On determining the primary object in Bantu

Abstract

Studies on Bantu have encountered problems in applying the traditional notions of direct and indirect objects to Bantu structures. This is because a typical Bantu sentence has a potential sequence of up to three nouns in post-verbal position and in the absence of morphological case or clearly definable prepositions, these structures suggest double or triple accusative. Further, recent linguistic research has shown that grammatical relations do not exist in every language as given by a general theory, but that in order to say that a given grammatical relation exists in a given language, the claim must be justified both language internally and cross-linguistically (Comrie, 1981:66). Using data drawn from Kikamba (a Bantu language spoken in Kenya), this paper discusses the properties of the primary object in Bantu and examines the operation of the parameters which determine the choice of the primary object in structures with more than one possible object.