Verbal extensions in Tshiluba

In this work I am going to discuss the nature and productivity of verbal extensions in Tshiluba, a Bantu language spoken in South-Eastern Congo-Kinshasa. Verbal extensions − i.e. suffixes placed between the radical and the final inflection of a verb, in order to “extend” the radical and form verbal derivates − are a phenomenon that typically characterizes Bantu languages; however, the number, type and form of verbal extensions varies considerably among languages. Though verbal extensions are generally treated as a unitary phenomenon in the literature on Bantu languages, nonetheless several differences can be observed among them, and in particular I claim that extensions can be divided into two groups. The former, which I call ‘syntactic extensions’ (i.e. applicative, causative, reciprocal and passive), are highly productive, and crucially cause a change in the grammatical functions − as well as in the linear order − of the constituents of the sentence. The latter (i.e. neutro-passive, neutro-active, stative, reversive, repetitive, extensive and contactive) are instead relatively rare, and are generally found, in an almost idiosyncratic way, together with certain verbs or certain semantic classes of verbs. I will call them ‘lexical extensions’. In the course of the paper I will discuss each extension in turn, their properties as well as their possibility to combine with others; finally I will speculate on the differences that can be drawn between syntactic and lexical extensions.