The Syntax Of Dholuo Anaphors And Case Assignment

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue IV, April 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

The Syntax Of Dholuo Anaphors And Case Assignment

Janet A. Onyango ¹, Henry S. Nandelenga², Emily A. Ogutu^3
1,³Department of Linguistics, Literature & Foreign Languages,
Kenyatta University, Kenya.
²Department of English, Literature & Journalism,
Kibabii University, Kenya.

Abstract- Anaphors which include the reflexive and reciprocal manifest differently in languages all over the world. As referent items, they occur as morphological, syntactic or lexical. In this paper, a different focus is taken by assignment of the case to determine the grammaticality of sentences that contain anaphors. Data was drawn from native speaker intuition and secondary data from scholars. The data was subjected to validation by being verified by six adult native speakers. Different types of anaphors collected were analyzed using descriptive and qualitative research designs. Case Theory, a module of Government and Binding Theory was used as the tool for analysis. The analyses report that Dholuo language exhibit both lexical and non-lexical words as anaphors which occupy object position. The non-lexical anaphor –r ‘self’ or ‘each other’, does not occur in isolation; it is attached to the verb and followed by a personal pronoun. It is also established that Dholuo anaphor is assigned morphological accusative case by the verb, the antecedent is assigned abstract nominative case by INFL(ection); while the preposition assigns oblique case to its object to satisfy the case filter principle. However, Exceptional Case marking (ECM) occurred where the anaphor in an infinitival IP was exceptionally assigned accusative case by the verb from the matrix. But, where the Complementizer Phrase (CP) and Prepositional Phrase (PP) occurred, ECM does not apply since they are barriers to government. Conversely, Case Theory could not account for assignment of case to an extra anaphor in the sentence like wuon ‘self’ in Dholuo that occurred with the anaphor –r ‘self’ ‘each other. Therefore, there is need for a linguistic theory that captures the assignment of case to two anaphors that occur in constructions.

Keywords-anaphors, antecedent, case, case filter, grammaticality

I.INTRODUCTION

Anaphors are elements that refer back to other elements in a construction, and they need to be close to the elements they refer to [11], [21]. They function referentially only when they interact with the antecedent in the same sentence. According to [16], anaphors are exhibited differently in many languages in the world. They can occur as morphological (non-lexical), syntactic or lexical items. The anaphor and the antecedent, an element that occurs before the anaphor in the same minimal inflectional phrase (IP) must corefer. This reference is indicated by use of a subscript placed on the anaphor and the antecedent. The anaphors constitute elements that bear the feature [+Anaphor, -Pronominal] during

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