Definiteness and specificity in the isiXhosa determiner phrase

Abstract

The article investigates questions relating to the morphosyntactic realization of (in)definiteness and (non-) specificity in isiXhosa. The interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics is explored in establishing the interpretation of noun phrases as regards (in)definiteness and (non-)specificity in isiXhosa, with particular attention to the object noun phrase. Properties of the noun phrase interpretation relating to the correlation between the (non-)occurrence of an object agreement prefix in the verb morphology and the preprefix of the object noun is invoked as evidence for the view that the noun class preprefix is an instantiation of the functional category Determiner. (In)definiteness and (non-)specificity readings of noun phrases containing nominal modifiers that are inherently neutral as regards (in)definiteness, namely the adjective, nominal relative and clausal relative, are invoked to argue for the syntactic status of the morpheme a-, which occurs in the inflectional morphology of these modifiers, as a determiner category heading a Determiner Phrase (DP).