The thematic structure of event nominals in Xhosa

Abstract

The syntactic realization of the argument structure of deverbal event nominais in Xhosa and Venda are investigated and compared in this paper. The argument structure of deverbal event nominais in Xhosa and Venda is generally realized in genitive structures, hence the term thematic genitives is often used to refer to these constructions. It is demonstrated that Xhosa and Venda, representing different language groups within the African languages of South Africa, exhibit certain cross-language similarities and differences as regards the syntactic projection of the argument structure of event nominais. It is further demonstrated that the genitive NPs exhibit ambiguity in thematic interpretation and that the omissibility of the genitive morpheme -a- in thematic genitive constructions pose particular theoretical questions as regards Case assignments to such nouns.