Sebastian Dom | Ghent University (original) (raw)

Papers by Sebastian Dom

Zahran, Aron & Dom, Sebastian. 2024. Reflexive-Reciprocal Syncretism in Eastern Bantu Languages of Tanzania: Distribution and Origins. Languages 9(11)., Nov 8, 2024

This paper presents an overview of the distribution of reflexive-reciprocal syncretism in Eastern... more This paper presents an overview of the distribution of reflexive-reciprocal syncretism in Eastern Bantu languages spoken in Tanzania. Most Bantu languages encode reflexive and reciprocal constructions by means of two distinct verbal affixes. However, the Tanzanian Eastern Bantu languages under study have developed reflexive-reciprocal syncretism, in which the originally reflexive prefix has developed into a polyfunctional morpheme coding both reflexive and reciprocal constructions, to the detriment of the original reciprocal suffix. In a sample of 79 languages, reflexive-reciprocal syncretism is attested in 27 neighboring languages, thus constituting a clear areal feature. We propose that reflexive-reciprocal syncretism is not a language-internal innovation but was rather adopted from neighboring non-Bantu languages and subsequently spread out to its current distribution. We locate the heart of this contact-induced spread in the Tanzanian Rift Valley, a convergence zone in north-central Tanzania where languages from multiple African language families are spoken and have been in contact for an extensive period.

Dom, Sebastian. 2024. Reflexive morphology in the Kikongo Language Cluster: Variation and diachrony. Languages 9(3)., Mar 20, 2024

This paper provides a comparative and diachronic account of reflexive morphology in the Kikongo l... more This paper provides a comparative and diachronic account of reflexive morphology in the Kikongo language cluster, a genealogically closely related group of 40+ West Coastal Bantu languages. This study is based on data from 34 grammatical descriptions from 1659 to 2017 and fieldwork data collected in 2012 and 2015. Previous studies have shown that Kikongo languages, despite being closely related to each other, demonstrate extensive phonological and morphological variation. This is also the case for reflexive morphology. First, six different reflexive prefixes are attested in the database. These are, in alphabetical order, di- (with cognate li-), ké-, ki-, ku-, lu- and a vocalic morpheme variably written as i-, ii- or yi-. Second, while most Kikongo languages have one reflexive prefix, some descriptions report the use of two or more different prefix forms in a single language. Languages with multiple reflexive prefixes fall into two groups: one group has different prefixes in free alternation, while the overall verbal construction is claimed to determine which prefix is used in the other group. Following an overview of the formal variation, I discuss the possible origins of the various reflexive prefixes. One hypothesis assumes that the vocalic prefix is inherited from Proto-Kikongo, the most recent common ancestor of the Kikongo languages. A second hypothesis relates the origin of some reflexive prefixes to object indexes of various noun classes, in particular, noun classes 5, 7 and 11. A third hypothesis suggests that in some Kikongo languages, the vocalic reflexive prefix became fused with other pre-stem verbal morphology and developed into ku- and ki-. A fourth hypothesis proposes the development of the reflexive prefix ké- from an auxiliary. These four hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, and I discuss how multiple diachronic scenarios are necessary to account for the full range of variation of reflexive morphology in the Kikongo language cluster. It is proposed that the distribution of di-/li- and ki- is contact-induced through borrowing, both between different Kikongo languages and between Kikongo and non-Kikongo languages. I tentatively reconstruct the vocalic reflexive prefix *i- to Proto-Kikongo.

Dom, Bar-el, Kanijo & Petzell. 2023. The noncausal/causal alternation in Kagulu, an East Ruvu Bantu language of Tanzania. JALL 44(2)., 2023

This paper explores the formal correspondences between the members of verb pairs participating in... more This paper explores the formal correspondences between the members of verb pairs participating in the noncausal/causal alternation in Kagulu, a Bantu language from Tanzania. Our investigation shows that Kagulu has a predominance of equipollent verb pairs, with the anticausative and causative correspondences following close behind. We argue that, diachronically, the causative correspondence was much more prominent than it is in present-day Kagulu. However, due to morphophonological changes triggered by the historical causative suffix *-i, a significant number of verb pairs that are diachronically causative can be synchronically reanalyzed as equipollent. This study highlights the complexity of diachronic morphology in synchronic analyses of comparative-typological phenomena such as the noncausal/causal alternation, and contributes to the growing body of research on noncausal/causal verb pairs in African languages.

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

This paper explores the middle voice in Kagulu, a Bantu language of Tanzania. Although not tradit... more This paper explores the middle voice in Kagulu, a Bantu language of Tanzania. Although not traditionally recognized in Bantu languages, recent research has asserted that middle voice is attested in some Bantu languages. We propose that of eight affixes that might be considered middle markers, Kagulu has two affixes that are part of the middle voice system, each one coding two different detransitivizing voices. We argue that, from a diachronic viewpoint, the underdeveloped voice syncretism of Kagulu’s middle markers is the result of competing morphology and minimal functional innovations towards voice syncretism in the derivational system of Kagulu.

Linguistique et langues africaines

In this introduction to the special issue on the noncausal/causal alternation in African language... more In this introduction to the special issue on the noncausal/causal alternation in African languages, we lay the foundation for the contributions that follow. We provide an overview of the languages that are discussed in the contributions. We present a definition of the noncausal/causal alternation, and a summary of the typological literature on this alternation. We outline two dominant typologies of socalled "correspondence types" and discuss the methodology for investigating the noncausal/causal alternation. The introduction closes with summaries of the eight contributions.

2023 Dom et al. Middle voice in Bantu: in- and detransitivizing morphology in Kagulu, 2023

This paper explores the middle voice in Kagulu, a Bantu language of Tanzania. Although not tradit... more This paper explores the middle voice in Kagulu, a Bantu language of Tanzania. Although not traditionally recognized in Bantu languages, recent research has asserted that middle voice is attested in some Bantu languages. We propose that of eight affixes that might be considered middle markers, Kagulu has two affixes that are part of the middle voice system, each one coding two different detransitivizing voices. We argue that, from a diachronic viewpoint, the underdeveloped voice syncretism of Kagulu's middle markers is the result of competing morphology and minimal functional innovations towards voice syncretism in the derivational system of Kagulu.

Linguistique et langues africaines, 2022

In this presentation, we discuss the first results on the causal-noncausal alternation in Kagulu.

Linguistique et langues africaines, 2022

In this paper, we discuss shifts in the formal relation, i.e. “correspondence” (Haspelmath 1993; ... more In this paper, we discuss shifts in the formal relation, i.e. “correspondence” (Haspelmath 1993; Nichols et al. 2004), between members of noncausal/causal verb pairs in eight East Bantu languages. These shifts are the effect of diachronic changes to the morphophonological structure of the verbs involved, conditioned by reflexes of a reconstructed Proto-Bantu causative suffix *-i. In the history of many Bantu languages, the high vowels i and u conditioned a series of sound changes on the preceding consonant. The suffixing of the causative suffix *-i to a verb root is one context in which these sound changes occurred. We investigate noncausal/causal pairs in eight East Bantu languages in which the causal verb is historically derived by a reflex of the suffix *-i. We argue that many of these noncausal/causal pairs changed from a causative to another correspondence. Our analysis has implications for the study of the formal alternations of noncausal/causal verb pairs across all Bantu languages and beyond.

This sentence questionnaire was created by the four members of the research project 'To break... more This sentence questionnaire was created by the four members of the research project 'To break or be broken — A study of valency-decreasing alternations in East Ruvu Bantu languages'. The project aims to study valency-decreasing alternations in Kagulu, Kami, Kutu, Kwere, Luguru and Zalamo, six underdescribed East Ruvu Bantu languages spoken in Tanzania. The questionnaire is based on the word list published in Haspelmath (1993), which consists of 31 noncausal-causal verb pairs and aims to study the coding of the noncausal-causal alternation. The questionnaire is tailored to the specific linguistic and cultural area of the research project, and is not intended to be of use for all languages or linguistic communities. The questionnaire is entirely bilingual English-Swahili. TL stands for 'target language'.

This sentence questionnaire was created by the four members of the research project 'To break... more This sentence questionnaire was created by the four members of the research project 'To break or be broken — A study of valency-decreasing alternations in East Ruvu Bantu languages'. The project aims to study valency-decreasing alternations in Kagulu, Kami, Kutu, Kwere, Luguru and Zalamo, six underdescribed East Ruvu Bantu languages spoken in Tanzania. The questionnaire is based on the lexical verb list published in Haspelmath (1993), consisting of 31 verb meanings, to study the coding of the anticausative-causative alternation. The questionnaire is tailored to the specific linguistic and cultural area of the research project, and is not intended to be of use for every language or linguistic community. The questionnaire is entirely bilingual English-Swahili. TL stands for 'target language'.

In this paper, I discuss two visual perception verbs in Kindibu, namely kumona </em&... more In this paper, I discuss two visual perception verbs in Kindibu, namely kumona and kutala. Two related issues are addressed concerning these verbs: (i) What are the meanings of kumona and kutala in Kindibu and subsequently, what are the various constructions they appear in? (ii) A direct corollary of proposing a polysemic network (rather than analyzing the different senses as instances of homonymy) is to establish the underlying link(s) between the various meanings. I will argue, following Sweetser's (1990) account of perception verbs in (mainly) English and some other Indo-European languages, that the relation between the various meanings of the visual perception verbs in Kindibu is a metaphorical one. It is shown that the related senses of kumona all pertain to perception of an abstract 'inner' (both physical as relating to one's body and psychological as relati...

This paper presents a comparative overview of the neuter suffix -ik- and its... more This paper presents a comparative overview of the neuter suffix -ik- and its functions in Bantu.

KIGA (JE14) (Taylor 1985: 147) a. Rutafa y-aa-yat-a amate. Rutafa SM-PST-spill-FV milk 'Rutafa sp... more KIGA (JE14) (Taylor 1985: 147) a. Rutafa y-aa-yat-a amate. Rutafa SM-PST-spill-FV milk 'Rutafa spilt the milk.' b. amate g-aa-yat-ik-a. milk SM-PST-spill-NT-FV 'The milk (got) spilt.' The neuter thus encodes an alternation between a two-participant and one-participant clause in which the Goal (Undergoer, Patient) of the basic, underived clause (1a) becomes the sole participant of the derived clause (1b), and the agent-like participant of the basic, underived clause becomes inexpressible. 1 This has been called the ergative or anticausative alternation, depending on the framework in which the phenomenon is studied. It has been shown that there are generally five ways in which the alternation is encoded cross-linguistically (Haspelmath 1993). These are summarised below. Table 1. The five alternation types (based on Haspelmath 1993) Alternation type Examples from Haspelmath (1993: 91-92) 1. Causative alternation a. One-participant basic/underived 2 b. Two-participant derived Georgian a. duɣ-s 'cook' (intr.) b. a-duɣ-ebs 'cook' (tr.) 2. Anticausative alternation a. One-participant derived b. Two-participant basic/underived Hindi-Uru a. khul-naa 'open' (intr.) b. khol-naa 'open' (tr.) 3. Equipollent alternation Both verbs derived from the same basic verb stem Japanese a. atum-aru 'gather' (intr.) b. atum-eru 'gather' (tr.) 4. Labile alternation Same verb root used for one-and twoparticipant member English a. open (intr.) b. open (tr.) 5. Suppletive alternation Two different verb roots used for one-and two-participant member Russian a. goret' 'burn' (intr.) b. žeč' 'burn' (tr.) Map 1. Guthrie's classification of the Bantu languages, with the addition of zone J (

This PhD deals with the semantics of two major parts of the Bantu verbal system, namely derivatio... more This PhD deals with the semantics of two major parts of the Bantu verbal system, namely derivation and tense/aspect, from a comparative and diachronic perspective. With respect to derivation, the aim of the PhD is to relate a number of verbal affixes, which are found throughout Bantu, to the grammatical category of “middle voice”. With respect to tense/aspect, one aim of the PhD is to present a first large-scale comparative overview of the most common tense/aspect constructions in the Kikongo Language Cluster from which i) Proto-Bantu retentions and ii) innovations from different stages in time can be identified. The isoglosses of the most common tense/aspect constructions can be confronted with the isoglosses of lexically-based phylogenetic subgroups, where both similarities and mismatches between the two provide relevant information about language history. A second aim of the study is to describe the diachrony of tense/aspect constructions and paradigms on the basis of different m...

Zahran, Aron & Dom, Sebastian. 2024. Reflexive-Reciprocal Syncretism in Eastern Bantu Languages of Tanzania: Distribution and Origins. Languages 9(11)., Nov 8, 2024

Dom, Sebastian. 2024. Reflexive morphology in the Kikongo Language Cluster: Variation and diachrony. Languages 9(3)., Mar 20, 2024

Dom, Bar-el, Kanijo & Petzell. 2023. The noncausal/causal alternation in Kagulu, an East Ruvu Bantu language of Tanzania. JALL 44(2)., 2023

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

Linguistique et langues africaines

2023 Dom et al. Middle voice in Bantu: in- and detransitivizing morphology in Kagulu, 2023

This paper explores the middle voice in Kagulu, a Bantu language of Tanzania. Although not tradit... more This paper explores the middle voice in Kagulu, a Bantu language of Tanzania. Although not traditionally recognized in Bantu languages, recent research has asserted that middle voice is attested in some Bantu languages. We propose that of eight affixes that might be considered middle markers, Kagulu has two affixes that are part of the middle voice system, each one coding two different detransitivizing voices. We argue that, from a diachronic viewpoint, the underdeveloped voice syncretism of Kagulu's middle markers is the result of competing morphology and minimal functional innovations towards voice syncretism in the derivational system of Kagulu.

Linguistique et langues africaines, 2022

In this presentation, we discuss the first results on the causal-noncausal alternation in Kagulu.

Linguistique et langues africaines, 2022

This sentence questionnaire was created by the four members of the research project 'To break... more This sentence questionnaire was created by the four members of the research project 'To break or be broken — A study of valency-decreasing alternations in East Ruvu Bantu languages'. The project aims to study valency-decreasing alternations in Kagulu, Kami, Kutu, Kwere, Luguru and Zalamo, six underdescribed East Ruvu Bantu languages spoken in Tanzania. The questionnaire is based on the lexical verb list published in Haspelmath (1993), consisting of 31 verb meanings, to study the coding of the anticausative-causative alternation. The questionnaire is tailored to the specific linguistic and cultural area of the research project, and is not intended to be of use for every language or linguistic community. The questionnaire is entirely bilingual English-Swahili. TL stands for 'target language'.

This paper presents a comparative overview of the neuter suffix -ik- and its... more This paper presents a comparative overview of the neuter suffix -ik- and its functions in Bantu.

This paper was written for the course "Syntax and Lexicon" at Ghent University in 2014. In this p... more This paper was written for the course "Syntax and Lexicon" at Ghent University in 2014. In this paper, I compare two visual perception verbs, kumona and kutala, in Kindibu. I argue that the semantic difference between these two verbs, roughly corresponding to 'see' and 'look' in English, pertains to the dichotomy of the perception of an abstract 'inner' (for kumona) and an abstract 'outer' (for kutala).

This paper was written for the course "Language Variation and Change" at Ghent University in 2014... more This paper was written for the course "Language Variation and Change" at Ghent University in 2014. It summarizes the detailed history of the study of language variation provided in the state of the art handbook of variational linguistics edited by Peter Auer and Jürgen Erich Schmidt, "Language and space: An international handbook of linguistic variation", and gives an overview of the various dialectological works on Kikongo varieties.

Folia Linguistica Historica, Nov 1, 2015

Across Bantu, several polysemic markers expressing progressive aspect and so-called predication f... more Across Bantu, several polysemic markers expressing progressive aspect and so-called predication focus have been reported (Güldemann 2003; Hyman and Watters 1984). In this article, we examine two such markers in Kikongo (Bantu, H16), i.e. the fronted-infinitive and the locative-infinitive constructions. We provide an in-depth synchronic description of the pragmatic and syntactic behaviour of both verbal constructions and suggest a historical evolution for each of them. We evoke the term ‘event-centrality’ to cover the different uses of both constructions and suggest that the fronted-infinitive construction’s progressive meaning evolved from its use as predication focus marker, and vice versa, that the locative-infinitive construction’s predication focus meaning evolved from its use as a progressive marker.

This draft is a typologically oriented version of my master dissertation. It is unpublished, and ... more This draft is a typologically oriented version of my master dissertation. It is unpublished, and has been uploaded for comments.

This dissertation was written for the Master of Advanced Studies in Linguistics in 2013-2014.

Folia Linguistica Historica, 2018

This article aims to give a semantic study of the reflexes of one specific tense/aspect form, nam... more This article aims to give a semantic study of the reflexes of one specific tense/aspect form, namely the so-called *-a-B-a construction, in a cluster of about 40-odd Kikongo language varieties spoken in a wide area around the mouth of the Congo River in Central Africa. We first present a detailed analysis of the multiple uses of these cognate constructions at sentence level, in order to arrive at a formal and semantic reconstruction for the most recent common ancestor of the Kikongo Language Cluster, namely Proto-Kikongo. The analysis departs from the overall aspectual meaning of the linguistic expression in which the tense-aspect construction is used. Therefore, we also take into consideration the contribution of different aspectual tiers, such as lexical and grammatical aspect, adverbials and taxis constructions. Through the discussion of the multiple uses of the-a-B-a construction, we argue that its overall meaning is complex, combining both temporal and aspectual semantics. It is furthermore shown that a lexical-aspect distinction between states-of-affairs with transitional versus non-transitional temporal structure is crucial in order to understand the various uses of the-a-B-a construction. Methodologically, the formal and semantic reconstruction to Proto-Kikongo are based on a thorough comparison of a multitude of existing data sources, some of which several centuries old, as well as original fieldwork. This bottom-up approach has rarely been pursued over the past half century in Bantu grammatical reconstructions.

Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2020

The North-Angolan Bantu language Kisikongo has a present tense (0-Rang-a; R=root) that is morphol... more The North-Angolan Bantu language Kisikongo has a present tense (0-Rang-a; R=root) that is morphologically more marked than the future tense (0-R-a). We reconstruct how this typologically uncommon tense-marking feature came about by drawing on both historical and comparative evidence. Our diachronic corpus covers four centuries that can be subdivided in three periods, viz. (1) mid-17th, (2) late-19th/early-20th, and (3) late-20th/ early-21st centuries. The comparative data stem from several present-day languages of the “Kikongo Language Cluster.” We show that mid-17th century Kisikongo had three distinct constructions: 0-R-a (with present progressive, habitual and generic meaning), 0-R-ang-a (with present habitual meaning), and ku-R-a (with future meaning). By the end of the 19th century the last construction is no longer attested, and both present and future time reference are expressed by a segmentally identical construction, namely 0-R-a. We argue that two seemingly independent but possibly interacting diachronic evolutions conspired towards such present-future isomorphism: (1) the semantic extension of an original present-tense construction from present to future leading to polysemy, and (2) the loss of the future prefix ku-, as part of a broader phenomenon of prefix reduction, inducing homonymy. To resolve the ambiguity, the 0-R-ang-a construction evolved into the main present-tense construction.