Studies in Role and Reference Grammar – serie

Gĩkũyũ is a Bantu language (< Niger-Congo) spoken by approx. 8 million people in central Kenya. Like other Bantu languages, Gĩkũyũ is head-marking at the sentence level but dependent-marking at the level of the phrase (e.g. reference phrase, modifier phrase). Concerning the head-marking vs. dependent-marking division, the volume addresses major topics. First, it explores the exact conditions of head-marking in Gĩkũyũ, addressing issues like argument linking as well as voice operations affecting argument realization. Second, it investigates the so-called associative construction. This is a dependent-marking strategy used for the expression of possessive relations, spatial locations, as well as adnominal modification. Although the use of the same morphosyntactic strategy for the expression of possession and adnominal modification is frequently attested among the world’s languages, this issue has not been addressed from an RRG perspective yet. Although Gĩkũyũ already received some attention within the RRG framework, the above-mentioned topics have not been in their main focus. Thus, the volume extends the previous analysis of Gĩkũyũ and presents a coherent account on the language’s morphosyntax along the lines of head- and dependent-marking. The analysis builds on the latest theoretical developments within RRG and combines a detailed analysis of a single language within a broader cross-Bantu perspective.

This inaugural edited volume of the series Studies in Role and Reference Grammar brings together papers that showcase recent advancements in various aspects of the field. The individual chapters explore phenomena such as Aktionsart, operators, discourse and information structure, argument coding, alignment, voice, and clause linkage. Among other topics, the volume includes a revision of discourse representation, a new analysis of passive constructions, and a new RRG analysis of case syncretisms. The papers in this volume encompass analyses of a wide range of genetically and typologically diverse languages, such as Lakota, Yaqui, Japanese, Irish, Spanish, and several Indo-Aryan languages.The book is targeted at the RRG community but will also appeal to researchers interested in syntax, semantics, morphology, discourse structure, and the interfaces of these linguistic domains.