Relative clauses in Bantu: affixes as relative markers

In this work I am going to investigate relative clauses in Bantu languages, with special regard to Tshiluba and Swahili. In particular, in these languages the relative marker is not an independent element, but rather a morphologically bound affix. This does not come as a surprise, in that all unstressed pronominal elements encoding syntactic relations, like subject, object or locative, have affixal status in Bantu. However, the fact that the relative marker is a bound affix bears non-negligible consequences on the morphology of the verb contained in the relative clause (RC). RCs are noun modifiers, like attributive adjectives; thus a RC must be prefixed in agreement with the antecedent DP, like all modifiers. Consequently, the prefix of the modified DP must show up in the (morphologically complex) structure of the verb of the RC, thus interfering in various ways with the other affixes which may be present. Furthermore, the situation will be different according to the syntactic relation (subject or object) holding between the modified DP and the predicate. To complicate the picture even more, different Bantu languages encode RCs in different ways. In particular, the picture offered by Swahili and Tshiluba in this regard looks rather variegated. It will be the scope of this work to show how a unitary analysis can be provided, in spite of the notable superficial differences existing between the two languages.