Abstract: This paper investigates how the fusion between subject person markers and auxiliaries is related to the rise of subject cross-reference, based on a sample of 28 Mande languages (Niger-Congo, West Africa). Building my microtypology on two independent parameters, i.e. S/Aux fusion and subject cross-reference, I demonstrate that the distribution of language types reveals an implicational relationship between the two parameters in Mande: no S/Aux fusion implies no subject cross-reference, and subject cross-reference implies S/Aux fusion. This distribution suggests that S/Aux fusion may trigger the rise of subject cross-reference. To account for this, I argue that in constructions with strong S/Aux fusion and no subject cross-reference, non-fused predicative markers are replaced by fused person-predicative markers within the same syntactic slot, i.e. Aux. This process is driven by low textual frequency of non-fused predicative markers and strong phonetic erosion of predicative markers within person-predicative forms.

________________________________________

LANGUAGE CONTACT AND CHANGE IN EASTERN BOTSWANA: NEW INSIGHTS FROM THE PRONOMINAL SYSTEM OF AN UNDOCUMENTED KALAHARI KHOE LANGUAGE

Abstract: This study contributes to the documentation and description of the diversity of Kalahari Khoe languages in eastern Botswana. Kalahari Khoe languages have highly complex pronominal systems with extensive paradigms of portmanteau morphemes encoding person, gender, and number categories. This study focuses on Thabala Tchoe, an entirely undocumented Kalahari Khoe language. Features of the Thabala Tchoe pronominal system set it apart from descriptions of closely and more distantly related languages. In this paper, I offer a formal and functional analysis of these features, which include honorific and focus sensitive pronouns, and innovative forms which offer contemporary evidence for the historical development of the complex pronominal system. This analysis is explored against the background of historical contact patterns between different Kalahari Khoe speech communities and Tswana merafe, or 'clans', in region.

________________________________________

THE MORPHEMIC STRUCTURE OF THE NDONDE VERB

Abstract: The article is devoted to the initial description of the previously undescribed minority language Ndonde and is based on field data obtained by the authors from informants in the province of Mtwara in southeastern Tanzania. The morphemic structures of the Ndonde verb and the features of their affixal implementation on the aspectual-temporal-modal level are considered. The data collected using the structural method of describing a language new to Bantu studies will make it possible to contribute to the general problems of the extremely complex and multifaceted system of the Bantu verb.

________________________________________

THE NEUTRAL ASPECT IN EASTERN DAN

Abstract: The paper deals with a default aspectual construction in Eastern Dan (< Southern Mande < Mande < Niger-Congo). This construction may express different aspectual meanings, depending on the lexical semantics of a verb, on the presence or absence of a direct object or an adverbial, and on the pragmatic status of the argument: habitual, stative, counter-factual, progressive, imperfect, resultative or perfect, and completive meanings are all attested. At the same time, Eastern Dan has specialized verbal constructions for most of these aspectual meanings. In the paper, conditions for the realization of different aspectual meanings are discussed. A hypothesis on the origin of this construction is suggested.