• Subject Clitics: New Evidence from Old Nubian

    Author(s):
    Vincent van Gerven Oei (see profile)
    Date:
    2018
    Subject(s):
    Linguistics, Africa
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Old Nubian, Nobiin, African linguistics
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6JC18
    Abstract:
    This article treats a set of subject cross-referencing morphemes in the medieval Nilo-Saharan language Old Nubian, traditionally called “personal endings.” Based on an analysis of their syntactic distribution and morphology, I argue that this set can be best described as a set of subject clitics, originally deriving from phonologically reduced pronominals. This set of subject clitics interacts with both topic and focus makers in the clause. Finally, by inspecting the historical development of Old Nubian subject clitics into full-fledged agreement suffixes modern Nile Nubian languages Nobiin and Mattokki (Kenzi) I argue that a purely syntactical approach to this development is impracticable, but that any morpho-phonological approach should be able to account for the diachronic data.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    http://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.503
    Publisher:
    Ubiquity Press, Ltd.
    Pub. Date:
    2018-1-12
    Journal:
    Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
    Volume:
    3
    Issue:
    1
    ISSN:
    2397-1835
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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