Subject-Verb Agreement in Chiyao Conjoined Noun Phrases

Abstract

This paper discusses different strategies for establishing concord with conjoined noun phrases in Chiyao (P.21), a cross-border Bantu language spoken by about three million people scattered in five countries of eastern and southern Africa. The findings reveal that various options are available in Chiyao for showing concord in conjoined noun phrases (NPs ). These include the use of default agreement markers a- (class 2) for human nouns, and i- (class 8) for non-human nouns; the use of an agreement marker of the noun closest to the verb, as a default strategy for locative and post- verbal conjoined noun phrases; taking an agreement marker from a human noun in cases where the conjunct involves a human and a non-human noun; and opting for a compound sentence, thus avoiding the conjoined construction. The paper is organized into six sections. The first section introduces the problem and provides background information to the language and its speakers. The second section presents the methodological issues of the study. The third section discusses subject-verb agreement strategies in Chiyao. The fourth section presents a brief review of previous works on conjoined noun phrases in Bantu. The fifth section discusses different strategies for establishing concord with conjoined noun phrases in Chiyao, and the last section provides a conclusion. Key words: Chiyao, conjoined noun phrase, concord