masculine, 3Pl.C = third person plural common, 3SG = third person singular, 2FEM.SG = second person singular feminine, 3FEM.SG = third person singular feminine, 3MASC.SG = third person singular masculine, 3NEUT.SG = third person singular neuter, 3SGSCL = third person singular subject clitic, ADVZ = adverbialiser, CL = clitic, COP = copula, du = dual, EXCL = exclusive, f = feminine, FUT = future, Gen = gender, INCL = inclusive, JNCT = juncture morpheme, m = masculine, n = neuter, NEG = negative, NP = noun phrase, Num = number, Pers = person, PGN = person-gender-number, pl = plural, PostP = postposition, PRS = present, PST = past, REL = relativiser, rV = rə (past tense marker), sg = singular, V = underspecified vowel.
Letsholo and Saul (2015, 225) give credit to Hagman (1977) for the use of the abbreviation PGN to refer to person, gender and number marking morphemes in Khoesan languages.
3 The discussion is restricted to PGN markers referring to first person singular masculine/ feminine, third person singular masculine and third person singular feminine. Reference is not made to PGN markers referring to second person, whether masculine or feminine, because unlike the PGN markers under consideration, those referring to second person do not have forms without a vocalic element that will necessitate their attachment to an adjacent leftward element to form a prosodic unit with that element.