Interrogative words in Northern Sotho appearing in the subject or initial sentence position

Abstract

Until now it has generally been accepted that interrogative words in Northern Sotho such as mang ‘who’, eng ‘what’ and neng ‘when’ are restricted to the postverbal position and cannot occur (without the particle ke) in the initial sentence position, unlike their English or Afrikaans counterparts. Traditional linguists consequently formulated strict constraints on the syntax of such interrogative words in terms of old versus new information, definiteness versus indefiniteness, etc. and did not attempt to study those interrogatives which do occur preverbally satisfactorily. This view firstly created the impression that such words cannot occur preverbally and secondly that they automatically presume interrogativity. No attempt has been made to do an in-depth study of the syntax of these words nor to differentiate between different polysemic values conveyed by these words. It has also been exhaustively argued in existing publications that Northern Sotho is typologically being reinterpreted from an OV to a VO language on sentence, word group as well as on word level. Consequently any study of interrogatives in the sentence initial position (which is typical of dominant VO languages) should take typological change into consideration. The aim of this article is thus to analyse interrogatives which are used preverbally in terms of (i) typological change, (ii) syntax, and (iii) semantics.